Santiago, Chile (April 2013)

As part of my MBA program, our class had the opportunity to travel virtually anywhere in the world to spend a week meeting with local businesses, government officials, think tanks, and a whole host of other people to gain a better understanding of the business climate in that city/country as well as see firsthand what, if any, opportunities or challenges there may be in doing business with the United States. Before the first of the year, we had narrowed our list down to three places: Tokyo, Prague, and Santiago and the latter proved to be our final choice.

The decision represented a rare opportunity for me. My parents close friends from college, Jim and Peggy Callahan, have lived in Santiago on and off for the past 30 years. Additionally, Jim's chosen profession is banking. So, I saw this as an opportunity to leverage Jim’s stature in the banking community in Chile as well as a chance to reconnect with old family friends and while we’re at it – do a bit of traveling with Denise and my parents. Unfortunately, that last part became a bit more complicated than we had bargained for as my father’s cancer reemerged and he and my mother decided to post-pone their trip. 

Nevertheless, I left for Santiago on April 13th with Denise planning to join me the following week after I completed all of my obligations with the MBA program. I flew out of Dulles making a connection on Copa Airlines in Panama. Flying into Panama City it felt like the aircraft got smaller and smaller as we descended. By the time we three-hopped the landing on the short runway, I might as well have been in a little two-seater prop-plane. It was like I was landing in the jungle in a remote part of the world no one had ever seen. As the plane taxied to the gate, I was brought back to reality as the city landscape revealed itself along with a tarmac full of military transport aircraft. My stay in Panama was brief, but long enough to admire the oddity of all the boutiques in the concourse for designer clothing, perfume, jewelry, and all the other duty free trappings. All of this set against the back drop of Police carrying machine guns and the roof of the building leaking like a sieve. Anyway, within an hour or so I was back on a plane for the second leg of a 12 hour journey to South America. 

I arrived in Santiago around 11:30pm Saturday night, quickly paid my entry fee, and cleared customs to grab a cab to the Plaza el Bosque Suites where almost all of my classmates had already checked in. The next morning would we would all meet for orientation with the Austral Group, our hosts and guides for the week. The remainder of Sunday was spent visiting a few tourist spots, but the highlight was easily the soccer game we attended between Universidad de Chile and Palestino. The fans were raucous and the atmosphere was tense as we walked past and were surrounded by Carbineras (State Police) in full riot gear standing next to these armored vehicles adorned with water cannons that looked like something out of MadMax or Beyond Thunder Dome. It wasn’t so much the presence of the riot police that struck me, but rather that they all seemed to be very attractive young women in their 20s, jet black hair pulled back and ruby red lipstick included like something out of Robert Palmer video. Our guides explained that this is by design. Agitated young men seem less likely to escalate to violence when they see a young woman standing in front them attempting to keep the peace. Whether it’s the attraction or the chance that many of them have a sister, girlfriend, or wife that looks just like them – I guess we’ll never know, but it apparently works.

Now, we get down to business. The next 6 days would be a whirlwind. As I mentioned before, with a connection to the banking industry – I was able to help broker a meeting with Jim Callahan and his staff as President and General Manager of Scotiabank’s operations in Chile. That was our first meeting on Monday and really set the stage for the rest of the week. Jim spoke to us for 90 minutes about every facet of the historical, political, and economic climate in Chile and then took questions from the group. Easily the best presentation of the week, but I am a little biased. From there we had a series of meetings with representatives from the Chilean government regarding attracting foreign business to Chile, the mining industry that dominate the Chilean Economy, as well as an US ex-patriot/entrepreneur who has made a career out of starting up new businesses in Chile. Along those same lines, we also visited Start-Up Chile and Groupon’s offices in Santiago. I wasn’t too impressed with either. I didn’t realize the hipster problem was a full on pandemic. We rounded out the week with a visit to a car dealership, wholesale food distributor, nuclear research facility, and finally a bio-dynamic farming winery in the Casablanca Valley – Matetic Vineyards, which you can find here in the States. This is where I left my classmates behind as they headed to the coast to tour Valparaiso and I traveled back Santiago to prepare for Denise’s arrival later that night. 

  
My experience with my classmates as part of this trip were memorable – phone calls flooding in as the Boston Marathon bombing unfolded, late night karaoke, Cuban cigars and 18 year old scotch on the roof top bar of the hotel, art museums, fish markets, wine, wine, more wine, empanadas, and I could go on and on. I picked Denise up at the airport late on Friday night, April 19th. Her luggage was soaked from changing planes in Panama and she had a rather dicey experience with the gate agents checking passports and boarding passes when she attempt to get on her connecting flight. 

As I mentioned before, there is an entry fee that US Citizens have to pay when visiting Chile. There is a reciprocal fee for Chileans when they visit the US. You pay it once and it’s good for ten years. Well, apparently the gate agents were trying to con Denise and two other Americans into paying the fee in cash before they boarded the plane. Thankfully, one of them was a US businessman who travels to Chile often and he was able to defuse the situation by running back to the airport lounge and bringing someone to the gate to confront the gate agents. Denise and the other two Americans were quickly on their way from there, but the next time we go to Chile – I think we’ll skip the layover. So, after laying all of Denise’s clothes out around the room to dry, we crashed. It was going to be an early morning meeting Peggy in the lobby of the hotel to start our week of vacation. 
  

Stepping off the elevator that next morning I immediately recognized Peggy. Much like my mother, her classmate from Oswego and neighbor in Boston, Peggy barely seemed to have aged a day since the last time I saw her some 25 years ago. We loaded up the car and headed out of town to our final destination – the Callahans’ recently finished beach house in coastal Zapallar. Surrounded by more contemporary architecture, Jim and Peggy managed to take a little piece of New England and drop it on the Pacific Coast of South America. Jim had made the trip out the previous evening to play in a golf tournament that morning. We met up with him at the house and then set out for a late lunch where we met up with Jim and Peggy’s son, Sean, and his girlfriend. We spent the rest of the afternoon catching up on 25 years of life sharing pictures and stories.
 

The next morning we did some hiking early while Jim mountain biked. After lunch, Denise and left the Callahans' to head south along the coast. We checked into the Sheraton in Viña del Mar that evening and just spent the twilight hours with a cocktail and some appetizers on the patio/pool deck. 

The next morning we were up early to visit Valparaiso, which is the town just south of Viña and is a UNESCO World Heritage site as well as home to one of Pablo Neruda’s three houses turned museums. Neruda’s was a poet and is considered to be one Chile’s most admired and respected literary figures. Valpo, as they call it, is effectively a shanty town built around a shipping industry that managed to survive despite the Panama Canal and the treacherous Drake Passage around Cape Horn. Aluminum shacks all cobbled together sprawling up the near vertical streets of the coastal cliffs. Much like Santiago, there are stray neighborhood dogs everywhere. The scene in Valparaiso is the closest thing to the third-world as I have experienced. I’m glad to have made it part of our trip. It certainly added some diversity of experience to the growing urban economic development in Santiago that had dominated the visit so far. Denise and I spent the rest of the afternoon exploring Viña, which felt a little more like Venice Beach, California, compared Valpo. After a late lunch (common and lengthy in Chile) we headed back to the hotel to relax. 
  

The next morning we packed the car up to head back to Santiago with a brief pit stop at Emiliana Winery in the Casablanca Valley for a tasting. The valley was beautiful and so was the wine. I think we ended up buying a bottle of just about everything we tasted to share with our hosts, the Callahans, during the rest of our visit. 

Arriving back in Santiago, we decided to stay in a smaller boutique hotel that had recommended to us by our good friend and world traveler, Victoria Yanakos. This was also a special treat to celebrate my birthday. The Aubrey Hotel is in Bellavista area of town at the foot of Cero San Cristobal. Great restaurants in the area of Patio of Bellavista, but a little bit of a tourist trap. Cero San Cristobal offers great views of the city and the Andes provided the smog isn’t too bad. The next two days we spent seeing the sites of Santiago, including: the Cathedral de Santiago in the Plaza de Armas, La Moneda (the Chilean White House), the Museum of Remembrance and Human Rights dedicated to preserving the history of Chile era of dictatorship, as well as more museums, cafes, and restaurants. 

Our last nights in Santiago were spent with the Callahans and we even had a chance to share in Jim's birthday celebration with the family. We can't wait to visit again in the future and hope that our rekindled relationship with this amazing family continues to grow.