Santiago, Chile - February 16, 2020
Yes! Si! We are here! Estamos aqui!
That's the exciting part, but, as most people our age know, life goes on - detailed agendas and planning, while extremely useful life-tools, have little impact on pure daily life.
First let me start with . . . just two days before our cruise ended, Stan became ill, very ill. We have no idea why or how but he started growing slow-moving and he developed headaches. He just lost himself. He was in no way his usual happy, entertaining man. The next morning his body felt very hot next to me, but he wanted to go on our planned excursion, especially since it was our last port and reportedly a very good one for fantastic views of God's country. Even with good intentions, he hardly left the van . . . except to visit the banio . . . at every stop and more often when possible.
We did see sea-side villages, vacation resorts and a beautiful rushing river with not tall, but powerful water falls - at least I saw all that. Stan saw some. He had severe chills in the night. Early the next morning I was absolutely convinced he had fever and realized I should have recognized that his condition was serious the day before. Stan was still willing to wait and see. At my urging we got dressed and visited the ship's doctor first thing. We were skeptical of the help he might receive; assuming limited facilities would be available on ship. Still we thought, better safe than sorry. Our expectations were low. Cruise ships' medical facilities are notoriously similar to doc in a box. However, the prospect of leaving the ship and ultimately landing in Santiago, becoming more and more ill with no clue where to go did not seem like good alternative.
NCL Star's physician, Dr. Harold Castellanos was nothing short of amazing! This doctor from Guatemala City performed a thorough examination on Stan with blood tests and urine analyses. Stan's fever, even though early in the morning was still alarmingly high. His white blood cell count was off the charts and his urine tests were bad. Dr. Castellanos prescribed IV fluids and IV antibiotics for that morning, that evening and again the next morning before we departed the ship. He gave Stan high potency antibiotics to take along and instructions that if notable improvement was not noticed within 48 hours, Stan should see a local physician or perhaps go home. Meanwhile he sat with us and made Stan feel comfortable, and thoroughly explained Stan's condition, the dangers and signs to watch for in the days to come.All that happened February 13-15. Today, Stan is allllll-most himself again. I promise you I will keep a sharp eye on him. He is my everything. I WILL keep a sharp eye on him.
Stan and I spent the greater part of Valentine's Day in the ship's Infirmary.
In the meantime, with great timing, we had an offer on our beach house in Panama City Beach. Oh, how we hate and hurt to sell this beautiful place! But as we become older, we feel the need to dispose of most property and obligations. We hope to simplify. We dread the day that we get truly old and are not able to take care of property and things. We think it's best to divest and rent (and continue our travels) . . . . Just call the landlord if the sink stops up or the HVAC is not working.
Well . . . as I said earlier, life just happens, like it or not. The appraisal on the beach house came back $60K below the agreed upon selling price. Yeeesh! Anyway we fumed and worried but finally settled for a price a little lower but it's done. All of these complex back and forth communications with our real estate agent occurred here and there via sketchy Internet service and Stan sick as can be! I say again, Yeeesh! While it looks as if we have a deal, we have mixed emotions - we are happy, but extremely sad. If all goes as planned we will never enjoy that amazing veranda or sleep in that wonderful place again. Excuse me while I cry.
Ok. . So here we are in Chile. Our drive from the port, San Antonio, Chile to Santiago took about 1.5 hours through long stretches of dry port areas . . . mile after mile of huge metal containers waiting to be moved to cargo ships or to trains or trucks to be delivered to their ultimate destination. We have never seen such a complex shipping arena.
Outside of shipping lay miles and miles of farm land . . . dry as a bone. Trees were coated with dust. The landscape littered with dusty eucalyptus trees reminded us of the hot, dry Australian country side. Even the air was filtered with dust. We passed irrigated fields of strawberries, beans and corn. Finally we began to enter the city of huge city of Santiago. Graffiti! Graffiti everywhere. The markings of demonstrations and protests that began last October by the peoples' revolution are quite evident. We expected this but seeing the results of civil disobedience and pure vandalism is shocking. Still . . . I get it. People must make themselves heard and that's what these folks have done! They protest rising costs for education, the rising high prices of public transportation and police brutality. They protest the rich government. Well, I'm not taking sides because I just don't know the entire story but man, their buildings are a mess. I will just ad this: We did not walk very far to see the disparity between the rich and the poor.
We love our little apartment. It's just right and it is in wonderful part of town that is close to very important things we want to see and experience. It's just steps from fantastic restaurants and shops and just steps from the metro. Our school, we expect to begin class, next Monday, is a 44-minute walk away. Uh-oh! I expect we will in fact walk/run there on some days but we might also opt to hop on the subway and pop out just a 12-minut walk away from class. Maybe we will walk one way for our daily exercise and take the subway the other.
We had a delightful late afternoon, early evening dinner last night at Novita—just a few doors from our gated apartment complex. We were tired, stopped at the first inviting bistro and simply ordered pasta. The delight of the visit was meeting our waiter, Senor Fernando. This gentleman has never left the country in his at least 60 years but speaks perfect English and his handwriting could become font we all might select. Meeting him was our first God-moment.
Our second God-moment was today when after we had walked 3 miles doing a trial-run to our school's location, we decided we were lost. A 90-year old gentleman sidled up and said in his soft voice, are you folks lost? We said, maybe??? Oh my gosh!! What a nice man. He's a native but must have deep European roots. He said he couldn't see a damn thing on our phone but if we could tell him the street, he could tell us how to get there . . . and he did. Actually . . . we gave up before we got there and called UBER before my phone's battery was totally dead. ----- We surely did not want to be miles away from the apartment with no phone for navigation or UBER. The UBER driver came and took us straight back to the apartment, again. Thank you, dear Lord for allowing my phone's battery to hold out. Once home, we checked Navigation again. We were within a block of the escuela. We plan another dry run tomorrow. At least it's good exercise. More to come!