Thursday evening, April 14.  One more whole day in Santiago, then Sat morning at 5 am off to the airport for me.  Ran into some folks I met on the boat, chatted awhile.  Had my city tour this morning, gal was friendly, wanted to be helpful, but her English was lacking.  She would talk to all the other folks in Spanish for a couple of minutes, then turn to me and haltingly say three to ten words slowly in English, then back to Spanish for a few more minutes of commentary, then to me with a very few words.  Now she knows English heads and tails more than I know Spanish, but when I paid for an English tour it didn't seem right.  She really tried, but wasn't up to it.  Oh well!  Such is life on the road.  Tried another way to lighten my load, remember the suitcase incident in Cusco where the price escalated from a ball park estimate of under $50 to a quoted price of $485 (or so), well I had inquired and found out the postal service was a lot cheaper than the commercial services (DHL), so I prepared a small box of stuff I had purchased, about 2kilo's, or 4+ pounds, and hiked over to the post office which had been identified on the tour, that was helpful, but after them opening the package, resealing it, then it was weighed, and the clerk's computer screen registered the air line price, the shipping--vis an actual ship, which took about longer, but I'm not home waiting for the package to arrive, right ?, so I opted for the slow boat to Des Moines, and it was sixty bucks or so--in rounded numbers math, so I declined again, so all purchases will stay with me for the duration, but be rebundled into my carry on, not the checked bag.  Had a great hot dog for lunch, Chilian salsa--includes mustard, and a coke zero.  Walked around some new areas, and ran across the national archives, saw an exhibition of the protests against the former military regime in the 80's.  And around the corner was the national library which had an exhibition about Chilian history, and the roll Cape Horn, Terra del Flago had on early history of Chile.  And it was a lot.  Couldn't read the Spanish explanations, but could decifer some, but the maps were great.  Copies on maps produced by Drake, Magillian,  Darwin and the crew of the Beagle...  Maps from the mid 1550's til the 20th century.  Many from the 1600's, it is amazing how accurate they were,  I remember really wondering how Clark (of Lewis and Clark in 1803-4-5) was so accurate on his maps of the twists and turns of the Missouri River, and if I remember correctly was off by about only fifty miles in recording the distances from St. Louis to Astoria at the mouth of the Columbia River on the Pacific.  I took a picture of a 1600's map, which almost could be a satalite photo.   Amazing!!  Then I went across the street, that crazyly busy O'Higgins Avenue, to a huge church which had a sign saying that it had a colonial history museum.   And Oh boy! Was I ever surprised.  Don't know the age of the church, but bet it dates back to the early 1800's, rough cut huge stone walls, tombs of guys from the 1800's in the floors and walls, really old statues, ceiling paintings and tile work, large side altars about six or so of them... just everything seemed dated to that era.  The museum closed at 6pm