I'm in Chile!

It's the end of day two in Chile! We have packed a ton in so far. I'm traveling with a delegation of about 20 people from many walks of life. The majority of our team is from the American Red Cross (different chapters, but mostly LA). We have two doctors, a lot of people who work for the state doing emergency preparedness/management, my boss and I from USGS, and a few others. We're in Chile to try and draw connections between the earthquake they had here in February, and what could happen in CA.
It's late, and it's been a very long day, so for the sake of my sleep, I'll try and keep this brief!

I left LAX on the 18th, flew through Dallas-Fort worth and saw some great things on the 9 1/2 hour flight to Santiago! It was overnight flight, so to the normal person, having a window seat may not have been that exciting. Au contraire, my friends! We flew east to New Orleans, then flew south over the gulf. I saw at least 40-50 controlled burns in the oil "spill". Somewhere around the narrow gap between Cozumel, Mexico and Cuba, we flew through an hour of lightning storms (literally zig-zagged through them)--it was pretty cool! I kind of felt like I was watching the weather on Jupiter or some far away planet :) I slept for about 2.5 hours over the Caribbean and northern S. America. When I woke up, it was about 4:30 AM, and I decided to watch the sunrise (Yes, I planned my seat on the plane so I could see sunrise and the Andes...), because how often does that opportunity come around? Here are a couple of shots of the sunrise.

See the mountains really far in the distance?

 Here is more sunset over the Pacific, with the Andes in the far distance.

The Andes are AMAZING!

This is the tallest peak in the Andes, Aconcagua

Here is downtown Santiago, with a modern high-rise in the foreground and the Andes in the background.

Day one, we had lunch in the Bellavista area of Santiago. I had pumpkin filled pasta with a salmon cream sauce. The best part was a fresh mango juice drink! It was 100% fresh mango, and was incredible! After lunch, we met with Chile's version of FEMA. It was an interesting/informative meeting, and we're meeting with another group from that office later this trip. On our way around town, we saw something that I've never seen before. In LA, we have panhandlers that walk between cars at lights asking for money. In Santiago, people do acrobatics (and then ask for money)! This guy and his buddy were juggling. Another group of 4 people were doing impressive gymnastics/cheerleader-like throws. One one throw, they must have launched the girl at least 10 feet in the air!

We had an evening group debrief, which went until about 9. For dinner, 7 of us ate in the hotel. I had an asparagus and avocado gazpacho (it was only OK), and split a rosemary marinated tilapia appetizer with someone.

Today, we had two meetings. The first was with the Chilean Red Cross. We met with about 10 representatives, including the national president of the CRC! We had lunch in the hotel restaurant with the CRC people. It was very impressive-a delicious salad (yummy goat cheese!), an entree with a lightly fried chicken, a fritatta of some sort, and rice, with spectacular cream puffs for dessert! One small catch-the cream puffs were filled with a custard flavored ice cream! AMAZING.

Our afternoon meeting was at the Palacia de la Moneda (literally Mint Palace)-it's the presidential palace, but used to be the national mint. We met with the gentleman who chaired the president's special commission to (simply put) handle the after-earthquake coordination. They let some press in for about 3 minutes to take pictures and film. That was a but surreal.

The building was built in the late 1700s. The picture below shows some of the minor exterior damage the building had during the February earthquake.

This is me with some of the guards outside of la Moneda.

Seeing as it's 2 AM here (and I have to be up at 8:30) I'll close with dinner. We went to a great restaurant a few blocks away. I had a 12 ounce filet that was only about $12! I also tried a pisco sour (famous Chilean drink). I had pretty high expectations, and it was not as good as I was hoping. I think I'll have to try again sometime...

Here are all of our steaks! (Mine's the one on the far right!)

Check out that giant taxidermied buck behind us! What a great trip so far! We leave Santiago Thursday morning. I'll definitely have internet until then, but am not sure how reliable it will be after that... Thanks for reading all of this!

-Debbie