First Day day in Chile: Favor Espere

One of the attractions to hiking, biking and motorcycling is the sense of connection with the journey. The open space around you allows, and in many cases demands you pay an extra level of attention; alert to things in the distance as well as the details of your immediate surroundings. You see, smell and hear things you would likely miss in an automobile, bus or airplanes.  So a trip for several weeks on motorcycle that is started with 10 hours in the interior trio of seats on airplane is a strange start indeed. The transition from Toronto where we changed planes to Santiago was somehow all the more striking by sitting in the centre trio of seats  with a lack of any real intermediate feedback beyond the map display on the entertainment unit. The generally low quality of sleep during the flight might also have some bearing.
At any rate we arrived and began standing in lines; first to pay the reciprocity fee (since Canada charges Chileans a visa fee) and then for customs, by which time we thought our luggage would surely have arrived and be aimlessly traveling around and around the belt. Graciously our luggage waited till we were clearly there and waiting before arriving.  So we took our luggage to the agricultural inspector to ensure we were not importing a specter of disease for the farming business, they X-rayed everything and then they turned us loose.  We took a cab to our hotel (with the assistance of some airport official) and arrived about 15 minutes prior to our suggested check-in time of 1500.  Our room was not yet ready so we left our luggage and strolled around the area for about 45 minutes and when we returned they still needed a few more minutes so we sat down in the lobby to wait.  After about 30 minutes our room was ready and we moved our stuff in.
It looks like a really good idea to have a couple nights to adjust to the area and catch up on some sleep before we start riding . We will try to drop by the rental shop tomorrow but will spend most of the day seeing a few local sites and resting up.
We went out for supper around 2000 and the sun was still shining and even when we got home around 2130 there was still good glow in the sky.
Thursday morning we slept in till 1000 and then wandered over the bike rental place to have a preliminary chat.  Things are looking good so this afternoon we buy a phone, re-sort our gear and find another cool place for supper.