Tuesday, May 12

Yesterday we went to Santiago. Our first stop was the Santiago Stockmarket. We saw a video and then had a presentation and two employees answered questions. Finally we went to see the now empty trading room. Afterwards, we tried to see La Moneda (like the White House only the president doesn´t live there, she only works there). There was some event going on and it was temporarily closed to the public. We walked around the Plaza de Armas and saw the Cathedral. We had a misunderstanding with the bus driver but we finally walked to Mercado Central and had a great lunch with a former Pitt student, Leslie Wheeling, and a former Santa Maria student, Felipe Acevedo, who also studied at Pitt. Felipe arranged the lunch. Later in the afternoon we took a funicular up San Cristobal Hill. We could see a heavy layer of brown smog over the city but above that layer of smog we were able to see the Andes. Last year and the year before it was too cloudy to see the Andes. We ended the trip with some shopping in the Bellavista area of Santiago. Our company visits are now completed and today we go to see the beautiful home of Pablo Nerudo at Isla Negra. They say it may rain but so far it looks nice out.