santiago day one and two

my first look at the Andes pretty much put any other mountain range to shame.

as did my first visit to a Chilean supermercado. this one was called ´Jumbo´ and had everything from tvs to liquor. I wanted to take photos of the commically sized meat, fish and beer but apparently this was not encouraged; I can imagine many tourists come acros the ´hillarious´ discontinuity between the giant food and the less-than-giant people. Let me just tell you I bought a litre of beer for $1.50, and that was an expensive bottle. mui caro! here I am having my dignity slowly taken away from me by a guy in the Plaza de Armas (I look very happy about it). I rocked up and thought myself a fairly okay chess player, watched a game or two and surmised that while I might lose I might also put up a decent resistance. we were about to leave when i foolishly mentioned to Marce it´d be nice to have a game. next thing i know she had a table and a player lined up... the experience was a lot like being in a car crash. not once did I make an attacking, i just fended uselessly at his asualts until I had two pawns and a King remaining...
look at the guy on the right. he is like many of the locals who wanted to see if the gringo was actually a reincarnation of Bobby Fisher.

he was not.

...trying to upload more pics but not currently working...