May 11, 2026
My boots never did completely dry last night. We’re still very damn in the morning, but it was a warm and sunny day in Santiago, and I had a late flight, so I put them on and went walking around to give them sun exposure. The outside did dry. The inside is still damp. Hopefully that changes tonight.
Mailing honey back to the US from Chile turned out to be a bust. They’ll ship it within Chile, but DHL told me it was illegal to send it internationally. I’d have figured that’d be the recipient countries customs problem. But here we are. Legally Peru won’t let me cross the border with it tomorrow either, and I still haven’t decided how I wanna play that. To declare, knowing it’ll most likely just get confiscated, or not declare and dice roll on just getting the gringo wave through customs like my entry into Chile and my last trip to Peru. If I was flying I’d almost expect that. But crossing a land border I have no idea what to expect since it’s not a thing I’ve ever done before (ignoring 20 year old me walking across the border from San Ysidro to Tijuana and back). Problems for tomorrow me.
Didn’t take many pictures before leaving Santiago today. Just fluff filler pictures for potential blog use. But I did see a curiosity at the airport:
Not every day do you see a Cessna taxiing into position behind a commercial jet at a major international airport.
Flight introduced me to a bunch of “I’ve never heard a plane make that noise before”, but, we made it without incident.
Took a low fly by of the city on the way in:
So far my fears of linguistic failure haven’t manifested. I didn’t understand the gate crew at the airport and rolled up to board when they were asking for people to gate check their luggage. But that was no big deal.
The real adventure begins tomorrow. Walk from here to the bus station, colectivo to the border, cross, colectivo from there to tacna Peru, get a bus from tacna to Arequipa. So unless something goes horribly wrong this is my last email from Chile.
