Over 50 international flights arrive daily to Santiago from all parts of the world.  Long queues form at immigration. Tired-looking, but friendly, officials keep the hordes moving and stamping passports..

 A giant X-ray machine swallows luggage and customs agents are busy waving people through.

It sounds simple. I managed to get on the wrong queue. Some transit passengers whose airplane broke down were being processed to get aboard another aircraft. It took the official about a minute to figure out I did not belong to this group.

By the time I got stamped in, someone was frantically paging me. My bags stood in the middle of the baggage claim area and police had evacuated the joint. I didn’t have to wait to go through customs.

A very nice taxi driver asked a lot of questions about the economic crisis in the U.S.A. and told me why the Chilean economy would survive with relatively little damage. “Our economy is diversified, ” he explained, “We only have petty crooks.”

After checking in the hostel I sat at a sidewalk table with a half-liter tankard of Schop

And a plate of Spanish cheese empanadas. Even from Panama, it is a long flight to Chile but one is never late for a beer here. When I asked what beer they had at the restaurant, they showed me a list of over 30 beers from around the world. I settled for an Escudo, it is as good as it gets.

Getting on the Metro is easy, one buys a Bip card good for how many trips you want pay for. You touch a pad with the card and the turnstile beeps. If you are about to miss your train, you don’t rush, the next one will arrive in a minute. Some of the stations are quite plain, most have murals, frescoes or some kind of decoration. Video screens spew out news or some other entertainment. Most stations, if not all, have internet hot spots where people can sit and work their laptops. In essence, high speed internet is free and accessible to anyone in Santiago.

There are lots of apartments and houses for rent, but finding a place is not easy. Most are listed with brokers require you prove adequate income and you must have an identity card—actually, without an ID you can’t get much done. Anytime you need to sign an official document you need to include your RUT (identity number).

For those who want to settle here for a while, I would recommend seeking lodging with a Chilean family. You can find adverts on Craiglist.org. It will take some time to get resident status ( 6 to 12 months).

After two weeks in Santiago, I’m no longer awed by the city of the future and the architecture meant to dazzle—nor the stores with the latest Parisian fashions. My feet are tired. I ride a giant articulated bus packed with a hundred people and a Peruvian musician playing the Andean flute accompanied by an electronic orchestra in a box fed by a car battery and strapped to a dolly. The passengers are generous with hundred peso coins.

Tired of looking at small one bedroom apartments, I signed a one year lease for a small one bedroom place. Compared to the rented room I occupied for over two years in the Washington D.C. area this is a palazzo. It has what they call here and American kitchen divided from the sitting room by a counter and it has a long balcony. It also has a small walk in closet with good storage space.

The building is in front of what the concierge calls the Plaza of Boredom, a pleasant square with lots of benches and shaded walks. It’s a quiet area but for one car whose alarm keeps going off.

A mile away is the peak of San Cristobal Mountain, topped by a hundred-foot statue of the Virgin Mary. That’s the main view I have from the balcony of my apartment. To the east, in between two buildings, I can see the snowy peak of El Altar, the second tallest peak overlooking Santiago. I like having even a tiny view of the Andes.

The day I get the keys is unusually cloudy and thunder rocks from the mountains. Rain never helps when one moves. “It’s just my luck,” I complain to the concierge.

“Not at all,” Don Paco answers, “The drums of the Andean gods welcome you back.”

No one ever admits it, but most people believe in Andean gods. The Andes range is too huge, too imposing, too awesome not to have its own deities.

Furniture is too expensive in the city center and the ritzy-glitzy Oriente sector of the city. I take the metro to Franklin Street. Open on the sides, a huge roof covers three city blocks packed with stalls selling furniture. Some of the stuff is not much more than wood rudely hammered together. Here and there one sees quality work. There is something for everyone.

Two sales girls recognize me from a previous visit. Knowing they have live one, they follow me around and won’t stop blathering their sales pitch even when I’m looking at a competing stall. We finally agree at a price, 30% off the original asking price and free delivery. By the time I finish buying sheets, pillows and a blanket, my new bed is loaded on a pick up truck and we join a traffic jam of furniture haulers.

In sharp contrast with the area of my new residence, we travel through old barrios that haven’t changed in a hundred years. Windows are shuttered during the day to keep the heat from penetrating the thick brick or adobe walls. Families here stay in the same place for generations. Even before strict building codes came into effect, the houses were built to withstand catastrophic earth movements. The Andes is a young mountain chain and is still growing. One finds fossilized seashells at elevations over ten thousand feet. As the Andes grow everything rocks.

My driver is a young man who seems to have been in the army recently, like everyone one, on hearing I have just been in the States, wants to know about the economic crisis. People have a hard time accepting that the economy of such a civilized country like the U.S. was and is run by crooks.

I’ve read in some blog that it took four weeks to get hooked up on the internet. So, I told all my friends I would be offline for six weeks.

A week ago I went to the VTR sales office in the city center and signed up for broadband internet and telephone service. My jaw almost dropped when the salesman asked me if I would be home between seven and ten PM so that they could install the stuff.

Half an hour later, I got a call on the cell: Would it be possible to install the equipment now?

I had to race the techie. Grrr, who was the ding-dong who led me to believe I could amble home?

Half hour after returning home, I was on the internet with a superb high speed connection, faster than the one I had in D.C..

Next week:

A Day Trip to Awe the Most Jaded Traveler.