Our Fellow Travelers

Thu, 20 Oct 2022

We met up with our fellow travelers in one of the hotel's conference rooms.  We already knew our group would only comprise 14, including the four of us (myself, Katherine, Barbara, and Jeff).  Despite its small size, this was one of the most diverse tours groups of which we have been a part.  We later learned everyone's ages -- thanks to an immigration form we had to fill out as a group when we crossed the land border between Chile and Argentina -- and we ranged from 40 to 70.  We had a couple from Connecticut, who had emigrated from Poland in the late 1990's.  An airline pilot (the "baby" of the group) and his flight attendant wife, a naturalized American from Germany.  Two young-looking Asian women, who we called "the girls" throughout the trip.  They were investment analysts from northern California and both looked as though they were in their late 20's.  They were incredibly tech and social media savvy, which added to the impression that they were so young.  We were later universally surprised to see that they were in fact both 42, and looked no older than 28 or so.  Both were extremely intelligent and well-traveled, and very fun to be around.  We had an older, and very interesting, couple from Silicon Valley, who had emigrated to the United States from Israel.  The man -- Gershon -- was our tour elder at 70, and was born in Mexico.  His parents were turned away at Ellis Island in the 1930's, when immigration by Jews was banned in the United States.  They ended up as refugees in Mexico, where he was born.  He moved to Israel after the 6-Day War, inspired to help Israel and turned off by the persistent prejudice he faced in Mexico.  He had FASCINATING stories we heard throughout the trip, and I'll try to be sure to include some of them.  For example, his father served as mountain climbing guide for the Soviet spy who murdered Leonid Trotsky in Mexico City.  After the killing, a Jewish man working in the Mexican Government came to their house, warning them that the Soviet Government had paid off the Mexicans, who were in turn looking for scapegoats.  As Gershon's father had served as a guide for the eventual assassin, he was told to pack his things that night and he was helped to cross the border into Texas, where he hid for the next two years.  Gershon's wife came from a wealthy Romanian refugee family, and was born in Israel.  She and Gershon met in Israel and emigrated to Cupertino, California in the 1990's, recruited into Silicon Valley for his deep technical expertise.  Rounding out the group were two ladies from Chicago, who used to work together.  They were essentially travel buddies and had seen much of the world together.  One of the women was Cuban, and helped serve as translator at times. 

As I mentioned earlier, our tour manager was named Veni, and he came from Brazil.  On every other Gate1 tour we have taken, the tour manager was always from the main country we were visiting.  We later learned that across South America, they use a different system.  They have tour managers based across the continent, and they fly in to handle tours regardless of where they begin.  In each area we visited, in addition to our tour manager, we had local guides, who stayed with us throughout our stay in that area.  In this case, we had local guides in Santiago, Chilean Patagonia, Argentinian Patagonia, and then in Buenos Aires.  Veni was a very experienced guide and also had an extremely outgoing and funny personality.  It was fun to see the rivalry between Brazil, Chile, and Argentina which came out in each encounter, and all of the guides had obviously worked together in the past and were all friends.  In fact, throughout the trip, we witnessed lots of reunions, as our guides were bumping into other guides or locals who they had not seen since before the pandemic.  Travel through South America really only picked up earlier this year, and the tours into Patagonia proper only resumed a couple of weeks before our arrival.  

Everyone in our group had traveled with Gate1 before, aside from Jeff and Barbara, and we all gelled rather quickly, which was nice.  Following an overview of the trip and an introduction to our local guide in Santiago, we boarded our bus for a welcome dinner in the historic downtown area of the city.  Thankfully Chileans do not eat dinner until after 9:00pm, as we would later encounter in Argentina, but it was still close to 7:30 before we began our meal, which was good but entirely too much food, especially on a day of travel.  We were all pretty pooped when we made it back to the hotel later.  On a related note, we learned that in Chile, the main meal of the day is lunch, and dinner is usually a smaller affair, and not late.  In Argentina, dinner is the primary meal, and rarely begins before 9:00pm, very much like what we'd seen in Spain.

Area Where We Had Our Welcome Dinner in Santiago