May 10, 2026
Woke up this morning and packed. Walked down to the coast one last time.
Said goodbye to my furry friend who lives at the place I was staying and curled up with me while I was writing emails
Then I walked down to the airport. 3 hours early, which was very much too early. They don’t even let you check in until 2 hours before your flight.
Once I got checked in and through security, which goes stupid fast, you’ve got two options for waiting. Indoors or outdoors. I chose outdoors
Yes, that is a chicken in the secure side of the airport. They’re all over Hanga roa. Nothing was stopping me from scooping him up and carrying him onto the plane with me if I wanted.
Flight was uneventful. Landed safely, and ubered to the hostel I’m staying at tonight. And here we are.
Tomorrow morning I go out into Santiago and ship out some honey. Hopefully my shoes finish drying overnight. And then in the early afternoon I head back to the airport and fly off to Arica.
Arica is where things will start to get linguistically challenging for me, I think. I’ve done well here in Santiago. Haven’t had to use Google translate at all yet on this trip. Easter island had a number of situations where I was expecting people to say one thing based on context and experience, and they said something completely different and I had a “wait, what?” Moment, and they’d switch to English without repeating what they had said in Spanish. So didn’t really learn anything from those moments. Arica isn’t on the gringo trail. Tourists don’t really go there. So we’ll see how that goes for me.
