Alright Geysers...!

The trusty alarm went off at 4:15am and Fiona and I immediately jumped into action to get ready and out of the room in 15 mins. This is a new sport we have been practicing a lot over the past 2 weeks.....

Just before 5:00am we were last people to be picked up on the tour bus, which meant we got to sit right at the back-of-the-bus, with all the additional legroom that entailed... Result...! We set off in the pitch black of early morning and headed in the general direction of Northeast towards the El Tatio Geyser field some 50 miles away, near the Bolivian boarder. The travel distance was not as significant as the altitude change, as we went from 2400m to 4300m, which has been known to have a very detrimental effect on some people due to altitude sickness. This was the reason Fiona & I had decided to do this trip the day before we left San Pedro in order to allow our bodies to acclimatise to San Pedro’s altitude, before assaulting ourselves with almost another 2000m increase.

I sat in the back of the bus zoning out while listening to my iPod as we drifted through the moonless desert and steadily ascended the long climb through a series of switch-backs and long straights. One of the other passengers on the bus was having a hard time with the altitude change, and we stopped for a short while to allow them a sort break before continuing onward. Both Fiona & I were okay, but you can really feel the effects of the altitude change with shortness of breath and achiness in your body as you get higher & higher. About an hour before sunrise we arrived at the Geyser park entrance and we got off the bus to pay the entry fee... Bugger Me Backwards...!! It was COLD, in fact it was -10 degrees C, and our guide took great pleasure in letting us know it would get lower just before the sun actually rose.

Fifteen minutes later, in the half-light of the pre-dawn we stepped off the bus again into a surreal and haunting landscape of billowing mists and the coughing and spluttering of boiling water. The El Tatio is the 3^rd largest geyser field in the entire world and has hundreds of individual geysers or fumaroles. The reason the tour is run at sunrise is that the the air temperature is at its lowest and this makes the steam from the vents more visible and impressive, and impressive it was. Apart from the fact that I had the perverse idea of dipping my gloveless hands into a vent to warm them up, I was enjoying the spectacle immensely. Fiona was wrapped up in every item of clothing she could put on, (including 2 pairs of trousers), wrapped in a blanket, and she was still cold....

We were led through the geyser field, moving from one interesting sight to another until we approached where the bus was parked, and also where breakfast was now laid out on a low wall. Before we reached the bus however, our tour guide, Mariano, reached down into large geyser hole and pulled out a couple of cartons of chocolate milk and a bag full of eggs, now hard boiled from the heat of the water... Ingenious...! I have now eaten an egg cooked by a geyser, and the hot chocolate was also very welcome. As we ate our breakfast, Mariano informed us that the temperature had now reached -13 degrees, but it would change momentarily when the sun rose. He was not wrong, as soon as the sun crested the far mountain ridge it was like an electric heater had been turned on as the warm rays of the sun were now being absorbed through my jacket..... Hmmmm, warm....

We had some further time to wander around and take photos before we boarded the bus to head to the thermal hot pools for those that were brave enough to get their kit off and take the plunge. No, don’t get your hopes up, even I wasn’t dumb enough to put myself through that savage ritual, but a couple of Frenchies on the bus did. Allegedly it was colder than it looked..... Imagine that.

From there we started the long journey back to San Pedro, stopping off to see some Andean wildlife and some wetlands, plus a stop for a goat cheese empanada at the original ‘one-horse-town’ that has only 3 residents. By this point I was starting to suffer the reverse effects of the altitude and with each meter we descended, a small head ache that had developed, proceeded to get stronger & stronger. By the time Fiona & I arrived at the hotel at midday, there was only one thing we were going to do, and that was take some headache tablets and climb in to bed to sleep....

We finally resurfaced at about 3 hours later that afternoon and mooched about the hotel for the rest of the afternoon, drinking tea & coffee out in the beautifully designed gardens in the warm sunlight. We rounded the day out with dinner at a restaurant called ‘Blanco’ that was all trendy white interior, dim lights and subtle house music, and very nice food too.... 

Tomorrow, (Friday I think?), we pack our bags and head back to Santiago, before taking off again on Saturday, spending the rest of the weekend in Valparaiso on the Pacific coast until Monday. As I won’t be taking the laptop with me on that trip, this could be the last post for 4 or 5 days.... Signing off for now...

Fun Facts & Figures – Part 1

As I did for the previous World Cup Blog for South Africa, and as the start of a continuing series, here is a quick round-up of some of the fun facts & figures about our trip so far: -

• Current Distance from Home: 10,512kms
• Distance walked so far: ~ 77kms...! (More than the last 7 weeks)
• Beers Drunk: Countless
• Great Beers Discovered: SpoH India Pale Ale, Santiago, Chile
• Amount of Spanish Learnt: Quite a lot..!
• Amount of Portuguese: Nothing
• Lost Hours of Sleep: ~ 20 hours
• Planes Taken:  3
• Public Buses Taken: 3
• Trains Taken: 1
• Games of Wizard Won: 2 (Steve) / 0 (Fiona)
• Highest Temperature: 25 Degrees C (San Pedro de Atacama, Chile)
• Lowest Temperature: -13 Degrees C (El Tatio Guysers, Chile)
• Favourite Purchase:  Beer (Steve) / Ethnic Shoulder Bag (Fiona)
• Favourite Quote: “Beer is not a purchase, it’s a necessity” - Fiona
• Favourite Meal:  Steak al pil pil (Steve) / Avocado Salad (Fiona)

Feel free to ask us for any other interesting facts & figures associated with our trip, (leave your questions in the comments section) We will try and get you the answers... Happy Days. 

Resting our old bones

On the Wednesday, we had nothing planned, except to meet for lunch a student of Christine’s who is currently working in San Pedro. Therefore we decided we would have a very casual & restful sort of day mainly based around the hotel in the morning, and then into town for the afternoon.

We met Antonia at a cafe in the main square and sat and chatted for a while, she was very grateful for the chance to practice her speaking English. She is a geographer here in San Pedro for a year on a UN backed project, studying the impact of the regions many stakeholders on the hydrology of the area. As you can imagine, water is a very important subject around these parts, and trying to balance the needs and requirements of the local population, the mining sector, tourism, and many others, all while being sensitive to the indigenous peoples of the Atacama, is a key responsibility. Antonia was engaging, smart and ambitious, with plans to move to London when her year in San Pedro is up, and we felt sure that she was destined for great things in the future.

The first part of the afternoon was spent at the local Gustav la Paige Museum, which details the area’s many diverse ecologies and traces Mans journey through the region over the past 12,000 years.  Gustav la Paige was a Belgian Missionary who spent the last 40 years of his life in San Pedro, where he documented the region, its landscapes, its peoples, and its buildings, and collected and categorised many of the exhibits in the Museum. Well worth the hour or so wandering round.... We also visited the local church that has stood around these parts since at least the mid 16^th century, and boy, did it show its age...! They are in the process of restoring it right now, but I hope they don’t lose that vintage character.

The rest of the afternoon we spent lounging around the hotel & its grounds. It’s nice to be able to make use of the facilities, instead of just rushing in & out and using only as a place to lay our heads. We need to go out for an early dinner, as we were due to be being picked up at 4:30am the next day for a trip to see the El Taito Geysers, and we wanted an early night. We went to a popular restaurant called ‘Adobe’ and sat effectively outside in an internal courtyard sort-of affair, with a warming brazier, and

view above to the stars. I had a fantastic steak dish called ‘al pil pil’ which is apparently  of Spanish origin, and involved large pieces of meat & potatoes in a thick sauce made from garlic & chilli, and wow it was good, (my mouth is watering right now as I type this). We finished off the meal with coffee & dessert, which was altogether far too much and headed back to the hotel for an early night.

Tomorrow we visit the Geysers of El Tatio

High Plains Drifters

As is customary on our World Cup adventures, we always seem to spend some time in a desert region of some description. Last time out it was a sandy wastes of Namibia, and before that the fringes of the Tunisian Sahara. So a trip to Chile would not be complete without spending some time in the driest spot on earth, the Atacama Desert.

Less than 5 hours after we got out of a taxi in Santiago, we back in one, heading for a 7:00am flight to Calama, in Northern Chile. At 5:00am the traffic is very light and we were standing in the check-in queue less than half an hour later. The flight was an uneventful one for me, mainly as I caught up on some lost sleep, but Fiona spent the trip gazing out of the window as the Andes passed by serenely and the temperate farmland turned into long stretches of desert wasteland. Off the plane and in to our transfer, had us at our hotel Altiplanico and unpacking by 11:30am.

The hotel is a sprawling collection of contemporary adobe style villa’s set in a very well designed and maintained desert-type gardens. There is a lovely pool at one end of the complex, but the water temperature was so cold there would be distinct chance of hypothermia if we tried to use it, I guess it gets better usage in the summer where temperatures can top out at 40 degrees C. Our room is super comfortable & very quiet, no TV, and with a separate bathroom wing and an outdoor shower, which is a very invigorating way to start the day. This must be the very bottom of the low season as I am guessing that of the 40 or so rooms they must have, there cannot be more than a handful of people staying here... Quiet luxury....

After a spot of lunch at the hotel, we took a short stroll into the main centre of San Pedro de Atacama. In the days before we arrived, the town had experienced a sand storm followed by snow, which even closed the airport for a while. Considering this is the driest place on earth, to arrive and see large patches of snow all around was somewhat strange, even worse was that the roads had turned to vast tracts of mud...!  Slowly picking our way through the streets, we wandered the main strip, carefully avoiding both the mud and the hawkers trying to drum up custom for either their tours or their restaurants. After finding the main square and a shady spot we sat for a while feeling very tired & out of breath.

What we had both not taken into consideration was that San Pedro was at 2400m and that we were feeling some slight effect of the altitude, probably not helped by our now fading jet-lag or the less than 4 hours sleep the night before. Too tired to even sit in a bar and have a drink, we returned to our hotel and crashed out for a few hours, followed by doing a bit of research on what tours we actually wanted to do, and find some recommendations. We eventually slunk out of our room at about 8:00am to hunt down some dinner, had our first Chilean restaurant meal in a place called ‘La Casona’, and were safely wrapped up in bed by about 10:30pm, praying for the gift of sleep...

Praise be to the deity of your choice..... We slept through to 8:00am with no interruption. Let me tell you that you don’t know how good that feels after a week of disruptive sleep....

Consequently, we were up, showered & dressed in time for breakfast, and felt that we had a new lease on life. The previous evening we had planned the mornings activities, and if it all worked out, we would have the next few days sorted out in terms of tours & sightseeing. Our planning worked. Later that afternoon we would be heading off to see the ‘Valley of Death’ and the “Valley of the Moon’, followed by dinner in town, and then to make the most of the exceptionally clear skies out here in the desert, off on a star-gazing / astronomical tour.

Our afternoon trip to the various ‘Valleys’ was the sort of experience that we

had hoped for, with impressive landscapes and stunning new vista’s at every turn. Our English speaking tour guide, Simone, took the time to explain many of the features and points of interest, and was on hand to answer our myriad of questions. 

The Valley of the Moon was the most impressive part of the tour, with vast salt-stained ravines & canyons, untouched sand dunes of enormous heights, and weirdly eroded rocks dotting the landscape, just what we had come to see. No wonder NASA uses this area as a testing ground for their Mars Rovers...! We had the chance to wander through this ‘moon-like’ place for a couple of hours, before climbing 300m up the well named ‘Duna Mayor’, (Big Dune) to watch the sunset. Stunning...!

We returned to town and headed out for an early dinner at place called Ckunna, before the star-gazing trip at 8:00pm. The tour company had warned us that it would be cold and that we should dress appropriately, and Fiona took this advice to heart by wearing nearly everything she had with her. We even brought her some gloves...!

The star-gazing was amazing as the Milky Way was on full display, along with Mars, Venus & Saturn, and the people giving the tour were extremely knowledgeable. I learnt more about astronomy, space, and our human-kinds place in the cosmos in 2 hours than I had in the past 50 years. I was left feeling decidedly small & insignificant in the scheme of things. From the introduction we moved to a bank of 12 telescopes set up to view various points of interest, and we were given a full description of what we were being shown at each telescope. The view of Saturn & its rings just about blew my mind, I have never seen anything like it. There were other planets, star clusters, nebulas, and interesting objects to view, but Saturn was indescribable, Fiona though that the telescope was just showing a representation of the planet, it took some convincing for her to believe she was actually ‘looking’ at Saturn.

Finally we went into small adobe building and had a cup of hot chocolate, (very welcoming), and listened to the French astronomer talk and answer our questions. His answer to a question about shooting stars took 10 minutes to answer, described the journey of man in their understanding of the heavens, stars and planets, and was worth the price of the tour alone.

We have a telescope in a cupboard at home somewhere, and I will dusting that bad-boy off very soon after we return.

Not enough Spiglord on the Blog.

Fiona has complained that there are no photos of me on the Blog, so to rectify this injustice, here are a couple....

Enjoy...

Using Technology at the Museum

Up in the Mountains

After another night of broken sleep, we were up far too early to catch an assortment of buses to travel south to a town called Talca, and from there up into the mountains to a place called Vilches Alto, right next to the Alto de Lircay National Park. It was a long but reasonably comfortable trip, and we arrived at where we were staying around 2pm, and proceeded to sit and eat ‘Empanadas’, (a sort of meat pastie type affair), and drank a few beers.

Never one to let an opportunity for a walk to pass her by, Christine suggested that we take a short stroll into the woods to a popular viewing spot. 

Personally I could have sat outside in the sunshine drinking beer all afternoon, but it seemed churlish to not at least show some enthusiasm for seeing some of the scenery. We wandered through the autumnal trees to a site where an earlier civilisation had used the rocks to grind herbs, spice & corn, leaving a very distinctive ‘pitting’ in the rock surface. From there we went up a gentle climb to a look-out spot, (Eagle Point) to admire the view of the mountains. It was a spectacular perch overlooking a deep ravine and 180 degree views over the surroundings. We sat for maybe 20 minutes soaking in as much of the brilliant sunshine as we could and admired the view and the natural beauty of it before retracing our steps back to the cabin we were staying in.

I guess in real terms the walk was very short and only involved some mild elevation change, but I was completely shagged. I don’t know if it was the altitude, the continual lack of sleep, or the exertions of the past days, not helped by the lack of exercise over the past few years, but I felt very poor and washed out. I was so ill that I refused a couple of beers...! Fortunately, the sensation didn't last more than a couple of hours, maybe it was the Chilean wine, or Andres’s excellent BBQ food he had cooked for us, but I started to revive. We finished the night playing a card game called Wizard, a sort-of modified game of Trumps, which was hilarious fun.

Once again, even with the efforts of the previous day, Fiona & I still suffered from poor sleep, and as I lay there in the early morning, the thought of more walking during the next day was giving me a “I’m Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here’ moment...! But after a filling breakfast and a cup of Tetley Tea, (thanks Christine), I was feeling a bit braver and committed to another day of walking in the mountains. When I say ‘Day’ of walking, that is a little of an exaggeration as Andres is a notoriously late sleeper and we never left until after 11:00am we were back by 3:00pm. This time we walked up to another, even more spectacular view point overlooking an enormous mountain, known as ‘Cerra de L’Indo’, or ‘Face of the Indian’, where we sat in the brilliant midday sunshine. After that we went a little further uphill to a rock formation that looked like the face of a Gorilla..! We sat an rested for a while before making our way back down to the cabin, in time for more beer & empanadas. Even though I was tired after the walk, I felt much better for doing it and felt that I was finally finding my ‘Walking Mojo”.

Andres cooked another awesome meal that evening, he is not only very good at it, but also amazingly passionate about his cooking, and we enjoyed yet another feast, was down with lashing of beer & wine. I had declared that the solution to Fiona and my jet-lag was to stay up as late as possible in an attempt to prevent us waking in the middle of the night, and therefore 2 rounds of Wizard was played and we crashed soon after 11:00pm. I slept solidly until Fiona woke for a pee, and I looked at the clock fearing it would only be 2:30am, but was relieved when it said after 6:00am, so we had had a proper night’s sleep for the first time in a week...! I finally dragged myself out of bed around 8:00am, actually looking forward to doing some walking that day before we returned to Santiago later that night.

After breakfast we headed into the National Park up a long, and to me, steep entry road, with several stops for a breather. Once in the park we took an ‘Interpretive Loop’, where we made Christine act as interpreter at each of the 10 or so information stations, just so we could stop and rest a little...! Half way round we came to another lookout point, again looking over ‘Cerra de L’Indo’, but from a much higher vantage point than before, with views over the other higher mountains behind covered in snow. We sat for quite a while taking in the majestic view and soaking in the quiet ambience of the place. Whilst the walk up here had been the hardest of the weekend, it was well worth it.

We headed down again to the cabin for our now routine beer & empanadas, before retiring to pack and prepare for our bus & train journey back to Santiago. We said our goodbyes to the lovely Maria, who runs the cabins and seems to have taken a real shine to Christine & Andres, who have been coming here for a couple of years now. The bus was very crowded but we were on from the start so managed to get seats, and we had seats booked on the train, where we concluded our Wizard tournament for the weekend. We arrive back in Santiago at 11:00pm and were back at the apartment before midnight. Fiona & I started packing when we got back, as we had a very early flight the next morning, North to Calama and then on to San Pedro de Atacama.

Next stop the desert...

Down in the City

Immediately after finishing the last blog post, Christine announced that a few friends were going to be coming round for a small dinner party and to meet Fiona. The chance to meet Christine’s mysterious cousin from New Zealand was an opportunity not to be missed, and we felt a bit like celebrities! If I am honest I was just glad to be able to sit down and relax after the exertions of the morning.

The first of Christine & Andres’s friend to arrive were Matias & Gaelle and their daughter, Abril, and we were soon sitting round their dining table tucking into some lovely food. Both Matias & Gaelle spoke excellent English, and over a few beers & several glasses of wine the conversation flowed effortlessly, with much laughter and jokes. Later another friend, Jenny, a Swedish girl with a decidedly Irish accent, arrived on her bike and joined us in what was becoming more ‘Party’ than ‘Dinner”...!

Then we started tucking into the spirits...... Fiona & I had brought some duty free Gin & Rum for Christine and Andres, and I took the opportunity to pick up a bottle of Laugavilin Scotch Whisky on the way through the airport. Initially Fiona thought that I would struggle to finish the whole of the bottle of whisky in the time we had in Santiago, before flying down to Brazil, but she need not have worried. I introduced Andres & Matias to the delights of Laugavilin, and Christine being a genuine scotch lass, need no such introduction. By the end of the evening the bottle was empty and there were more than a few slurred words and incoherent sentences being spoken. Not bad for a Tuesday evening.....

Fiona & I have been knocked sideways by the jet-lag, which has really interfered with our sleep patterns. For the first few nights we seem to go to bed and fall asleep quickly only to wake 3 or 4 hours later, wide awake that is, and then find it impossible to get back to sleep for a couple of hours. The worst of it is that when we wake up in the middle of the night, we feel fine, only to eventually fall back to sleep and wake up the next morning feeling awful.... I can feel your lack of sympathy from here....

Anyway, when I arose on the Wednesday morning, I bumped into Christine on her way out to work, and she was very much the worse for wear, and swearing off whisky for the next eternity before she left. Fiona and I sat around waiting for Andres to get up, as he had offered to be our tour guide for the day. Eventually around midday he made an appearance and I was not convinced that he was not suffering a little also.

Anyway we left the house and headed in to the city, which is only a few minutes’ walk away. We walked through the Parque Forestal to the Museum of Contempory Arts, and spent an hour or so looking round this lovely boutique museum, not too big, not too small. We stopped for coffee and Andres got a message that Christine had given up fighting her mammoth hangover and taken the rest of the day off. I have to say, I did feel somewhat responsible....

We continued our tour of the city with a walk through the Mercado Central, to a Railway Station that had been converted into an arts space, and thorough the local Santiago produce market where Andres gets his produce for his chef business. We ate lunch at a Peruvian restaurant where we had a mountain of a speciality dish, (the name escapes me), and we got to experience ‘Inca Cola’...! We next made our way to the Place Des Armes, the central city square, and visited the Catholic Cathedral which was pretty spectacular.

With a walk through one of the main shopping area, (no, Fiona managed to avoid buying anything), and a quick visit to the very old and very cool Church of San Francisco, we made our way our way back to the apartment. Overall, Santiago is a pretty chill place, with some lovely places and some cool stuff to look at. The people are very smart & friendly and there is no sense of social problems or despairing poverty, although I am sure they are there if you know where to look for them. If you want a 'soft introduction' to South America, then I would recommend Chile & Santiago.

During our day looking at the sites we clocked up a creditable 12kms of walking. Adding that to the 14kms walking we did the day before, Fiona & I were pretty much exhausted, and we had only been here for a couple of days... Oh yeah, and for the next few days we were heading south to experience the Andes Mountains, and even more walking.... Oh Gawd...!!

Welcome to Chile....

The trip from Christchurch to Auckland was reasonably uneventful, if you call losing and then finding my wallet uneventful. We chilled out in the Business Class lounge in Auckland for only a few hours before getting on the flight to Santiago. Flying cattle class for 12 hours was as much fun as it ever was, but once I found a comfortable position to lie in, it was not too bad. I managed to watch 3 movies and grab about 3 or 4 hours sleep so it was far from an uncomfortable flight. This is the longest flight we have until we head home, so all our upcoming flights will be short hops.

We were met at the airport in Santiago be Andres, who is the Chilean husband of Christine, Fiona’s cousin, who organised a taxi back in to the city. Christine & Andres live in a large apartment in a lovely part of the central city, very close to Piazza Italia. By the time Andres had made up a cup of tea, Christine arrived home, and we sat around chatting for a couple of hours, while Andres made us a very nice meal. After eating we went out for a walk about the local area to help us get our bearings, and to keep us from falling asleep in our strangely jet-lagged state. We ended up in a great little bar called Amadeus for beers and pizza, where I had my first couple of Chilean ‘craft beers’, a great India Pale Ale. After that, everything was good in the world.

We crashed out at about 9:30pm local time with no idea what the time was in New Zealand, but are bodies were telling us that they had had enough and we seemed to fall asleep quickly. I woke up at about 3:30am thinking that I was not going to get back to sleep, but the next thing I knew it was 10:00am. Over 12 hours of sleep is unusual for me.

After Breakfast, this morning we went for a walk up the Cerra do San Christobal, which in my eyes is a small mountain on the edge of the city, but was in fact not much more than a large hill. The walk up was slow & steady, and we had great views over the city of Santiago, which really put the size of this capital city into perspective.

Christine & Andres are the perfect hosts, giving us the run of their wonderful apartment, answering all our questions, and helping us when we bastardise the language with our attempts at ‘pigeon’ Spanish. Christine is from Scotland and teaches English in Santiago, and Andres is a chef, who’s English is far better than my Spanish, so chatting is always entertaining...! While I write this, Christine & Fiona are on the sofa making the arrangements for a couple of days away in Valparaiso the weekend after next. 

I on the other hand, am drinking my first beer of the day, as a thinly veiled excuse for rehydrating from this mornings exertion....

Packing….., Packing….., Packed….!!

So it’s done…. Both myself & Fiona are packed and ready to go. This time tomorrow, we’ll be somewhere over the Pacific on our way to Santiago in Chile.

Packing is a necessary evil, which if I am lucky, will mean that I have everything I need and nothing I don’t. In the past I have found that there is always some little item or piece of clothing that gets missed off the list, which will only be remembered when it’s too late. This time around I have had 3 solid days to get it right so let hope I am not carrying anything I don't need...

So now that the packing is done, it’s now my traditional chance to choose who I think will win the World Cup…?

I am not sure anyone out there would be too surprised to know that I would back Brazil as the possible world champions in 2014. The Cup has been won by the hosts more times than not, and so far, no European team has ever won the World Cup when it is played in South America. So the omen are there, and if the passion of the fans alone was enough to guarantee the win, then Brazil would be odds-on.

Spain, Germany and Holland should be there or there abouts, and Argentina will have something to say about it too. If I was going to choose a dark horse to pull off a surprise win, I might be persuaded to put some money on Uruguay, who will be playing on almost home ground. With Suarez & Forlan up front for Uruguay, anything is possible.

And of the teams we generally follow…?

England are in transition, with a mix of old & young players, and not very strong this time round. They have a tough group and they will do very well to get out of the group D and make to the next stage. Not impossible…

USA and Australia both have a very difficult groups to get out of to make any progress in the competition. It will be a miracle if USA get a result against either Germany or Ghana in group G, and likewise, Australia will need to pull off a sequence of unlikely results against Spain & Holland to get out of group B. That won’t stop us cheering them on….

Next update will be from Chile…. 

Hasta pronto mis amigos

Last day at the office……

 Well it’s finally here, my last day of work for the next 12 weeks…. It’s been a long time coming and there were times when I wasn’t sure it would actually arrive, but now it’s here. I’m not going to say that I will miss the work, cos I’m a “work-to-live” kinda guy, but I will miss the people, especially my team. It was great have a few drinks with them this evening, and the world’s worst game of table tennis, but I have left them in good hands and I can unplug from work and enjoy my time away.

Fiona and I will not be flying to Santiago on the first leg of trip until Tuesday morning, but I have metric-tonne of things that I need to do, the least of which is packing…!

Now, where is my passport...?