Friday, July 08, 2005

Santiago – Day 9 (May 10)


Chestnuts in Chile
Originally uploaded by PBryden.
Early breakfast and transfer to Transelec for a business visit. They seem to be the government power provider, but also compete in the open market. An interesting visit and overall good to see. Back to the hotel for the Placer Dome presentation, which was very informative and well done.

The afternoon was set aside for shopping and so I went off the Artisan Market and also a hellish trip back the the University of Santiago’s Business School for a too-small golf shirt. We all met back in the lobby of the hotel and took a bus to San Cristobal’s Hill, the highest point in Santiago and the smallest of the Andes. The view of the city was extraordinary and the top of the hill was graced with a thirty-foot statue of the Virgin Mary. Quite a spectacular sight and very unexpected. We didn’t get to ride the funicular, which would have been great, as it was a “real oldie”.

The meal was fantastic with many great speeches and “Gampei’s”. There was a group from New York beside us that was also on a school tour, but unfortunately they arrived a few hours after us and the head professor was a grumpy old snot. I played a bit with him and apologized for the Yankee’s performance, in the end we parted ways in good company and I hope that he was able to modify his opinion of us and much as I did of him.

We hopped of the bus in the new district and went to Louisiana Bar for a few half-price pitchers of beer. I managed to escape with Luc before the rest of the crew went off to a disco,…they didn’t return home until 4:30am. Unfortunately we learned that the Chinese guys will need to fly back through Sao Paulo as they don’t have entry visa’s for Argentina. Sadly we said our good-byes for maybe the last time, I will especially miss Guozhen.

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