February 19th to 21st | After a late flight (10:45pm boarding time, 11:45pm actual flight departure), spoke with a woman from Alberta who had been to South America more than 14 times and received lots of much appreciated travel advice. Also told myself and other people on the flight that her daughter had eloped in Peru. Slept decently on the flight but ate a very weird "pancake" breakfast courtesy of Air Canada.

Finally arrived in Chile, took about two hours to get through the reciprocity fee line up and customs -- then on to the Centropuerto bus where I didn't have any cash other than $10 USD. This appeared to frustrate the driver who dug for change in Chilean Pesos. Bus ride into the city was quite fascinating since I did not know where I was going nor did I really know what stop to get off at. I just knew I needed to get to the Los Heroes metro station which I made it to. Initially did not spot the Metro station but after squinting and scouting around in the middle of the street -- I found the entrance.

The next challenge was to get a Bip! transit card and that took a while as I attempted to communicate with the teenage customer rep in a mix of Spanish and English (in other words: 20% Spanish / 80% English). Had no idea how to use the Bip! card, apparently it works just like the Presto tap card. Lots of fans blowing cool mist with people standing underneath. Metro reminded me of the UK tube.... and after arriving at the Santa Lucia Metro station, I wandered abouts asking for directions to Miraflores where my hotel was. That is the beginning of this adventure.

Look out for the captions under each picture for more details.