First Day in Chile

As we were boarding our final flight, it finally sank in that I was leaving the country and going to Chile. It was a long flight and I didn't sleep at all on the flight which would eventually take a toll on me later. While making the final decent into Chile, I could see mountains out the window. The landscape already seemed very cool, even thru all the fog and clouds. After landing, we all successfully made it through customs without being accused of smuggling any items and we met the student from the University who led us to the bus to take us to the hotel. It was a very scenic trip however my lack of sleep caught up on me about half way through and I missed some scenery. When we arrived at the hotel, it was a bit frightening. There is no heat and the bathroom situation is a little ridiculous, but we’ll survive. We then left to find a place for lunch. We found a nice little restaurant and ordering the food was quite comical. My first meal in Chile was called Ave Especial, basically a chicken sandwich. It was huge! But very good. We then spent the next couple hours walking around Vina del Mar. There are stray dogs everywhere here and some just will follow you around. There are some that are very cute but also a lot that look like they have such sad lives. One particular dog followed us around for a while and the boys named him Sergio. After spending some time by the water, we went back to the hotel to chill before dinner. Around six, we got dinner at the Hot Chile Pepper right down the street. I got the chivichanga, I believe it was called, and it was basically a fried tortilla filled with beef, chicken and cheese. It was pretty tasty actually. Then after, we all went and got gelato and managed to piss those people off too with our American obliviousness to how to order correctly there. But the ice cream was absolutely delicious!