Arrival In Santiago

We travel a lot, but rarely by plane.  I have renewed respect for those who can manage lots of air travel.  It´s far from Seattle to Santiago — almost 16 hours of flying time split over three flights.  But there were no troubles, so 22 hours after leaving our house, a taxi was dropping us in front of the Happy House Hostel.  Happy indeed!  They let us check in at 6:30 in the morning.  After hot showers, we promptly fell asleep until noon.

After a nice walk around the neighborhood and a leisurely lunch, I´m starting to feel human again.  My Spanish is starting slowly, but I did manage to navigate a pharmacy for sore-throat lozenges.

We have no news yet on when the motorcycles will arrive.  I´m hoping for that today.  If we get a definitive date, we can make our own plans.  Until then, we´re just hanging out, which is not so bad.

Our preparations to leave Seattle went fairly smoothly.  It helped that we shipped the motorcycles on Wednesday, so we had three full days after that to pack our stuff and do all the other stuff.  The details aren´t that hard to handle, but saying goodbye can be.  As excited as I am about this trip, it is hard to step away.  In some ways, many things will be the same when return.  But lots won´t be.  It´s especially true about the kids in my life — a lot changes in five months.  The little ones will be crawling, the bigger ones lose teeth or learn to ride a bicycle or learn to read.  And things change in the lives of my friends that I´m not there to share in the joy or help in the difficulties.  I´m certainly not complaining about the opportunities I have.  I just want to acknowledge some of the flip side that often doesn´t get mentioned.

That´s all for now. Hopefully, next time I´ll have some photos to include.