A Remote Corner on Earth: First Post from South America

(Saturday, the 9th of January, 2016)
Hey guys, I've made it, I'm here. The flights had no problems and the customs and food safety officials at both the America and the Chilean borders were excellent and painless.

Apparently I was the only guy to use the stairs on the way down to get to the customs line, the rest of the pack got stuck on the escalators. So I just hustled down the stairs, aiming to get to the front of the pack so the line wouldn't be long, but there was no line, I pretty much just walked straight up to a booth, lucky day! I was surprised that I made it to the front, and I guess the customs officer was surprised by my super-speed as well.

I do believe that my Chilean customs guy was just waking up. He was still drinking the first sip of his coffee when I showed up in front of him. I was just going where the other officer pointed. He just turned around, scanned and stamped the passport and I was on the way.

It feels great to be back, by the mountains (or hills, depends on your on what scale you're talking, cause the ones around the city are quite small in comparison the the Andes.). I took some low quality shots with my phone and I'll try to get some posted.

After I arrived I took a long nap. Man, it felt like a new day after that. Sleeping and planes are a little hard for me when they're together, so I got maybe 3.5 hours, a 4 hour nap just doubled my sleep. I've met some cousins here today who don't speak more than a few words of English so I've had to get my Spanish game on a little earlier than I expected. Which has been fun and a challenge at the same time. We had a beautiful lunch together of homemade humitas and some salads, and dessert consisted of 1/8th of a massive watermelon. My God, I was stuffed and it was only 2 pm.

I spent some time bonding over Red Hot Chili Peppers with one of the cousins, coincidentally also named Nicolas. So he became Niko and I lapsed back to the traditional nickname of Nicky. But it was a fun time. Playing some knockoff Chinese version of Jenga.

We then some tea and freshly baked bread from the clay oven at around 6. The sun set around 9:30, and it seemed like we might have Evan had some dinner later. A few of the cousins sprung for some 10 o'clock corn on the cob, but I passed. If I keep eating this much I'm going come back massive.

All in all though, today was a great day, and I am looking forward to a great sleep tonight.

[The Internet speed is slow here, and I haven't had the chance to get a data plan or anything. Rather I'll link a Mega.nz folder with all of the pictures that I have, (sorry they are huge, as they are just transferred straight from my phone). At a later date I'll have time to compress some of them and choose the ones I like to post on the blog.]

More Pictures...
(Click here to see more pictures, I'll probably be changing this around getting it to a state of organization that works, making albums etc.)(Apparently not mobile friendly)

I'm looking to upload a random song from my library (that has an official YouTube video or official web source, unless I decide to toe the line) to provide some background music while reading. Since this is random, there is no guarantee of what genre it's going to be or if it is explicit or not this is more of a project for me and my friends... I'll try to accurately label it, but no guarantees.
Our test run today will be...
"Entre Cuerdas" by "Edmar Castaneda's World Ensemble" [Latin, Instrumental]
(Features some awesome trombone by Marshall Gilkes)