On the Road Again...

Greetings!

I'll be using this blog to update our friends and families about Paula and my trip to Chile in January/February of 2006. We'll be leaving Friday and the current itinerary (well, the current guess at what our itinerary might be...) includes:

January 20-21 - Travel from Seattle to Dallas to Santiago, Chile and then to Viña del Mar

January 21-26 - Stay with Paula's sister Lola and her family in Viña del Mar (a resort on the Pacific Ocean near Valparaiso) and also visit Paula's mother

January 27-29 - Travel to Temuco in southern Chile for the wedding of Paula's nephew Antonio on January 28th

January 29-February 1 - Spend a few days at a ranch near Temuco (or something similar, the translated details that I've received aren't quite clear and I don't think the original Spanish version is any better...) visiting with family after the wedding

February 2-8 - Travel to Chiloe, an island further south in Chile (just south of Puerto Montt) to visit Paula's brother Tite

February 9-16 - Head back north to Santiago by bus and train to catch our flight home. We'll probably stop along the way in Valdivia to visit Paula's cousin Francois and also in Concepcion to see Paula's adopted dog "Lucky" and finally in Santiago or Viña del Mar to meet Chris Leininger, his wife and cousin (Chris is a friend from work that will coincidentially be in Santiago at the same time we are)

February 17-18 - Jack's Birthday - Fly from Santiago to Miami

February 18 - Wedding in Miami - Paula's nephew Javier

February 19 - Fly from Miami to Seattle and home

This trip is a bit different from our usual style of travel. We've been to Europe, Africa and Asia on trips before and always travel with just a carry-on bag or two. We travel light. And we don't usually have an itinerary - we arrive and decide where our next stop will be by our mood and interest.

This time we have responsibilities and appointments plus we're taking some semi-bulky gifts for members of the family along with real clothes for a couple weddings - so it looks like we'll have our usual "carry-on bag or two" but also be responsible for a couple extra suitcases. I'm not looking forward to walking out of the airport in Santiago and finding transport into town to the bus station and then onto a bus to Viña del Mar while lugging our suitcases.

But we'll manage.

I'm sure it won't be as bad as some of my other travel horror stories (see your local Barnes and Noble Bookseller for these former best selling titles: "5 days of Mud in Northern Kenya" or "Boatride from Hell to the Sudan" or the gripping "Malaysian ER", or maybe "Sick and Alone in a First Class Waiting Room Somewhere in India" or the always popular "The Chinese Canned Pears of Wadi Halfa" and "No Rooms in the Inns of Colmar" plus others in the continuing series...).

Watch this space for the first update from Chile sometime soon! If you want to get some background information on Chile - check out the Wikipedia Chile webpage.