We made it here to beautiful (and I mean beautiful) Santiago, Chile, where the weather was in the mid 50's today. We had an exciting day of being oriented and exploring the city on a cultural scavenger hunt. I loved seeing the Cerro de San Cristobol and reacquainted myself with riding the subway.
My biggest cultural lesson for the day is that Chile is strict on food coming into the country. Genius me decided that natural almonds (in prepackaged 100 calorie packs) would be a great, light snack to carry around. Not so much. Despite my gut feeling that almonds aren't really a fruit or vegetable, I had consulted the flight attendant and declared them after she told me that customs were strict on food products and that almonds are considered a dried fruit/vegetable product. Sure enough, Mr. Customs Agent (who was very nice and looked like he felt bad about it) tossed my 6 packages of almonds right in the trash before my very eyes. I just thanked him for not taking my granola bars too and he explained that even if my almonds had just been roasted or salted I could have kept them. It was the whole "natural" part on the package that led them to the trash can. Needless to say, I'll survive and have learned a valuable lesson.
Since we mainly just toured the city in small groups trying to find things today, I only made a few real observations. (1) The people here are nice and accommodating. (2) There are a lot of homeless dogs that just lay around on the sidewalks all day. And, (3) There are many, many public displays of affection by young and old couples alike.
I'll hopefully get to report in tomorrow after I ride a horse (or go rafting) in the Andes. That should be interesting to say the least.
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