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....