Santiago, Chile
Santiago is Chile's capital and largest city and has become one of Latin
America's most developed metropolitan areas.
Valparaiso, Chile
This is the departure port for our ship. It is about 72 miles northwest from
Santiago.
After a VERY long flight from Dallas to
Santiago we opened the window shade
to a view of the magnificent Chilean
Andes! The flight from Dallas was 9.5
hours and we didn't get much sleep.
This is the Santiago International
Airport. It was very nice but the
immigration process was very
unorganized and frustrating.  Once
we got through immigration we were
met by the Celebrity representatives
and taken to buses for the trip to
Valparaiso where we boarded he
ship.
The drive from Santiago to Valparaiso was
about 75 miles and went quite smoothly until we
reached the dock area.  There was a large
container ship loading and the truck traffic
ended up putting the whole dock area in
gridlock! We had to sit on the bus for about two
hours. There wasn't any air conditioning and it
was about 90 degrees!
When we finally got on board the ship
about 3 p.m. we found champagne and
personalized stationary waiting for us.  
Judy and Rusty had some in their room
also since they are also celebrating their
40th weeding anniversary. We drank their's
and saved ours for another night.
We had a few hours before the ship
sailed and could have taken a tour of
the harbor, but we were all so tired
from the trip we decided to stay in the
room and catch up on out sleep.  The
ship sailed about 9 p.m.