Normally, we are very independent travellers and book all of our own arrangements, including flights and accommodations. However, just like in Africa, we felt that our trip to South America merited the knowledge and advise of a specialized travel agency. We found South American Vacations in Florida.

Often, we travel for an extended period of time, combining personal travel with work in international schools. This time, however, I did not have school bookings and we could only go away for a short time, around 2 weeks. We had not spend much time traveling in South America and several locations here were on our long time bucket list. Two weeks would be enough, in fact we couldn't afford any longer to this expensive destination. We took a deep breath, bit the bullet: and decided to visit Easter Island and the Galapagos Islands while we are still healthy enough for the amount of hiking involved.

Easter Island and Galapagos are often visited together with Machu Pichu. But we weren't interested in hiking at such high altitudes nor in seeing more ruins after visiting many Mayan and Aztec sites in Mexico. Later we met people who visited both destinations and also include in their trip Rio, Patagonia and Antarctica. This seemed way too overwhelming to combine in one trip….

South American Vacations was able to tailor-make us an itinerary. But it did involve a lot of flying. Booking a prearranged trip has advantages as well as disadvantages: I felt that we wasted a lot of time waiting for drivers to pick us up. But it was also nice not to have to figure out taxis, haggling over fares or finding addresses. We travel with cabin luggage only which allows us to be the first ones through customs and off with our waiting ride.

The travel gods were with us. We seldom have snow on Salt Spring Island but a foot of thick snow fell just before we left. We made it out OK even though flights all around us were canceled due to snow. From Houston, TX we then flew 9 hours to Santiago, Chile where it was a balmy 25º.

The arrival hall in Santiago beat anything we'd ever seen in airports around the world: hundreds and hundreds of arriving passengers in one gigantic line up, snaked around and around. We shuffled along for well over an hour until they finally opened up some extra windows and we cleared immigration.

Thanks to booking with the travel agency, all little details were arranged including pick up by taxi to get to our hotel - a small but very convenient hotel in downtown Santiago. We walked around the neighbourhood and ate a sandwich on a patio. I was surprised at how un-Latin-American the city felt. It resembled a modern, European city and in fact I read somewhere that Santiago is called "the Paris of South America" - stylish business people rushing to offices, expensive cars, underground parking garages, and of course several Starbucks...

We didn't spot any Chilean food - just French, Thai and American - and ended up having a great meal in an Irish Pub of all places. After having spent a night on the airplane we slept like a log.

The following morning we were picked up for a city tour.

The downtown core in which our hotel was located, was the cosmopolitan, business part of the city. But there is also a historic, more authentic, downtown. Dating back to the mid 1500’s, the streets are narrower here and lined with historic houses, palaces and churches rather than with glass and glistening steel skyscrapers. Our guide, Cristobál, was extremely knowledgeable, not just in dates and numbers but with his grasp on politics and development of his country. We learned so much from him about revolutions and dictators, about settlement and government.

Starting in an ancient cathedral with gleaming wooden floors and hand painted wooden ceilings, we walked all over the city for several hours, stopping in front of old palaces where generals lived, the palace of justice, the mint and many other Spanish style buildings and monuments. One monument still had the bullet holes from the 1973 revolution in which Salvador Allende gave up his power.

We ate fresh empanadas and walked around the hill of Santa Lucia where we had a view of this city of over five million people. Green belts and parks are the lungs of the city and many people walked and jogged here. If you ever visit here, be sure to also include a tour of wineries which are abundant in Chile.

Our travel agency: www.savacations.com

For a walking tour of Santiago check out: http://www.swoop-patagonia.com/blog/things-santiago/