Happy
General Conference weekend! It's one of my favorite times of the year. I love feeling inspired by the messages shared. I was also able to use the time between sessions to organize our pictures and things to get ready to post about our vacation a few months ago.. and voila! A blog update.
One of my goals once we graduated was to travel. I haven't had the opportunity to travel very much and I wanted to change that. In December Dallin finished up his first full case as a real, grown-up, attorney, so in January we took two weeks for a vacation before work got super crazy again. Dallin served his
mission in Santiago, Chile several years ago and has talked about returning since we were married, probably before actually. So on January 10th we woke up early, grabbed our two carry-ons (that's right I packed for two weeks in only a carry-on... are you impressed? You should be!), and got on a plane bound for Santiago.
We had a 10 hour lay-over in Mexico city so, after spending about an hour trying to get out of the airport (immigration, customs, and then the maze of the airport itself), we went to explore. We jumped on one of those double decker tourist buses and listened to the tour information as we rode around on the top! The weather was amazing. It was a fun way to see the city with a limited amount of time. Especially since we were carrying our bags. We hopped off at the Zocalo (the huge main plaza) and wandered around looking at the churches, government buildings, and shops. While walking around we found some tacos de canasta (tacos from a barrel) which were about 50 cents each and were way better than the dinner we had later.
They were still having their fiesta de Navidad so it was pretty crowded, and as it got later we started to notice dozens of riot police gathering on every street corner. Although our next flight didn't leave for a few hours still we decided it was time to go back to the airport. We managed to get on the metro and take it back to the airport. At this point I was feeling pretty good about my Spanish. I'd understood most of what was said and was able to respond fairly well. Don't worry though, this confidence didn't last long.
Luckily our flight to Santiago wasn't full so we got to spread out and sleep. We woke up the next morning in Santiago. It was amazingly warm here too! We were so happy to be out of the endless winter we've been having in the northeast. We made it to our hotel at about 12:30 and after a much needed shower we headed out to get some money, a sim card for our cell phone, and things like lotion and shampoo that we couldn't carry on the airplane. We walked out onto the busy street our hotel was located on only to find all the shops closed! Apparently everything, and I mean everything, closes early on Saturday in Santiago, even the tourist information place! Thankfully Dallin had lived in Santiago for two years and knew the shops at La Estaccion Central would be open. So we headed there to try and get what we needed. We went to the bus station and found a convenience store that had all the toiletries we needed. The cashier here didn't want to let us use our credit card without a RUT (a government id number) and we were reluctant to use the little cash we had so finally Dallin wrote down his driver's license number, which they seemed happy with, and we left to get a sim card.
The sim card seemed to be impossible to get. We went to about 6 different shops and they refused to sell us a sim card without a RUT. Finally we found someone to sell us a sim card. We needed internet to reset the phone so he gave us instructions on how to add minutes to the card once the phone was reset and we took off back to the hotel where we had Internet. On the way we stopped at Bar Naccional for some traditional Chilean food, Pastel de Choclo (a corn dish) and Porotos Granados (a fresh bean soup). We also stopped at Santa Lucia, a large hill in the middle of the city to see the memorials and the cannons at the top as well as to visit the feria (like a flea market) at the bottom.
While in the metro station we saw an atm, but when we tried to get money out, it said we couldn't because it was a foreign account. We started to get a little worried because we needed to catch a bus out to Melipilla the next day, and definitely needed cash for that. We figured out we had enough cash to get out there, and hoped the Riquez family, who we were going to be visiting there could help us figure out the atms.
Once back in the hotel room we reset the phone and attempted to add minutes, but we couldn't do it without a RUT! Dallin got on Skype with Fabricio, one of his mission friends who lives in Argentina. They spent a long time trying to figure out the stupid phone. I'm not sure how long because I fell asleep. I was pretty convinced our trip was off to a bad start. We had almost no money, no phone to contact anyone, and apparently couldn't do anything without a RUT!
*note: RUT is now a bad word in our family! And should not be used in my presence.
To be continued...
