Ripley's Staff in South America Skiing Chile Meets With Wholesale Partners in Santiago June 24, 2008 On the Way to Epic Andes Skiing!

Dear friends:

I personally arrived in Santiago, Chile at about 8:00 am on Tuesday, June 24th. Since then the schedule has been so hectic, that it has been difficult to post to the blog. My apologies for that! As the pace of our whirlwind tour settles down slightly for a few days, I will attempt to post more frequently. I assure you there is much interesting feedback to share. I also have great images to post, but manipulating (sizing) the images is taking a little help from home, so the overall process has been a bit slow.

Where to begin? My flight from Denver to Dallas was uneventful. From Dallas to Santiago was an 8-9 hour red eye that arrived in Santiago at about 8:00 am. This is a typical flight schedule getting into Santiago from the states. I had a hard time sleeping on the flight mainly based on the excitement of the trip. I was up a good portion of the night. Needless to say, sleeping on a plane isn't extremely comfortable to begin with.

The first real evidence that indeed I was actually traveling to South America and this all wasn't just a dream came when the captain pointed out the beautiful views of sunrise over the Andes Mountains. I quickly made a beeline for the other side of the plane and gawked in sheer awe. That is when the reality and excitement of this trip truly kicked into high gear. It was truly a beautiful site to behold. It was evident to me after flying in to many mountainous destinations that the Andes were on a larger scale than most. In fact, Cerro Aconcagua, located near Mendoza, Argentina, about 15 miles from the Chilean border and not that far from Santiago, is the highest mountain in the Americas at about 22,000 feet. It is one of the seven summits and the highest mountain in both the Western and Southern hemispheres.

I soon learned that these mountains were towering! Where you have a base elevation in Santiago at somewhere just under 2,000 feet above sea level, you have near bye mountains literally rising 10,000 plus feet straight out of the ground and straight up making for stunning visual impact! Because Denver is already at 5,280, getting up to 10,000 obviously doesn't take nearly as much vertical rise from ground level. These mountains are huge!

I was a bit trepidatious about what to expect from customs in Chile. I do not have a great handle on Spanish and was wondering how difficult the process of muddling through the airport, collecting my luggage, meeting my ground transfer, and getting to my hotel in Santiago would be. I had received an email from Julie Waters who had arrived in Santiago two days before and had largely and expertly coordinated most of our logistics, explaining a slightly hectic disembarkation process and giving me the name of the driver from CTS Turismo, one of our wholesale partners for skiing Chile. His name was Jaun and I was told he would have a sign with my name on it that would be evident once I picked up my bags and cleared customs. That was good news!

Assisted by Kevin, a friendly university professor from Baltimore who contributed to a teaching program at the Catholic University in Santiago and my flight seat mate, I found the process relatively painless. You have to pay a $130.00 reciprocity fee as they call it to enter the country. I was happy that they had recently started taking most of the major credit cards from American tourists to cover this fee, something not even the guidebooks, or even American Airlines as they detailed the customs process on the tarmac, have caught on to as of yet it seems. Everyone still says it is cash only. Anyway, This fee is good for the life of your passport so in theory is a 1 time deal if you plan on returning to Chile on the same passport. Luggage was scattered about the floor of the baggage claim, but it only took me a few moments to locate mine and everything was accounted for.

I had carried on most of the electronic items that I was taking on the trip out of paranoia and first hand feedback that baggage handlers have an affinity for electronic devices stored in luggage so my laptop case was weighed down with Ipod speakers, webcams, charging units, etc. Julie had mentioned in an email that people would try to grab your luggage and carry it for you for tips even if they were not associated with your scheduled ground transfer, so I held on tight after having collected my luggage and emerged from security into the general fray outside of security. This was my first encounter with Jaun, our very friendly driver from CTS Turismo.

There it was right when I emerged from security, a sign with my name on it and a very comforting sight in general. Jaun drove me from the airport to the Times Suites in the Las Condes district on the eastern side of Santiago. He spoke English well, something you can specify through this company when making a reservation for a private transfer, and proceeded to give me a pretty decent verbal tour of the city on the way in from the airport as well as answering the myriad of general tourist questions that I had for him. I recommend this route for ease of assimilation, less stress, and general convenience if you don't mind spending the marginal additional amount amount on a private transfer with an English speaking driver rather than a shared ride. For specific information and pricing on ground transfers from Santiago contact us at Ripley's Mountain Adventures.

Anyway, we were very lucky. This was a very nice man with a patient and laid back demeanor, something characteristic in my short experience of Chileans in general. We would get to know Jaun pretty well over the course of the trip as we had him on just about all of our transfers around Chile. He was nothing short of phenomenal! Thank you Jaun! More on that later.

Driving through Santiago I was struck by the variable conditions in different parts of the city as we drove in from the airport. There were definitely some shanty areas on the outskirts of the city, but as we proceeded East the city became increasingly nice and increasingly cosmopolitan. This is a pretty large city with a population of around 6 million people. Most tourists stay in one of three upscale districts, Las Condes, Providencia, and El Bosque Norte, all next to each other on the east side of town and all very nice with a wide variety of upscale accommodations available from luxury hotels to trendy boutique hotels. Downtown is another popular area to stay, but its popularity is diminishing a bit because it isn't as quite as clean, safe, nice, or modern as its eastern counterparts. There are a few major players as far as accommodations downtown, the Plaza San Francisco Hotel for one, that are still good options. This hotel is one of the more established hotels in the city and is very traditionally fancy. It markets itself as Santiago's only 5 star hotel, although the rating system here is self imposed. It is a very nice hotel and the service is formal. It also has one of the most famous restaurants in town, the Bristol. If you want to be close to the Presidential Palace, government ministries, and other downtown attractions, then this hotel is a good option. For more information on Santiago lodging options contact us at Ripley's Mountain Adventures.

When I arrived at our accommodations, Tench was already in the suite sleeping after having arrived earlier from LA from after 3 nights of Widespread Panic. He seemed in need of some good sleep! Julie arrived from her other hotel shortly after my arrival. She had been in town for a couple of days. We were simply waiting for Justin, who had been traveling around South America for weeks, to arrive on his flight from Buenos Aires. Then the Ripley's Mountain Adventures Chile Crew would be complete.

Justin's flight ended up being a bit delayed so the rest of us were picked up by the intrepid Juan from CTS Turismo and we went to visit our business associates at CTS Turismo headquarters, including Andrea, Victor, and Hugo. CTS Turismo enjoys a large office on the east side of town and is running a sizable organization that offers a wide array of products including scheduled and private ground transfers, ski tours, tours of the Atacama Desert, wine country tours, Patagonia tours, combination tours inclusive of lodging, and even tours and cruises down at Tierra del Fuego, the Straight of Magellan, and in to Antarctica. We plan on offering a lot of this fabulous product to our clients at exceptional rates. For more information on the abundance of Chile Tour Packages we are able to offer encompassing everything Chile contact us at Ripley's Mountain Adventures. These Chile Tour packages are amazing!

Next we visited the Valle Nevado Ski Resort Corporate Office in Santiago and met with our colleagues including Paz, Andrea, and Xemena! It was great to meet people that we have dealt with over the phone so many times and it it was quite a festive occasion for all. These ladies have incredibly sunny dispositions and are incredibly sweet and nice. During our visit we made a light inquiry regarding the possibility of heliskiing when we arrived on our tour of Valle Nevado Ski Resort. Paz was uncertain whether the heliski operation was ready for its first outing of the season, but promised to make the inquiry. They had to test the chopper, inspect the back country conditions, etc. Much more on that later!

The rest of the day involved Tench, Julie, and me on an exhaustive yet thorough tour of most of the primary hotels and lodging options in Santiago. We got a good tour of the city thanks to Jaun who knows his way around and knows how to maneuver through some confusing streets and crazy traffic. Thanks again Jaun! We were able to visit a dozen or more of the best hotels in Santiago, Chile, look at rooms, and tour the amenities. This knowledge will serve our clients well in the future. After this exhaustive tour, it was time to get some dinner and prepare for our departure to Valle Nevado Ski Resort the next morning. This journey would happily include Jaun once again on one of the most interesting transfers imaginable through the mountains to a ski destination. Much more on this in my next posting!