Below the Equator - Santiago and Valparaiso, Chile

Yesterday we travelled 6,208 miles, from San Juan to Santiago. Which means we sat in airplanes for 9 1/2 hours. It actually wasn't so horrible.
We arrived in Santiago to find that our hotel was very centrally located, and a short walk to a hopping night life area called Bella Vista. We ate dinner at 11 pm, at a restaurant called "coma Agua para Chocolate", and yes, the excellent food was made with lots of love. What a marvelous find.
Something we noticed while walking through Santiago were many, many free dogs wandering around. All breeds, very friendly. We saw this in Athens also... just dogs who live in the city and are sort of communally cared for. They all seem very well behaved and have their special spots where they hang out.
Santiago strikes me as a friendly, clean city trying to become more modern.
As we flew in, we could see all the farms surrounding the city. It is such a treat to finally eat Chilean produce in Chile - it's local!

We left early today to travel to Valparaiso, the coastal city from which we will depart on our sea voyage. It is about 80 miles from Santiago, and we travelled by bus. Chile seems to have solved the public transportation problem - they have excellent metro, trains, and busses.
Valparaiso is surrounded by 6 hills. Where we are staying is in an old area of the city, which reminds me of Greenwich Village on hills, I guess like San Francisco also. There are lots of galleries and restaurants, and I saw many working artists. Some tiny little houses surrounded by roses amidst the 3-6 story buildings.

We are staying in a molto trendy hotel with only 9 rooms, a sitting room like your very favorite cozy living room, and a beautiful garden. Tomorrow we hope to get to the market and purchase some flowers to bring on board the ship.

O...and the most important thing...I can testify that, below the equator, one feels upside-down and inside-out, and yes, the water swirls down the drain counter-clockwise!

And another strange thing.... even though we traveled west (we thought), we ended up in a time zone one hour ahead of our beloved Virgin Islands. Need to look at a map, and see how far East South America is!