Well! We’ve finally run the technological gauntlet of seemingly global control over accessing your own accounts when not on your home computer! The entire google-sphere seems hell-bent on protecting us from ourselves. All the verification systems don’t matter if you cannot receive an SMS attached to your phone number which cannot be received when abroad. This post does not guarantee future posts, but we’ll try nonetheless….[sigh…]

**spoiler alert: verification by home phone numbers will prove to be an ongoing barrier to doing many things in Chile…

After several flight cancellations during the mid-January extreme winter weather, we managed to get to South America on January 14, landing first in Santiago, Chile.

Our first 4 days were consumed by sleeping & buying groceries (day 1); climbing Cerro San Cristóbal & the ‘downtown’ sections of the city in 30C (day 2); tackling the metro system and exploring Centro (Plaza des Armas, Cathedral of Santiago, National History Museum), climbing Cerro Lucia with views from atop Castillo Hidalgo, and enjoying our first Pisco sours with some lovely food on a patio in trendy LaStarria barrio (day 3); laundry & re-organizing our bags, plus a wander through the interesting Recoleta cemetery and Cerro Blanco park (day 4). Approximately 35km explored on foot excluding trains.

Random Santiago

Cerro San Cristobal

Centro

Barrio Recoleta

Watch for our next instalment, touch wood…