Santiago — A City Of Painted Crosses
And Coffee with Legs
I often wonder what motivates a traveler to pick her destination. Of course, television and advertisements play a big part, but sometimes the place itself summons people; otherwise, there was no reason for me to visit South America.
The only thing I knew about Chile when I first set foot in its capital city was that it is a thin strip of land that ends somewhere near Antarctica, literally at the end of the world.
I had never heard of Patagonia or the Fjord of islands in the South or the Atacama Desert in the North of Chile. Yet the desire to see it all was so strong that a visit to three countries ended up mostly visiting Chile.
LAN airways’ flight landed at Santiago at 7:45 pm local time. Just before the plane stopped on the runway, I realized that one of my earrings had come off while sleeping. That generated a frantic search. I looked under the seats, in the pile of blankets, and at the back row, but to no avail.
Without disclosing it to my husband, I abandoned the search and walked with him through the airport's long corridors only to get behind a wrong line at the immigration check.
