And Then They Were Four

Amy and Chip should be here.  A couple months ago, the three of us had maps spread out all over the floor trying to draw our path through Patagonia, coordinating with Tony via email every few days.  We picked Valdivia as a meeting place -- a large enough city to have good bus connections to Santiago but small enough to not be overwhelming.  Being from Seattle, we naturally picked the north-west corner of the Plaza as our meeting place.  They should be here by now, but I'm guessing that they caught a later bus and I'll try and meet them at the bus station. 

It'll be interesting to see how they change the "feel" of the trip.  So far, it's been pretty mellow: stop for days if the location looks cool, beers at lunch, nap during a break if the weather is nice. I'm curious to see if we end up with more riding or if they fit into our current agenda.

Tony and I instituted the idea of one covering the entire bar bill and alternating that responsibility so as to encourage longer breaks (and more beers) while the other is paying.  I'll have to get back to you on how well that's working.

The plaza holds an interesting crowd: the business folks on lunch and the retirees who probably spend a great deal of their day here in a sort of common meeting place and extended social circle.  There are a few street vendors on the corners selling the usual tourist crap, a combination of balloons, buttons, hats and pinwheels.  There were a couple guys on stilts when we first rolled into town, but they've obviously moved onto greener pastures.  Except that everyone is speaking Spanish, it could be any park in the States.  I guess it could still be any park in California.

Just about any city that amounts to more than a crossing of roads has a Plaza de Armas.  Given different names in different countries -- in Mexico, El Zócalo, in Central America, Parque Central, and here in Chile, Plaza de Armas -- the origins are the same.  The larger cities were built by the Spanish Conquistadores in the standard military grid, leaving a central block open and surrounding it with governmental buildings.  Today, you can find at least one bank, the main catedral, and the city or regional offices.  If the Spanish were under attack, this central area of the city would be easiest to defend.  Ironically, most Plaza de Armas I've seen in Chile have a statue of Bernardo O'Higgins at their center, one of the commanders in the Chilean War of Independence from Spain.