December 14 - The Adventure Begins

I woke up on my feet with a phone in my hand, saying "Hola?Hola?" How quickly I convert to the native tongue.

It was 5:45 a.m.—our wake up call. I was in such a deep sleep that I had incorporated the ringing phone into my dream. In my half-dreaming stupor I believed I was having a conversation with my Aunt Betty who was taunting me by not revealing her name and urging me to "guess who." As I shifted into consciousness I realized I was holding a phone and listening to an alarm-style "beep, beep, beep."

We made it to the airport for our early flight without event. Security in the Chilean airports is a joke. As long as you're not carrying an ax or an uzi in plain view, you're pretty much okay to board any plane.

The flight from Santiago took across some of the most beautiful mountains I've ever seen. The Andes looked so much like the mountains from the flying monkey drawing I recently completed. I was mesmerized. Their beauty was expansive and completely enthralling. They were a rich gray with deep dark brown undertones. Turquoise rivers wound through the snow-capped peaks. Signs of human life and civilization were nowhere to be seen.

We had an hour to ourselves before our Active South America tour guides showed up. We ate at the only restaurant in the tiny little Punta Arenas airport. It was probably the best food we had on the entire trip. Creamy soups and humongous sandwiches the size of my head.

The remainder of our group had stayed in Punta Arenas overnight and met us at the airport with our guides. We divided into two groups and began our drive to Puerto Natales. We quickly learned a little about our travel companions as we drove through pasture after pasture of sheep. I was so excited to see all the sheep. I've been drawing sheep for a few months now. It started innocently enough as an exploration of my fear of herds and just grew from there. Seeing the sheep in their element was a nice surprise.

We soon arrived at "the end of the world"—Puerto Natales. The town has obviously benefited greatly from its proximity to the national parks. Tourism is a huge industry in Chile. Many of our guides have studied in universities to gain degrees in tourism. Were it not for tourism, I can only imagine that Puerto Natales would be a forgotten shanty town.

We spent a quiet Sunday afternoon walking around the city, taking photos, browsing the souvenir shops and talking to the stray dogs down at the pier. The buildings in the town were all painted in a gorgeous color palette that seemed unique to the region. Turquoise. Yellow-green. Mossy Lime. These colors repeated themselves throughout many of the towns of Chile. Despite the run-down nature of the town, it has a certain appeal to it. It is very genuine and welcoming. And I'd love to go back for a couple of nights if I'm ever planning another trip to Torres del Paine National Park.

Holiday in Hell

Maybe we're just unlucky, but I couldn't help but notice the day's date as we continued our search for Cain's luggage—the 13th.

It seemed the luggage was lost in a bureaucracy of laziness, stupidity, disengagement and unhelpfulness. The afternoon's proceedings went as follows. Phone call. Phone call. Phone call. Busy. Voicemail. Hung up on. A little internet research. A handful of jumbled numbers for international phone calls. Peak of frustration and a brief break for lunch to appease the pending grumpiness.

We ate at some crappy uber-mall restaurant notable only for its similarity to the mediocre fare of Atlantic Station or Perimeter Mall back home. Alas, we needed to be at the mall for the next phase of Operation Luggage Recovery.

With heads hung low, feeling overwhelmed and exhausted, we headed into the mall to stock up on wilderness gear. We spent 461,614 pesos (roughly $700) in about three hours. But it wasn't without much effort and perseverance.

Shopping in the malls of Santiago for cold weather gear was not exactly an easy or productive feat. When it's 80° F outside, not too many people are shopping for long underwear or wool hiking socks. To further complicate things, stores in Chile apparently carry very little inventory. There are generally four or five sizes of an item in stock and no additional sizes in the back of the store. And not to overlook the biggest hurdle of the entire shopping excursion, you should note that cashiers in Chile are a special breed unto themselves.

Chilean cashiers operate in clusters of four or five. They each share an insignificant portion of the same brain. While one begins ringing you up, another will interrupt them or move all of your merchandise out of the first cashier's reach. A third will appear from under the counter to ask a completely irrelevant question that temporarily confuses all of the cashiers at the register. Inevitably a fourth or fifth person will show up carrying register tape or some other dislodged register component, causing all of the cashiers to shuffle like penguins to the adjacent register for an emergency register repair session. When the gaggle of cashiers return they might scan your next item, or they might gaze absent-mindedly out the store entrance for a couple of minutes before remembering where they are and what they're supposed to be doing for this strange person across the counter who seems to be staring at them.

So here's a word to the wise, do not go to Chile with major shopping excursions in mind. This is not the place to do it. Our experience with the inept cashiers was not unique to any one store. It was a widespread epidemic.

Needless to say, the shopping experience just further tired us out. We headed back to the hotel and collapsed for a few minutes. We tallied up the receipts for Cain's purchases, removed tags from the new clothes and packed up our gear in preparation for our flight to Punta Arenas in the morning.

We had a quiet dinner near the hotel and watched an endless progression of belly dancers passing in and out of a nearby dance school. A bottle of wine and a good partner to reassure you when you're feeling defeated can make a huge difference after a long day.

A Four Hour Tour

The plan for today seemed simple enough, if not a bit vague and subject to key developments in the search for Cain's lost luggage. Our consensus was this—if the luggage is lost then it's lost and we can't make it otherwise just by calling various offices at Delta and fretting endlessly over the bad situation. It seemed then that if we were to enjoy any of our time in Santiago we would have to just put the luggage situation aside for a little while and go explore the city.

Jason had arranged for a guided van tour to pick us up at his hotel early that morning. So we had a simple brunch at Hotel Orly and then headed over to the Grand Hyatt so that I could lick the floors and smell the lingering stank of Madonna's ego—she stayed there the previous two nights while on tour.

The van tour was a wonderful way to see Santiago. It certainly helped that our guide was smart, funny and amiable. Carlos looked a lot like Antonio DiGiorgio, President of Winthrop University. So that was weird for me.

Carlos seemed very proud of his nation's history. His enthusiasm for Chile was infectious. I admit that I don't know a lot about Chile or its history. I just know that once upon a time, there was a dictator named Pinochet. And because I'm an American, I presume that all dictators are always bad. Interestingly enough, Carlos was hesitant to criticize Pinochet, but passionate about freedom and human rights.

Carlos showed us site after site, spouting the political significance of it all. It was almost too much information to process. But to be in the presence of a Chilean who wished to share their culture with us was a great blessing. We ended our tour back at the hotel and Carlos was bumping fists with us, giving high-fives and grabbing us and hugging us as we said our good-byes. He was a sweet man.

Then began the epic hellacious saga of locating Cain's luggage... a cloud creeps in over Santiago.