Saturday, 23 Dec 2023 – We were scheduled to dock at San Antonio at 7:00 AM. San Antonio is located 73 miles west of Santiago and 60 miles south of Valparaiso, Chile. Gateway to Santiago and the hub of the fishing area, San Antonio, Chile has a population of about 87,000. Its port is the largest in terms of freight handled and the busiest on the western coast of South America. The city was 80 percent destroyed by the 1985 Santiago earthquake; then the San Antonio port was shut down by the 27 Feb 2010 earthquake, but had resumed operation at 80 percent capacity by 3 Mar 2010. There is not much for tourists to see in San Antonio. All three available Oceania shore excursions for San Antonio began with bus rides to Valparaiso or Santiago.
Santiago is the capital and
largest city of Chile as well as one of the largest cities in the Americas. The metropolitan region of Santiago has a
population of about 7 million. (We have
stayed overnight in Santiago, as well as in Valparaiso, before and after
cruises.) Founded in 1541 by the Spanish
conqueror Pedro de Valdivia, Santiago has been the capital city of Chile since
colonial times.
We went to our usual breakfast in the Terrace
Café. A shuttle was scheduled to
transport ship passengers to the ship terminal every 10 minutes. Sally wasn’t up to going, so Jesse went
alone. It was quite a distance from the
gate to the shopping area, lined with souvenir booths, and even farther to the
mall. So, it was a good thing that Sally
had decided to stay onboard. It took
Jesse about 20 or 30 minutes to get to the mall. The mall was very large and was at least four
stories high and had two separate entrances.
One entrance was marked “Casino.”
Jesse used the other entrance, where he found numerous shops of all
kinds, including a grocery store and a videogame arcade. He walked through the shops looking for a
compact tool set and a sewing kit, neither of which he was able to find. He did, however, find an eyeglass dispensary. The saleslady performed minor repairs to
Sally’s eyeglasses at no charge, but chose not to try straightening the frame
for fear of breaking it. The walk back
to the ship seemed to be much longer, so Jesse was very tired when he finally
got back to our cabin. Sally was very
happy with her eyeglass repairs, even though only one arm fits down on her
ears. (She plans to use them only in the
cabin, to prevent any further damage before returning home.)
We went dancing to the 4 Corners Band in the
Horizons again and then to the Terrace Café for dinner. Instead of lobster, Sally tried Jesse’s
method of choosing dishes; that is, just walking along the buffet line and
selecting anything that looks good. That
didn’t work out so well for Sally because she ended up eating twice as much as
her usual lobster dinner! With dinner,
we each enjoyed a glass of delicious Riesling wine that Alesia had recommended
to us. For some reason, we had a problem
getting the wine and solicited the help of our waitress, Maribeth. We’re still not sure what the problem was. Maribeth became our favorite waitress early
during our first cruise segment. She
knows the other drinks that we order, etc., and gets them for us without us
asking. However, some of the other
passengers prefer her also, so sometimes we’re not able to sit in her area. Maribeth is from one of the rural areas of
the Philippines. There was little or no
Covid in that area around her home.
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