Puttin' on the Ritz

We hit the ground running in our first full day in Santiago with three business presentations. In the morning representatives from the American Chamber of Commerce gave us an overview of Chile's economy, and afterward we were visited by Sergio Lopez, a Chilean IT entrepreneur who has started many successful firms over the past twenty years. In the afternoon we walked over to the nearby Ritz-Carlton for what was probably the most fascinating presentation of this entire trip thus far. We are in fervent negotiations to stay there next year, but I'll bet we'd have to be pretty darn persuasive to get a rate that we could afford.

Tonight we had our welcome dinner at Camino Real, a beautiful restaurant located high atop a peak (San Cristobal) near the city. I would imagine that several of us will ascend this hill again in the daytime either by a hike or the cable car system, so look for more pictures from San Cristobal Hill later in the week. It was here that many of us tasted our first scrumptious piece of Chilean salmon as well as sampled a Pisco Sour, the national drink of Chile. (Well, apparently the Peruvians would beg to differ with that statement because they claim the invention of the drink as well, but that story is way too long to go into at 1am!)

Tomorrow we start our day at a good old-fashioned Chilean slaughterhouse, so expect some horrifying pictures in the next post! Where's Upton Sinclair when you need him? I guess this blog will have to serve as our muckraking platform for the time being.