Urban Thought Collective

This week was truly an exercise in durability and endurance as I was on more flights (9 to be exact) than there are days in a week, and spent almost as much time in transit (55 hours) as I actually did in the locations themselves (95 hours). As you may have gathered by now, my travel can be simultaneously very frequent and very, well, um…varied! Such variation lends itself quite naturally to exercises in comparison and contrast. At no point in recent memory can I recall two destinations as dissimilar as the two that I visited this week.

When I landed in Las Vegas the other day at about 9:30 AM, the temperature was a balmy 91 degrees. ‘It’s a dry heat,’ folks are always so apt to say. “So is my oven,” I often reply. The fact that it was this hot, this early in the morning, I knew that I was in for a real scorcher, and had indeed made the correct call in braving the morning frigidity in Oakland as I made my way to my flight in shorts and flip flops.

Three days earlier when I arrived in Santiago, Chile, at about the same time of morning it was 1 degree. Okay, okay…so it was Celsius, but that’s still cold. Converting to Fahrenheit (34 degrees) you’re still looking at hat/jacket/glove/scarf weather. I had stuffed my pea coat and hat in my carry-on and promptly took them out and put them on before I exited the plane. When I finally arrived in Valdivia a few hours later after another flight it was rainy and 49 degrees. Advantage Chile. I look much more distinguished and fashionable in winter clothes than I do with my bird legs poking out of some Nike shorts, and wearing flip-flops. I don’t usually look out the window when I’m flying to somewhere that I’ve already been, but I just happened to be awake in time to peep the breathtaking snow-capped 20,000 foot peaks of the Andes Mountains off in the distance as we landed in Chile. This is the stuff from which post cards are made.

Las Vegas, with its jagged mountains and expanse of sand and lifelessness, looks like what you’d imagine the surface of Mars or Hell resembles. Advantage Chile. Even the in-flight experience was markedly different. On my way to Vegas, the flight attendants on Southwest Airlines carried on in their silly little khaki shorts and polo shirts and told silly jokes or sang silly, made-up songs. On LAN Airlines in Chile, the smartly dressed flight attendants in their form-fitting, navy-blue dresses trimmed in red with their red pumps were bona fide head-turners. They didn’t sing any songs but the sweet Spanish instructions that came out over the intercom sounded like music to my travel weary ears. If you caught a glimpse of them leaving the plane and walking through the terminal, you would’ve seen them donning red trench coats and red Carmen San Diego lookin’ hats while carrying red leather bags. Throw in the ham flavored soda crackers and the chocolate brownie over Southwest’s roasted, salted peanuts, and I think it’s clear that it is Advantage Chile, here again.

As for hotels, this one doesn’t really even seem fair. I was at the Hotel Puerta del Sur for a total of 6 hours and slept for 5 of those, but while I was awake I did notice the lush greenery and vegetation accented with beautiful flowery gardens behind the hotel from the huge windows in the lobby that stretched from the floor to the ceiling. This was probably the nicest hotel in town and much better than the little dive that where I resided the last time I was in this town 3 years ago, but for accommodations, the Las Vegas Hilton far outdistances this one. If you want beautiful gardens, walk on over to Bellagio or the Wynn to see the best that man has to offer. It’s a close one, but will give the Advantage to Vegas here.

As far as overall cities go, it’s a good thing I had been there before, because other than the 5 hours sleeping, most of the rest of my 23 hours in Valdivia were spent on the 3rd floor of my client’s little office. However, this seaside/riverside town with all the charm of a small New England village (think Mystic River/ Mystic Pizza, except that everyone is speaking Spanish) is as lazy and relaxing as it is beautiful. With its restaurants on the water and bike paths over small villages, you can’t help but enjoy this place. Las Vegas has the Strip. Enough said. Sure, the NY-NY, Paris, Luxor, and Excalibur are impressive feats of architecture and Hollywood creativity, but for my money…well, I guess it depends on what you’re into. We’ll call this one a push.

Well UTC, that’s all for today from the D-Man, perhaps coming to a city near you very soon.

Destah Owens is a single father of two from Northern California and proud UCLA Bruin who travels the world for his job as a computer engineer. His blog “Soufflés in Saigon” is exclusive to Urban Thought Collective.