As promised, I am continuing the blog in comfort from home in Tucson, although you will note that some of this was written in Chile.  Not only is blogging more comfortable, it is a lot faster and a lot less expensive.  I will return first to 17 December and the shore excursion that takes us from the ship in San Antonio to the exploration of the port city of Valparaiso and on to the Santiago de Chile airport.  Since you already know about the cancellation of our flight home on the 17th, I will give more details about the delay and the day we spent at the Sheraton Hotel in the city, as well as the next night's flights back to Houston and on to Tucson.

18 December 2018
Santiago de Chile

If you have been following the itinerary of our trip, you would expect me to be writing this entry from home in Tucson.  But travel is often full of unexpected adventures, and here we are at the Sheraton Hotel in Santiago de Chile.  Last night's flight to Houston was cancelled as a result of a mechanical problem.  To be precise, the problem was that none of the toilets on the plane were working.  And I can verify this from personal experience:  right after boarding the plane, I decided to empty my bladder so I wouldn't have to get up during evening meal service.  When I finished my work, I discovered the toilet would not flush, and so informed the closest flight steward.  The rest is history, which shall be reported in due time.  We are rescheduled to leave Santiago tonight (Tuesday) on the same schedule as we were originally placed on Monday.  I will, of course, let you know how this all works out.  But the delay gives me time to go back to yesterday's adventures focused primarily on the historic and quirky city of Valparaiso, Chile.

17 December 2018
From Ship to Shore
San Antonio to Valparaiso to Santiago de Chile

After a quiet sea day yesterday--deciding what souvenir papers to keep and what to discard, packing, attending the Mariners' lunch and receiving our HAL Delft tiles (I have quite a collection now), saying goodbye to ship-made acquaintances--we are ready for a long day of sightseeing and travel today.  Our flight doesn't leave Santiago de Chile until 11:20pm; we will spend most of the day touring, with a planned airport arrival of 4pm.  That leaves a lot of waiting time, even if everything goes as scheduled.

We left our luggage outside our stateroom door before turning in last night and we will not see it again until we are at the airport--at least we don't have to carry or worry about those.  We have room service breakfast at 6am (by the way, room service breakfast choices have been severely limited from what they used to be on HAL cruises--only one type of egg, scrambled, is available).  At 8:30 we are on the coach heading north to Valparaiso, where we arrive in about an hour.

Valparaiso is an old port city that has earned UNESCO heritage status for its old city built up the hillsides of the coastal range, accessible by a series of venerable and still-working wooden funiculars.  I spent a short time here in April 2013 as I began my cruise from Valparaiso to Ft Lauderdale--I had less than two hours to explore the northern part of the city.  Today we will get a much more comprehensive look at various parts of the city.

We enter the city from the east in a pass through the hills.  As the bus takes us downtown we pass a large number of wonderful 19th- and 20th-century buildings in various states of restoration or decay.

Erected during the Allende dictatorship, the monument to the copper industry provides a rather grim entrance to the center city.

While the post-modern legislative building presents a more "open" attitude toward government and architecture.

We continue on the bus toward the city center, passing a major street market and some of the city's native murals--unfortunately we going too fast and the windows are too dirty to get many good photos.

Our first stop is the Villa Victoria Museum, a Valparaiso heritage interpretation center run by young members of the family that own this 19th century building.  The museum recreates the mercantile atmosphere of Valparaiso as a major port city before the turn of the 20th century.  The exhibits include artifacts and some fine video presentations.  The building has been restored to its original quality.  Costumed members of the family lead guests on the tour.

After our visit to the Villa Victoria we are ready for a funicular (ascensor) ride up the hillside to the first panorama level.  Before entering the funicular we pass the Hall of Justice.

Ticket Taker and Turnstile

Views from Ascensor

Views from Platform at Top of Ascensor

Besides offering wonderful views of the city and port, the platform at the top of this ascensor is home to the Palacio Baburizza, an eclectic art museum housed in an eccentric building.  After a light lunch on the museum terrace we are given a guided tour of the museum by a young curator, who speaks only Spanish--luckily our excellent tour guide from Holland America, a native of Valparaiso, translates into coherent English.  The museum has works by the "followers" of important European artists of the 19th and 20th centuries, as well as some innovative contemporary Chilean works.

Left:  Museum Curator; Right HAL Guide

Museum Interior

After a return trip down the ascensor, our waiting bus takes us on the 90-minute drive to the Santiago Airport (SCL), where we arrive about 4:30pm.  Our flight is scheduled for 11:20pm and United Airlines will not let us check in until 8:00pm.  So we must wait, with our luggage, with no place to sit, for three and a half hours!  We do find a restaurant--the only one around--that will let us bring in our luggage, where we dawdle over a meal for as long as we can.

Finally, we are able to join the line for check-in (at least we have priority boarding for this flight) and prepare for all the rigors of check-in, security, immigration, etc, before we can finally sit at the gate for another two hours.  The only bright spot is the very kind young woman from Chicago, Kim, who is on line behind us, having spent her vacation traveling around Patagonia with her husband.  Not only does she provide friendly conversation, but offers to watch our luggage and help us whenever things get tight--as they will over the next 24 hours!  I will mention her again later.

At 10:15 we begin boarding and settle into our Polaris flat-bed seats.  As I mentioned at the top of this long blog, I decide to use the lavatory and discover that the toilet is not working.  After that,  all hell breaks loose.  It takes several hours for the toilets to be fixed and when we finally taxi out to the runway, another mechanical problem seems to pop up.  After another long while, an announcement is made that we will be returning to the terminal because the crew has worked over their allowed hours and are no longer able to fly tonight.  So, at close to three am we are herded off the plane, taken through immigration again, have to pick up all our luggage and go outside to waiting buses that will take us all to a Sheraton hotel for the night.  We will be given more information later in the day about our return flight.  We reach the hotel at 5am, where check in for the 120 passengers goes pretty quickly, and by 6am Will and I are asleep in our beds.

I will continue this saga in the next episode of LFLatSea.