One aspect of the Chilean life style that has made it easier for us to adjust is the Latin proclivity for eating dinner late at night. Given the five hour time difference from Seattle, getting the kids to eat dinner before 4 pm based on their body clocks would have been difficult. When we first arrived in Santiago we thought that, based on “Da Book”, that there was only a four difference between the cities. Ignoring the correctly set clock in our apartment, we confidently assumed it must be wrong, turned it back one hour and spent much of the next week one hour off from the rest of Santiago society. Amazingly, we would show up for dinner at restaurants thinking it to be 8:30 pm when it was actually 9:30 pm and find that we were still ahead of the crowd.

It wasn’t until Thursday of our first week that we discovered the error. I went out to film the changing of the guard at the Presidential Palace that occurs every 48 hours at 10:00 am. After departing our apartment early in order to set-up the equipment, I arrived at the Palace just in time to see the North end of a South-bound parade column. Then it hit me that maybe, just maybe, the clock in our kitchen was right in the first place. Chagrined, I returned to our apartment.

The Provedencia neighborhood for our apartment is quite, shall we say, interesting. I think it used to be the swanky part of town, but the swank has long since moved on to the adjacent neighborhood of Las Condes. During the day and evening, we are surrounded by convenient shops, restaurants, bars, etc. By night, however, we are treated on the street below us to non-stop car alarms, partying, fighting, and philosophical discussions about the meaning of life. Invariably, at 4:00 am sharp a single motorcyclist sans muffler zooms up and down the street without fail.

The limitations of this neighborhood became evident one morning when I had to depart our building at 5:30 a.m. in pitch black darkness. A good friend of ours, Bryan Dunkeld was arriving at the airport on an overnight flight, so out into the darkness I went. I encountered across the street two individuals who seemed interested in a business proposition. They are best described in a family web site as a “gentleman and his lady employee.” Now I imagine one can encounter such professionals in many neighborhoods but I did not expect to find them across the street from my apartment!

Looking around, I saw one lonely taxi at the taxi stand and made a beeline for it. The “gentleman”, being the fine young entrepreneur that he was, saw my direction, perceived a different potential customer demand, and nimbly changed his business model by offering to provide a taxi. Funny, but he didn’t look like a bell man and I didn’t relish the thought of being driven through Santiago traffic by his “lady employee”. I soon found, however, the source of competitive advantage for the “gentleman and his lady employee” – the taxi driver was dead asleep in his vehicle.

As I tapped on the vehicle to wake the taxi driver, the “gentleman and his lady employee” continued to make the pitch for their business model. Although neither of us spoke the other’s language, the concepts involved were universal. Being 6’5" I wasn’t really worried by the relatively small stature of the “gentleman” but the “lady employee” looked like she could cause some serious damage and I wouldn’t want to meet her in a dark alley. “Wait a minute,” I thought, “I AM in a dark alley with these people” so I tapped harder on the taxi window! Fortunately, the taxi driver woke and decided that a morning fare was better than a few more minutes of shut-eye. The “gentleman” angrily talked with the taxi driver for a few minutes whereupon the driver paid in cigarettes what must have been the previously agreed upon parking fee and off to the airport I went.

Within minutes of returning to our apartment from the airport I reached to pick up an envelope from the coffee table and promptly experienced some of the most exquisite pain I have ever experienced in my lower back. Since men in general are wimps when it comes to pain, I spent the next three hours perfectly still on the floor staring up at the ceiling. It took a full two hours before one of the kids asked, “Why is Dad lying on the floor?” Eventually I managed to crawl over to a couch and remained motionless the rest of the day. Having both experienced back pain before, Brian and Catherine chuckled knowingly at my predicament, plied me with ice, painkillers and pity and furnished me with a “hiking” stick.

Fortunately they convinced me the next morning to try a chiropractor and even more fortunately there happened to be an American chiropractor with an office a few blocks away. Actually, he was the only licensed chiropractor in all of Santiago. I had never used the services of a chiropractor before so I was skeptical. Dr. Steven Flint is a very pleasant fellow and was kind enough to see me without an appointment in his very busy office. Dr. Flint is married to a Chilean woman and had moved his practice down to Santiago five years ago. After sharing with me the pleasure of living in Chile, he applied a series of twists and pressures to my back, neck, shoulders and hips that would have made any villain in the World Wrestling Federation proud. Although I managed to stifle a scream, the sounds that did emanate from me clearly indicated I was not enjoying a pleasant massage. I developed new found respect for the chiropractic profession as I was able to walk upright out of a room I had practically crawled into. While Dr. Flint did wonders for me, I am not sure that I helped his practice very much based on the pale, horrified faces of the patients in his waiting room when I walked out.

A few days later we all flew down to the Lake District of Chile and the town of Pucon, a beautiful region of volcanos and lakes that many compare to the Pacific Northwest. Now you would think that since we live in the Pacific Northwest and know first-hand what the weather is like in the Pacific Northwest that we would adequately dress for Pacific Northwest weather. But nooooooooo, we packed our bags in 95 degree Santiago and we didn’t need no stinkin’ coats or sweaters. We arrived at Lake Villarrica to witness beautiful warm, balmy, cloudless weather. By late afternoon, however, a major front moved in with howling winds, driving rains, and thunder and lightning.

Not being adequately dressed we retreated to our rooms at the beautiful Hotel Antumalal nestled at the foot of the Villarrica Volcano. The facility was built and is still operated by a Czech family that left Europe around World War II. Given the large size of our party, to accommodate all of us we stayed in the “Royal Cottage” - so named for a visit by Queen Elizabeth many years ago. Without adequate clothing and since, being summer, the heat was turned off; we built a fire in the fireplace the next morning to ward off the cold and had difficulty getting the flue to draft properly. We appreciated the irony of staying in a “Royal” cottage and smelling like we just spent all night camping by a fire. The staff seemed puzzled by why we would want to fumigate ourselves out of our own cottage. Not surprisingly, the baseboard heaters were on the next morning to prevent any more smoke damage to the room by the crazy Americanos.