Santiago de Chile is the capital city with a large population of 5.6 million inhabitants. We wanted to spend a couple of days before we moved onward to Bolivia.
It was in the evening when we arrived at Santiago Airport in Chile. We arranged for a pick-up service in advance and the driver took us to Hotel He Wang. On the way, the area was full of graffiti and we were wondering if we made the right reservation. But, in the end, we arrived at the hotel and the facility was not too bad. The area where the hotel was located was an undesirable part of Santiago downtown.
We found a Chinese restaurant within the same building where the hotel is located and we had a good dinner including steamed lobster as Mrs. Choi suggested.
As we were resting, Mr. Yoon came to our room and shared an unpleasant news. Mrs. Yoon got infected with the COVID-19 virus. She has been ill for the past few days and Kristin had been spending time taking care of her. They never thought that she could be infected, but they just wanted to test it and alas she was positive. Mr. Yoon came out negative. So, Mr. Yoon said that they would cancel their trip to Bolivia for everyone's sake. I suggested we would sleep first and we would discuss it again tomorrow morning.
The next morning, we had breakfast in the hotel cafeteria and met in the lobby for a further discussion. In the end, they would return home and three of us would go on the trip to Bolivia. It was too bad that Mr. Yoon had to cancel his trip again to Bolivia because he canceled a trip to Bolivia two years ago because of the pandemic. But, we felt it was the right decision. So we had to take the last group photo and said "Goodbye!" Except for Mrs. Yoon, everyone else was negative, thankfully.
Originally we planned to take a city tour, but Kristin wanted to rest and take it easy. So Mrs. Choi ended up going out by herself. She met our Patagonia trip members and spent time together. She had her own mishap of getting her cell phone almost snatched away by a young man. Thankfully, she was able to hold onto it and avoid the incident. She shared a few photos including one below:
The following day, we went to the airport very early to fly to La Paz, Bolivia to begin our journey.
"So long, Santiago de Chile!" - Jeffrey
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