Day 236 - Santiago de Chile

Today we reached the capital Santiago de Chile.

The Swiss Consulate had mail waiting for us, and a box with VW spare parts from our friends Bernhard & Elisabeth in New York was waiting at customs.

The Swiss Club was easy to find and assigned us a parking space and access to the entire facility. We couldn’t wait any longer and curiously snooped through the mail.

In the afternoon, we walked to a shopping center and supermarket. At the checkout, they asked if we had empty bottles to trade in for the wine we bought. It was apparently part of Chile’s recycling policy and made much sense. The market had various fruits (peaches, apricots, oranges, grapes, apples, pears) and all sorts of vegetables, assumingly all from the southern region we had just passed through.

The Chilean people seemed OK. The police wore clean, well-kept uniforms. Downtown Santiago halovelyce old buildings in the Spanish colonial style. The streets and sidewalks looked clean and well-maintained. Everything seemed organized, and there were some rules: restaurants must close at 11:30 PM, and no motorized vehicles were allowed to drive between 1 and 4 AM.

Stats: Miles 47, Expenses $10.90Read more