There is No Place Like Home

I am back in the good ole' USA. Jimmy and arrived in Madison yesterday afternoon about 1pm. I am so glad to be off of the plane. We had 3 flights coming back and while walking onto the ramp of the last leg of our journey I felt like I was on the Amazing Race tv show. We had been on a plane since 8pm on Thursday.

The trip was wonderful. I can think of a million ways to describe it. My first international trip was complete and it felt like a dream. 

As we arrived in Valparaiso on Friday morning I think Jimmy and I both had some what of a small panic moment. Not bad or anything. It is hard to describe. You feel a little helpless. You can't speak the language, you don't know your way around, you don't know currency conversions, you can hardly read the maps b/c guess what you can't read the language either. Jimmy's Spanish came back to him from his childhood in southern TX and my elementary Spanish came back as well. People are eager to help you and will try their best to point you in the right direction.

It was a chaotic for me to go through customs. Jimmy had traveled internationally so he knew what stations we needed to pass through and what to expect. I panicked on the plane b/c when we had to sign our customs paperwork I realized I had dried fruit in my bag from Target.....not so smart Anna, it is illegal to bring it into the country. I tried eating a lot of it before we landed and ended up throwing it away before we arrived in Santiago. 

Once we got through the customs and screening part of the airport our next stop was to find our driver. I had no idea what to expect. I had booked two tours and shuttle to and from the airport with our B&B in Valparaiso. Was it a big van of people or a taxi? We had no idea.

As we rounded a corner there was our driver, holding a sign with my name on it. 

He was very nice. His name was Jose and he gave us our first impression of the country. We were also happy to find out that our other tours were solely through him and they were private tours. We both were excited that they were not on a big bus.

Our drive to Valparaiso was very pretty. We went through the Casablanca Valley were Chile produces a large amount of its wine and olives. When we arrived in Valpo I was first a little shocked at how large the city was. No tall buildings or anything just so many multi-colored homes on the side of the hills was quite impressive. There are 40 hills in Valpo. Each hill has it own name and character and many of them drop right off into the ocean. We stayed on Cerro (hill) Concepcion. Some hills are poor and some have a bad reputation. Jose told us where to walk and where we should not venture. 

Our hill was beautiful. I have to brag that it was the prettiest!! mainly in part because I organized the Valpo part of our trip. I booked the hotel, shuttle and tours. I actually really liked researching information for our trip. Maybe I should be a travel agent? Or a little secret...I also like watching the travel channel and I knew of the hill from Samantha Brown's passport to South America......

Our room had a view of the bay and the neighboring rooftops. The B&B had 6 rooms. It was very charming. Hardwood floors, decorated very nicely and comfy rooms. We had breakfast each morning in the dining room. For breakfast we had a fruit tart with skewers of kiwi, bananas and strawberries. Then a cheese and ham plate with homemade bread and jams. 

One night we got a little lost walking home and it was getting dark. We are very thankful to a lady who stepped from her balcony and told us "peligro" DANGER. She motioned to us to not go up a certain road and we took her word for it. We are not sure what was up there....and do not want to find out. We told her thank you and walked back down. She watched us until we made it safely down the hill.

I talked previously about our first two days in Valpo. Our first day we had a walking/driving tour of the city with Jose and Francesa. She is a student majoring in tourism and works with the tour company for part of her schooling.

Second day we went to two wineries. Vina Indomita and Casas de Bosque. Both were beautiful. I had lots of wine. Their tastings were quite plentiful. I had lots of fun! Lots of wine!

Our third day in Valpo was a short one. Jose was picking us up at noon to drive us to the conference hotel in Santiago. We awoke early to make the most of the morning. We went down to the harbor to buy some souvenirs and also to see if we could take a boat ride. 

The harbor has tons of boats ready to take tourists out for a view of the city from the water. One captain approached us and asked if we wanted a ride. He basically spoke in Spanish and pointed at his boat and we said "yes". Oh Lord....what are we doing I thought. We are getting on a boat with a man who speaks no English and we speak very little Spanish. I am concerned at this point. His boat looked legit. It was named, had numbers on it for registration, he had a name tag and life jackets. I whispered to Jimmy "should we be doing this." Jimmy didn't seem concerned and could understand the captain enough to figure out it was an hour tour of the bay and how many pesos it would cost us. We had a grand time. We saw sea lions, penguins and I even got to drive the boat.

Each day was sunny with lows at night in the 40s and highs around 60.

At noon it was time to leave.... goodbye Valparaiso. On to Santiago.