Back to San Antonio

17 and 18 Aug Yesterday was a quiet day parked by the boardwalk in Santo Domingo. We Didn't even move the RV. Roger and I spent the day relaxing, reading and walking the boardwalk. Today we left Santo Domingo and went back to Puerto de San Antonio. We parked the RV and went looking for the bus terminal and found out that a bus leaves for Santiago every 10 minutes. At the main terminal in Santiago we can catch another bus to the airport. With these questions solved, we walked to the mall to get the phone recharged. Cell service is different than in the US. For our needs we need a prepay plan, but there's nothing written down to describe the various plans or costs. We wanted international calling, so we could talk with the shipping agent in NJ. However I had no idea what plan my original purchase was in Arica. At the first kiosk, the lady could not tell me how many minutes x number of Pesos would buy, or how many GB's of data (navigation). She told me to go to the main store on the second floor. At the main store there's a lady at the entrance who helps define your need and assign a waiting number. When I told her that I wanted to recarga she told me to go the the caja, which is the payment window. I stood in line and when it got to be my turn, the man told me that their system was down. He told me to go to La Polar and that they would be able to recarga my phone. The two ladies at La Polar, told me that they couldn't recarga, because they didn't know what type of plan I had. They told me to go up the street to the other Claro store. In the interim, we stopped at Entel, which is Claro's competition and tried to get service. Unfortunately Entel requires you to be a Chileano or resident to get service. So we stopped in two more places that said they were Claro recarga places with no luck. We then decided to go back to the mall to see if the main store's system was back up. On the way to the third floor I stopped at the very first kiosk and asked the lady if she could recarga my phone with 20K pesos. She said yes and gladly took my money. I now think I'm recarga with enough time to last until we leave Chile. At least I hope so. From the mall we crossed the street to the Oficina del Tourismo and asked about where we could park our RV. The lady told us there were several estacionamentos up the street and we found one where we could park the RV off the street, and hopefully in a safer place. So we walked back to the RV and moved it to the parking lot and went back to mall for Roger to get some well deserved ice cream. After all that wandering back and forth I decided I needed some retail therapy. I bought some socks, leggings (for underneath my jeans in Ushuaia, and shoes. Everything had a discuenta, because Winter is almost over here. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. I changed my shoes out and threw away my tired socks once we left the mall. From the mall we went looking for the probable shipping company. We think we found the company, but until we have the shipping paperwork nothing can be done. We are impatiently waiting for that email from the shipping company in New Jersey that is setting it up. In the meantime we're back at the RV, periodically checking E-Mail to see if our shipping paperwork has come in. We are also waiting to make follow-on travel reservations until we know we can turn the RV over to the shippers and leave. As a side note, the weather in San Antonio today is heavy overcast and foggy, and quite cool. We have plenty of propane for the heater and hot water heater. We turned the fridge off today because we are out of food that requires refrigeration. Truly an exciting day...