Well, after many delays and a lot of procrastination, I finally am making the time to blog about our trip to Chile. As we were there for 3 weeks, this will be the first of many entries that I plan to make over the next couple of weeks. Stay tuned for more.
Given that we took so many pictures, and it would be time consuming to insert all or even some of them in the blog entries, I have decided to use the slide show below as it appears to be the easiest way to show you our pictures.
Our Chile Trip began on Feb 4th 2009 at 2:00 AM. Needless to say, it was a short night sleep as we hadn't gone to bed until 2 hours before. Something about us waiting until the last minute to pack our suitcases. By 4:20 AM, we were ready to leave our apartment and head to the airport. A few minutes later I realized that I had left all of my credit cards and drivers license at home on the scanner (I had wanted to make a copy as a backup). So we turned around and headed back home.
Arriving at the airport, we got through security realatively quickly (there are not too many crazy people who book flights at 6:00 AM). To summarize our day, we flew to Salt Lake, and had a 2 hour layover. From Salt Lake, we had a direct flight to Atlanta, where we spent 4 hours waiting for our flight to Santiago, Chile.
During our flight from Atlanta to Santiago, Katie experienced her first taste of airplane food and was quite impressed!!!! We tried to get some shut-eye, but stayed up quite late watching a free movie that was playing (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2). Thanks to John Madsen for introducing us to the first one.
Upon arriving in the airport on Santiago, we made our way down to customs and immigration. As I had been to Chile before and still had a valid immigration stamp, I didn't have to pay the $145 entrance fee that is charged to all Americans visiting for the first time, but Katie had to wait in line and pay her fee. From there, we waited inline to pass through customs and had to declare why we were there.
Finally, we made it to the baggage carousel and got our luggage, which by that time was just sitting there waiting for us. As an FYI, we traveled down there with 2 suitcases each, which turned out to be a pain when lugging them around. One entire suitcase (duffel bag) was filled with 40+ pounds of American food (root beer, licorice, skittle, snickers, jerkey, cake mixes, etc...) to give to some Chilean friends.
We found out the hard way that you can't enter Chile with any meat products, and they quickly confiscated two packages of beef jerky. I think it is probably because they customs agents just wanted something to eat!!!! Luckily they didn't notice the two extra package of beef jerky in another suitcase, so I was still able to make good on my promise to get some beef jerky to my Chilean friends.
We took a taxi to the bus terminal, and purchased our bus tickets for the 7 hour bus ride down to Concepcion Chile. As a side note about buses in Chile. Although more and more people are starting to get cars, the bus is still the major form of transportation in Chile. You can get anywhere to want to go on a bus (or multiple buses). As a result of this, some of the buses are incredibly nice.
Given that we took so many pictures, and it would be time consuming to insert all or even some of them in the blog entries, I have decided to use the slide show below as it appears to be the easiest way to show you our pictures.
Our Chile Trip began on Feb 4th 2009 at 2:00 AM. Needless to say, it was a short night sleep as we hadn't gone to bed until 2 hours before. Something about us waiting until the last minute to pack our suitcases. By 4:20 AM, we were ready to leave our apartment and head to the airport. A few minutes later I realized that I had left all of my credit cards and drivers license at home on the scanner (I had wanted to make a copy as a backup). So we turned around and headed back home.
Arriving at the airport, we got through security realatively quickly (there are not too many crazy people who book flights at 6:00 AM). To summarize our day, we flew to Salt Lake, and had a 2 hour layover. From Salt Lake, we had a direct flight to Atlanta, where we spent 4 hours waiting for our flight to Santiago, Chile.
During our flight from Atlanta to Santiago, Katie experienced her first taste of airplane food and was quite impressed!!!! We tried to get some shut-eye, but stayed up quite late watching a free movie that was playing (Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2). Thanks to John Madsen for introducing us to the first one.
Upon arriving in the airport on Santiago, we made our way down to customs and immigration. As I had been to Chile before and still had a valid immigration stamp, I didn't have to pay the $145 entrance fee that is charged to all Americans visiting for the first time, but Katie had to wait in line and pay her fee. From there, we waited inline to pass through customs and had to declare why we were there.
Finally, we made it to the baggage carousel and got our luggage, which by that time was just sitting there waiting for us. As an FYI, we traveled down there with 2 suitcases each, which turned out to be a pain when lugging them around. One entire suitcase (duffel bag) was filled with 40+ pounds of American food (root beer, licorice, skittle, snickers, jerkey, cake mixes, etc...) to give to some Chilean friends.
We found out the hard way that you can't enter Chile with any meat products, and they quickly confiscated two packages of beef jerky. I think it is probably because they customs agents just wanted something to eat!!!! Luckily they didn't notice the two extra package of beef jerky in another suitcase, so I was still able to make good on my promise to get some beef jerky to my Chilean friends.
We took a taxi to the bus terminal, and purchased our bus tickets for the 7 hour bus ride down to Concepcion Chile. As a side note about buses in Chile. Although more and more people are starting to get cars, the bus is still the major form of transportation in Chile. You can get anywhere to want to go on a bus (or multiple buses). As a result of this, some of the buses are incredibly nice.
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