Chile 2019

Population: 17.5m
Purpose of visit: Business Meeting

Dates: 27 July 2019 until 9th August

Spending two weeks in Chile was quite the adventure. It started off with my bags getting lost on route (first time that’s ever happened to me!). My first mission was, whilst on the layover waiting for the next flight, to head into town and buy some new clothes for the next few days.

Then…… When arriving for the local flight to Concepción, I was informed that the flight had been overbooked and they didn’t think they’d be enough room for me. Along with a few other people, we waited until the last people got on the flight to see whether anyone wasn’t going to turn up and a spare seat would be found.

It seems everyone turned up for their flight, so along with 4 other people we didn’t make the flight. We went over to the desk and the airline provided each of us with a meal voucher for 20EUR and booked us on the next flight two hours later.

It turned out to be a nice surprise as we all grabbed a Starbucks and a KFC together, exchanged stories and numbers and then even met up for a meal one night during my stay in Concepción. One of them worked for the government, another for the university I was coming to visit, and all of them were lovely.

When we arrived it was raining and one of the other passengers offered me a lift to town and even their umbrella. After all, not a bad start.

The next few days were spent setting up the training simulator in the dental university and training the teachers on its use.

Everything went very smoothly, and the university was very happy:

I was then visited by our new local distributors, who very kindly showed me around some of the sights and then we visited a few other universities to introduce them to the technology, before making the drive up north.