TACA, Fedex, and the arrival of Mathryn (Maria and Kathryn)

I think we are definitely over due for a blog update. We have probably been a little too lazy lately in all respects and updating our blog is not an exception. The route of our laziness I think comes from the fact that we have not been on the road much lately. After spending 2 weeks at The Point Hostel in Lima we are pretty chilled out. We had a lot of fun in Lima, but I think what will stay with me are the people that we met there. I hope we are able to stay in touch with them. In fact we plan to meet Martjin in Buenos Aires, he knows of some good places to stay there.

On the 14^th of April after the bikes were all sold and the riding gear was shipped home to California our backpacking adventure began. Quickly let me say that Fedex kicks DHLs ass. The package arrived at Clay’s parents place on the 16^th!!! Fully intact. Just awesome service. Clay and I arrived at the international airport in Lima by taxi with backpacks in toe. The airport in Lima worked out great! The place was clean and well organized which I was totally was not expecting. But the airline we took from Lima to Santiago, Taca, was outstanding! It was one of the best flights I think I have ever had. While booking the ticket I was a little pissed that I was paying $400 USD for a 3 hour plane flight but it ended up being worth it. The plane was brand new and very clean. Each seat had a complementary blanket and pillow. A meal and movie were also included on the flight, even though the movie was some sucky romantic comedy I thought it was cool that they didn’t charge for the headphones like on the Virgin Atlantic flights to Las Vegas. The other thing that’s dumb about Virgin Atlantic is the purple mood lighting in the cabin, anyways I digress.

So we got into Santiago at like 3am on the 15^th and didn’t really have a plan on where we were going to sleep for the rest of the night. Which resulted in us getting the run around from this cab driver who kept taking us to hotels that were already full or way out of our price range. Anyways after about an hour of farting around and about 50 USD later we got to La Casa Roja were we stayed for the last several nights. We had a couple good nights in Santiago, several people we talked to before said there wasn’t much to see in Santiago and that it had a sort of commercial feeling to it, which I think is somewhat true but we had a great time there and there are some nice things to see in Santiago such as the city square, and the catherdral as well as this cool park that is set up on an enomous rock that looks over the city. Clay will post pictures of all this stuff soon.   –Kyle

Kyle did a great job of updating you on our travels, and I was just teasing him that he should become a “Business Critic” Writer for Business Week Magazine (with a great Editor of course), somewhat similar to a Food Critic.  Although you are now well informed as to Fedex’s and TACA’s outstanding business tactics, he left out the biggest part of the last 4 days:  Maria and Kathryn showed up!!!  Kyle and I got up the earliest we have the entire trip and met them at the Santiago airport Friday morning.  We had a great time on Friday exploring the City and then later we visited the Bella Vista neighborhood for drinks and dancing.   It’s been nice to have a little estrogen in the air to mix it up a little over the past few days.  So I’m gonna wrap this up but we’re now in Vina del Mar on the Chilean coast and tomorrow we leave on an 8 hour bus ride to Mendoza, Argentina.  We’ll post some pictures soon, but not from Maria’s camera, which got stolen from right under our noses today while we were at the beach.  Luckily she only had a few pictures on it and it was on the fritz anyways.  Til next time….    -Clay