santiago day one: November 29, 2006
Chile has the oldest mummies in the world, John says. He's reading the Lonely Planet like it's the Bible, and we're hovering somewhere above the Chilean Andes on our jumbo jet filled with a mostly senior citizen-contingent of travelers, looming high above the clouds of South America, on our way to Santiago, Chile's capitol. As we descend, the pressure in the cabin plugging up my ears, John reads travel tidbits. I am listening to Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" on headphones and tap-tap typing for I can no longer sleep on this plane. I'm sitting between John and an older Chileno lady traveler. She has been awfully quiet during the entire trip---no chitchat, no 'How do's' or 'Where are you going, where are you from?' inquiries. Most people don't want to be bothered, I've noticed, on planes. But then again, neither do I.
They've just roused us from a fitful, stuffy pressurized night of overnight sleep on this flight from Dallas to Santiago and we've just finished breakfast---microwaved croissants, orange juice, jam, margarine and weak coffee. The pilot announces that the Santiago airport is a mere 25 minutes away from landing, and that it's a "nice day" today in Chile. I look over and see a lake of clouds floating beneath the plane's wings.
I can wholeheartedly say this trip began with me missing the dogs, Django and Sophia, and my cats, Mango and Deniro terribly and feeling torn up about leaving them. We emailed dog-walker Lance instructions from the terminal at LAX. I can already see Django waiting by the door for us to arrive and Sophia, she's sitting like a queen on the sofa, curled up into a ball on the chaise with the blanket at her feet. I am just a softie when it comes to my pets and animals---yet hoping with all my might that my very white couch remains just so and unsoiled when we return.
John is filling out his customs card as the plane gets ready to land---when the smell of the breakfast cart hits, it's really amusing to see everyone being roused from their slumber by that fresh-from the microwave scent of yeasty croissants---bread has a strange power to get people up. We sit up straight, smooth out our mussy hair, and await breakfast. I have been reading Pedro Neruda's Memoirs, off and on, during the fitful night and feel inspired. Even before we land in Chile, the pages of Neruda's thick memoir open up the country and evoke the landscape: isolated, desolate and impoverished, harsh, windy and brutal yet full of poetry, yet lovingly hopeful toward his fellow man. Most touching are Neruda's descriptions of his wife, Matilde, digging in the garden in their home at the beach town of Isla Negra, where the waters of its shores are, Neruda describes, cold and fresh.
"It may interest no one else, but we are happy. We share the time we have together in long sojourns on Chile's lonely coast.......Now I'm watching her sink her tiny shoes into the mud in the garden, and then she also sinks her tiny hands as deep as the plant has gone down. From the earth---with her feet and hands and eyes and voice---she brought me all the roots, all the flowers, all the sweet-smelling fruits of happiness." (from Pablo Neruda's
Memoirs)
37 weeks!
