Chile

We left our Buenos Aires hostel, the Portal Del Sur this morning and headed to the airport for our flight to Santiago.

We’ve really enjoyed our two stays at this hostel. Like every other one we’ve stopped at on this trip, its had real character to it. An older building, it has a central atrium area with balconies giving a bird’s eye view of this,

a roof top bar area with good views of the city,

and the second room in our stay had it’s own balcony with city views as well.

We’ve felt quite at home here, so it was a slight wrench to leave. But, onwards we must go, so set off to the airport. The drive in the taxi there was eventful; last night an Argentinean side, Estudiantes, won the Copa Liberatadores (the equivalent of the Champions League in Europe), and the approach road to the airport was dominated by flag waving supporters.

After swapping our remaining Argentinean Pesos for Peruvian Nuevo Soles, we went through security and before we knew it we were looking at our last views of Buenos Aires and Argentina through the plane window.

The flight back to Santiago once again took us straight over the Andes Mountains, and this time the views were out of this world!

Even the cabin crew of the plane were taking pictures; it was that clear and spectacular.

We’re staying overnight in Santiago before catching our next flight tomorrow to Lima in Peru. Our flight tomorrow is first thing in the morning, so we had decided to splash out on an airport hotel for the night, rather than making our way back into Santiago city centre and back again. And when I say airport hotel, the Holiday Inn in Santiago Airport is practically part of the airport. Literally after leaving the arrival gate, we crossed a pedestrian crossing and were there!

The room is quite luxurious,

but the location is something else. It meant that, for the night, the airport terminal was our playground. And we wasted no time at all before getting an All-You-Can-Eat buffet there! For the equivalent of around £9.00 we were getting several 16oz steaks freshly cooked, chicken, pork, rice, chips, deserts, popcorn, waffles – you name it, it was there!

So, waddling back to the hotel after eating the largest meal of our entire trip, we settled back and prepared for our flight tomorrow to the last new country of this trip, deepest darkest Peru!

During breakfast this morning, we spotted a Lonely Planet guide book to Chile. So, having spent yesterday wandering around the city, we took at a look at it to see if there was anything of significance we’d missed. And what did the Lonely Planet say about Valparaiso? That, apart from a couple of museums, the best thing was to wander around for a couple of days soaking in the atmosphere!!

So off we went again for “Wander around Valparaiso” #2!

We did manage to take a different route today, passing through more commercial areas than yesterday. We spent a long time wandering from square to square and shop to shop, looking at clothes that we had no real intention of buying, and just taking it quite easy.

Our impression of Valparaiso was pretty much confirmed by today. There isn’t a great deal to do here apart from walk around, but it’s quite a unique city and a good experience to have done it. And its been nice to have the (almost) luxury of not having to chalk off sight after sight after sight for a couple of days.

We headed back to the funicular after about four hours,

and headed back to the room to get our packs ready for leaving tomorrow.
About 5pm, we caught a memorable sight from our balconey, where the moon had risen early and was hovering large, full and bright above the hills and Valparaiso bay.

It was then that I encountered a reverse-werewolf moment. For normal werewolves, a full moon signifies extreme hair growth and madness. For me, I didn’t experience any less madness than usual, but I decided to finally irradicate the beard!

So, after two months to the day without shaving, I started on an epic one and a half hour battle to get clean-shaven.

And it was a battle. Not only did I break my electric shaver, I couldn’t get through it with scissors or a razor either! My appearance through this time ranged from Herr Professor to Mexican Roadsweeper to Nu-Metal before, finally, finally, finally, I managed to irradicate the facial fuzz and adopted my new image of Fresh Faced Schoolboy!

So, apart from scaring myself with my reflection and wondering where my chin had suddenly vanished to, that was the end of our second and final day in Valparaiso!

After enjoying an amazing breakfast, where there was far too much food to eat and all of it gorgeous, we headed out of our B&B and headed up the hill to the naval museum.

Paying our 700 pesos each to get in (no student discounts this time but only around 77p each!), we took a walk around.

We’ve got to the stage with museums on this trip where, if it doesn’t have interactive things to play with, we lose interest very quickly. And apart from a statue of the liberator of Chile, Bernado O’Higgins, doing a John Travolta impersonation

that was pretty much the case here. We spent most of the time just looking at the architecture of the building and ignoring the precious things in the glass display cases.

Still, a pleasant enough way to spend half an hour, and certainly was worth the entrance fee.

From the museum, we headed down the hill towards sea level, passing several interesting buildings and murals along the way.

The first things that hit you when you look around Valparaiso are the extreme number of electricity cable wound improbably around every available pole, and the almost shanty-town like corrugated iron houses clinging to the hills. This was certainly apparent after we reached sea-level from the long descent down the hill.

And the second thing that hits you is how ornate and beautiful some of the architecture in the city is, and how the blend of old/battered buildings and pristine ornate buildings gives this whole city an unrivalled charm.

We wandered for miles, from the docks into the city centre.

And, it being a Sunday, what better way to spend the day than going to a car boot sale!

Just like car boot sales in the UK, it was full of a wide variety of interesting items (and I-Can’t-Believe-Anyone-Would-Buy-That items).We even managed to find an electrical adapator for South America, which we’ve had to beg, borrow (and not managed to steal!) from everywhere we’ve stayed from Easter Island onwards!

Finally, after finding a supermarket and loading up on food items for the next couple of days, we started on our journey back. And realised just how far we had actually walked. When we got the taxi yesterday, we had travelled over five miles to get to the B&B. And we were now at least a mile further away!

So, day pack loaded with all the heavy bottles we’d bought before realising how far away we were, we started on the long, long journey home. With the sun beating down on us, and tired beyond belief, we even started to hallucinate we were being watched by by thirty foot high psychedelic apparations!

We even started humming songs about wandering with knapsacks on our backs! It was that sort of journey! But, over an hour and a half later, we made it back to the funicular running up the hill towards our B&B. So, weary legged, we paid our 300 pesos ride fee and sat while we were ferried up the hill.

And, after covering about 14 miles on foot since the morning, we arrived back in our room exhausted but happy from quite a good day!

One problem with our semi-hibernation over the past five days has been that we never bothered adjusting to the time difference between Santiago and Easter Island. Whereas on Easter Island we were getting up around 8am and going to bed around midnight, in Santiago we have been getting up around 10am and going to bed at 2am. So, we were bound to hit a stage where we needed to get up early and it was going to hit us, and that stage was today!

It took us an eternity to come around, and pack the rest of our rubbish into our packs. So we were tired before we even checked out of the hostel. And lumping our getting-heavier-by-the-day packs on our backs towards the metro station certainly did nothing for our exhaustion levels!

After enduring a fifteen minute ride on the subway, standing up in a crowd of people with the equivalent weight of a dead donkey strapped to our backs, we finally reached the Universiad de Santiago stop and got to the bus station. We’d not bothered booking tickets for the bus, as they are every twenty minutes, so didn’t rush into getting on a bus and instead popped back to the restaurant we’d been to a couple of days earlier to get our first food and drink of the day. Which was much needed and very nice; pity it was on the upper floor of the bus depot though, which meant more lugging packs around!

Suitably stuffed from the meal, we popped to the queue for the Pullman bus, my Spanish holding out unbelievably well, and within a minute of buying the tickets we were on the bus and on our way to Valparaiso!

Valparaiso is somewhere in the region of 100km north west of Santiago, but with having to negotiate the inner suburbs of Santiago the bus journey took a couple of hours. So, with the seats feeling exceedingly comfortable, it took about fifteen minutes before, nose pressed against the window, I’d fallen asleep!

About half an hour later I was woken up abruptly by turbulence. I say turbulence; I was so disorientated that I had thought I was back on a plane! It was only a bump in the road, but that was the end of my sleep for the journey. So I sat back instead and took in the scenery.

It was quite surprising, in that I never expected the scenery between Santiago and Valparaiso to be so nice and Alpine. It should have occurred to me, perhaps, with the proximity of the Andes, but for some reason I thought the journey would’ve been on flat road and not winding up hillsides. But winding up hillsides it did. And it made for a much more interesting journey than anticipated.

We arrived in Valparaiso bus station at 2:20pm and headed out to get a taxi to our B&B for the next three nights. Managing not only to ask the driver how much, understand his response (which always seems to be a problem – I know how to ask for how much something is but never quite expect the answer to come back in Spanish and always just look bemused when they reel off an amount very quickly!), and agreeing on the price, we were whizzed off about five miles away to the B&B through packed busy streets and winding hills. And the taxi didn’t rip us off; something of a rarity in this part of the world apparently!

Our B&B seems really good. Its perched improbably on a steep hill in Valparaiso and is right next to the most popular viewpoint in the city, Paseo de 21 Mayo.

So, having checked in, been made a brew by the owners, and dumping our luggage off, we went to have a look at it.

Paseo de 21 Mayo is basically a whole walkway and street with views over the bay of Valparaiso.

It’s also the location of the Naval Museum, which we’re probably going to do tomorrow as it’s literally one minute from our B&B door to the door of the museum.

First impressions of Valparaiso is that it’s run down, not very modern, but is brilliant for this very reason. It feels quirky, the little we’ve seen so far seems very characteristic, and we feel like we’ll have a much better understanding of Chile by being here rather than Santiago.

Our room in the B&B, which we crashed out in for the rest of the day after checking out the viewpoint, appears to be the only one in the building with a balcony. And we are right above the main docks area of Valparaiso, which is a constant bustle of activity and noise, and right next to the rickety old yellow funicular which runs from our elevated position down to the ground level below.

So we spent the rest of the day watching the busy docks loading containers onto ships from our balcony, followed by the spectacular sight of Valparaiso at night.

There were only a couple of things in Santiago that we were interested in seeing before arriving here. One was San Cristobel Hill which we did a couple of days ago, and the other was Santa Lucia Hill which, as today was our last full day in Santiago, we did today.

We’d gone through the Santa Lucia metro station a couple of times already, on our way to other places in Santiago, and had realised that it wasn’t that far away from our hostel. So, with the weather not being as hot today, we decided to take a walk instead. Passing a monument to the police on the way,

fifteen minutes later, we’d reached the park at the bottom of the hill.

We followed a path through the park to the entrance of the buildings and stairs leading up to the summit; and it was closed! So, we had to do a double take, walk back down onto the street, and walk all the way around again! But finally we managed to pass through the iron gates, sign our names at the security post, and then we were in!

We were slightly concerned that some local law had resulted in the banning of bottoms

but then we realised we were ok, as several months of starvation meant we lost our own arses ages ago!

Santa Lucia hill has some historical relevance, in that the Spanish Conquistadors won a battle here in the 16th Century. But our reason for coming here was much more modern; we’d seen it on a Michael Palin DVD!

The area is renowned as a place where couples go to sit on the benches and spend hours kissing. And we certainly saw evidence of that. Bit strange really; one couple who were at the entrance just kissing were still at it two hours later! It seemed like more a display of exhibitionism than affection!

The climb to the summit of the hill is through various improbably steep and hazardous steps. Starting off on the ornate staircases of the first building, where I saw a Mand (Where? There on the stairs. Where on the stairs? Right There!!!!!)

It continued up to a small castle like structure,

where a large walkway allowed us to see how far we’d climbed already and offered good view of the Andes overlooking the city.

To reach the pinnacle of the hill though, we still had a couple of steps to negotiate. The first of these were just carefully arranged rocks in a step formation, and it was quite an effort to get to the top.

And then, finally, we just had a couple of steps up to the final turret and we’d made it!

The climb to the top was quite tiring, but it was worth it, not only for the beauty of the buildings and landscaped walkways, but also the views from above of Santiago itself.

From the turret we started our descent, stopping briefly in a small garden area halfway down. Here there was a statue dedicated to my new namesake; Valdivia!

This one was a Spanish Conquistador, and not a random Chilean footballer, but at least it seems my adopted name is associated with greatness! As you would expect!

Santa Lucia was a really picturesque and good way to spend the day. The buildings were some of the finest we have seen in Santiago, and the park/walkways were really well planned and had a charm about them. And, as we descended Santa Lucia hill, our Santiago experience ended.

We headed back to our hostel, the Hostal Rio Amazonas, and grabbed a couple of pictures of the interior before getting our packs ready for tomorrow, when we will be catching a bus to our next destination, Valparaiso.

Santiago had been a really good experience for us both. We left Easter Island completely exhausted, and its been great to be in a city where we could do fairly little but still get a good overall impression of the place. We have got to the stage now, though, where we’re becoming desperately tired, so maybe the next three nights in Valparaiso may also be extended rests before we move onto Argentina next week.

Our personal crusade against an early morning continuing today, we left the hostel again after noon, walked for half a mile, and then headed back again. It was bloody boiling! So, quick discarding of winter clothes, we headed out again.

We caught the Metro to the Universiad De Santiago stop, to check out the bus station there. We will be heading to Valparaiso, which is supposed to be Chile’s most beautiful city, on Saturday so thought we’d investigate the buses to get there before we have to lump our packs around with us on Saturday.

Having established how much it cost (very cheap) and how frequent the service was (very frequent), we decided to grab some lunch from the shopping mall adjacent. And our lack of Spanish speaking ability didn’t stop us getting a brilliant Chicken dinner from a restaurant; stick that up your arse Mr Mexican Know-It-All from yesterday!!!!

Because we’d left it too late in the day to do anything of great significance, we decided to head back to Paseo Ahumada and do a spot of shopping. Namely, looking at clothes and finding the Chilean National Football Team shirt I wanted.

Arriving at the metro stop for this, we came out of the wrong exit and were briefly disorientated for a minute. But, camera in hand, we took full advantage in our unexpected surroundings to snap a few pictures of buildings around us!

We could see the street we were meant to be on across six lanes of traffic, and it was absolutely heaving with people!

So before crossing the road, we took a look at the nearby Plaza De La Constitucion. And wished we hadn’t bothered. It was only a big grassed square, and the architecture wasn’t anything brilliant.

We left the Plaza De La Constitucion and crossed into the mayhem of Paseo Ahumada. Now neither of us are particularly good shoppers as it all seems like a major effort and, not surprisingly, after an hour of looking at clothes shops and slowly realising that everything was the same and not what we wanted, we headed to the sports shop to get my football shirt.

Weighing up between paying 34,000 pesos for a #7 “Ramez” top or 29,000 pesos for a #10 Valdivia top, I made the wise decision that I hadn’t heard of either player so went with the cheaper option!

And then magically, I became the Great Valdivia.

Which is no surprise, as I learned later that his nickname is The Magician (and no Harry Potter jokes please – I’ve heard them all before and Harry Potter doesn’t have a beard!!!)

So, taking on the persona of the Great Valdivia, I became a South American football player.

Which of course meant arguing with the referee who had a problem with me playing football in the hostel room. I couldn’t see the problem with what I’d done

but, I got my name noted down and then was sent off!

Never fear……. The Great Valdivia will be back!!!!!!!

In a pattern that we’ve decided to follow for the rest of our stay in Santiago, we didn’t set an alarm again last night. We’re forgoing the free breakfast every day by doing so, but who needs food and drink if it means an extra hour in bed every day. And by this stage of the trip, the extra hour is more valuable than gold to us and lie-ins on this trip have been rarer than Rockinghorse faeces.

Despite this, though, we were woken up by the housekeeping staff making as much noise as possible outside; this may be entirely innocent on their part but we suspect it may be that they don’t want to wait until afternoon to clean our rooms. Well, tough! We left the room at 1pm anyway!!

There are two features that absolutely dominate the skyline in Santiago. One of these is the Andes Mountains. The other is San Cristobel hill. One of these would involve finding a bus, and spending hours winding up narrow mountain ledges to get to. The other is a five minute walk and a funicular ride away. Guess which one we did!

You’re right! We did the bus and winding up narrow mountain ledges! Oh, no. Hang on. We couldn’t be arsed with that, so took the easy option and went up San Cristobel Hill!

To get to the funicular we had to walk through, what the owner of the hostel described as, the “bohemian” area of the city. Now, usually this means a shabby area of town dressed up by a few “character” bars, and the street in Santiago was no exception to this.

Not entirely unpleasant, it did have a few cheap bars and restaurants, but nothing to write home about to be honest (so why am I doing just that I wonder!).

In no time at all we reached a small park at the end of the street and the foot of San Cristobel hill, and found the funicular.

Our original intention had been to just go to the Madonna statue at the top of the hill, take in the view, and then head back down again. But, when we went to purchase our tickets, we realised there was Santiago Zoo half way up the hill and that it would only cost another 2000 pesos each (around £2) to go in. So, spotting an easy and cheap way to pass some time, we got tickets for that as well, got in the funicular,

and headed up to Zoo Station.

Our first problem on getting out of the funicular was finding our tickets. In a prime example of the absent mindedness that is assailing me throughout this trip, I put the tickets “somewhere safe” when we had bought them. The problem with putting things “somewhere safe” is that I can never remember where “somewhere safe” actually is! After five minutes of searching through my pockets, with the woman on the entrance kiosk making lots of helpful suggestions in Spanish, I eventually found them tucked underneath my camcorder in the bottom of my bag! Don’t know how they ended up there, but at least they’d been somewhere safe!

Santiago Zoo was the type of zoo where the animals were pacing up and down relentlessly in their pens due to lack of space, but was generally a much more modern and pleasant experience overall than say, Beijing Zoo. It had it’s usual complement of Lions,

and Tigers,

and Llamas! (there was a bear but it was extremely camera shy! Oh My!)

We managed to pass a couple of hours there, and it was quite good value for money. The only downside was that it was built on a hill, the station was at the top, so we had to walk right down to the bottom of the hill again to see everything, only to have to walk all the way back again! Not the best design in the world! And reaching the kiosk at the exit to the funicular, we couldn’t work out how to get out through the turnstiles! Again, the very same woman who helped us find our tickets had to help us get out! I don’t know what the Spanish is for “stupid bloody tourists”, but I’m sure if we’d have listened carefully enough we would have learned!

So, the funicular arrived and we continued up the hill, the vast expanse of Santiago becoming more apparent the higher we ascended.

And on reaching the top, and getting out onto the viewing area outside the funicular exit, just how big an expanse this was plain to see.

We knew that Santiago was a densely populated place; it has over seven million inhabitants and we witnessed the population density first hand in the shopping areas yesterday. But what I think took us by surprise was just how sprawling the city is. From the top of the funicular, the valley underneath the Andes that Santiago is built on was just a mass of buildings as far as the horizon.

And what made the view of the city even more spectacular from here was the backdrop of the Andes.

There are some pretty large buildings in Santiago; we’ve seen them from the ground level. But everything, even the tallest skyscraper in the city, was dwarfed by the extreme height and majesty of the Andes.

It left you with a feeling that no matter how dense and sprawling the city was, it was just an insignificant, impermanent, transient feature on the landscape. The area felt like it belonged to the Andes; that the Andes were here long before the city existed and would be here long after it vanished. I don’t think, in my life, I’ve ever been so in awe of nature before this moment.

From one, naturally created, religious experience, we then experienced a man-made one. To head to the Madonna statue at the peak of the hill, you have to climb a series of steps, which cuts right through an open air church.

We sat on one of the pews/ benches to rest and take in the views. Religious music was playing through loud speakers as we gazed down towards the altar, the mass of Santiago and the Andes dominating the view behind this.

The combination of the music and views created an ethereal quality to the experience; just as the Hindu music in Batu Caves in Malaysia had indelibly imprinted the day onto my conscience, the Catholic music here just seemed like the perfect soundtrack to the whole place.

We could have happily sat here for hours, feeling more serene by the minute. However, we hadn’t come this far up the hill without reaching the top, so on we went.

And we finally reached the 22 metre high statue of the Madonna,

climbed the last steps to the foot of the statue and paused to admire yet more astounding scenery.

We sat in front of the main entrance; shortly afterwards, after two people stepped over us and knelt in front of this, we realised it was a shrine to Pope John Paul II so decided to move away before we antagonised anyone!

Heading back down to the funicular station, we passed a small chapel on our way,

so decided to pop in. Although a simple affair, it had the most stunning, understated carvings on the walls; the first impression was that they were just paintings but, when you approached them, it became apparent that the figures were actually carved out of the walls of the chapel and the skill involved in doing this was immense.

We reached the level of the funicular station, and took a couple more photos of the scenery

and the latest in the series of “joint photos”; having reviewed the collection of these we have from this trip, there is no doubt that madness has set in at some stage as I seem to look more wild-eyed in each photo we take! And while Mandy looks better and healthier in each one, I look rougher and rougher (and more like Obi-Wan-Kenobi according to Mandy)! For example, contrast the first “joint” photo we took on the Great Wall Of China five months ago

with the latest offering!!

Round The World travelling – should be a health warning on it!

And then it was back down the funicular,

past the ubiquitous sight in Santiago of dogs sleeping in the sunshine,

(we let them lie!), avoided giving begging students money by my fluent Spanish phrase “no tengo dinero”, and then headed back to the hostel.

Later that night, in one of the common areas in the hostel, a guy from Mexico said something to us in Spanish which we didn’t understand. When we explained we didn’t know what he was saying, he came out with the extremely anal comment of “How do expect to manage in South America if you don’t speak Spanish. You’re lucky everyone speaks English”. Not having a witty comment to retort, or a blunt instrument to thrust in his direction, we let it lie (as we did the other dogs!). But it slowly irritated us later the more we thought about it.

We don’t speak Mandarin, Cantonese, Vietnamese, Cambodian, Malay, Polynesian, and have a little Spanish (enough to get around with). Does this mean that we shouldn’t have visited China, Vietnam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Polynesia, or South America?

Or does it mean the guy was just an arrogant moron?

I’ll let you decide!!!

But it bloody annoyed us immensely! And for the record, nobody except the owner of the hostel has spoken to us in English. And we’ve been here three days now.

For the first time in a fair few days, we had the luxury of not setting an alarm this morning. It may not seem like much, but when you’ve changed time zones on a regular basis and your body is totally confused as to what time it is, its small things like this that keep you from total burnout.

In the event, we didn’t sleep too late, but late enough to miss breakfast, so we took a leisurely couple of hours and decided to have a look at the main shopping street in Santiago, Paseo Ahumada.

To get there, we needed to get the metro from our hostel to Universiad De Chile, a couple of stops away. Now we’ve been dab hands at doing this all around the world, but it’s usually not a major problem as most places have automated ticket machines. However, to our dismay, not in Santiago!

So, removing years of dust off my GCSE Spanish, which I last did in 1988, we approached the ticket counter and managed to get two tickets! Fair enough, I only had to remember the word for two (dos) but I like to make major achievements out of small efforts!!

So, having worked out the vagaries of the ticket barrier system (and by working out I mean the attendant had to show us what hole to stick the ticket in!) we arrived at the stop and headed out into the Santiago populous.

Santiago is a busy, busy place. The last time we were in such a densely populated shopping street was in Shanghai in February! So it was an, albeit small, shock to the system. But we quickly readjusted to city life, and headed up the street, stopping in McDonalds for a bite to eat and giving me chance to further explore my inadequacies in Spanish. It would appear that the Spanish for a double cheeseburger meal is “una” and then wave your finger pointedly at a picture of a double cheeseburger meal! If only my GCSE had been this easy, I would have got a grade A no problem (instead of failing it!). And if only the food had been edible, we would have been happy!

Walking up the main street again, stopping in several shops and finally being able to buy the camcorder tape that had eluded me since Australia, we arrived in Plaza De Armas.

Straight away, we felt immediately like we were in South America, possibly for the very first time since arriving yesterday.

The whole square had an undeniably Spanish feel to it, with grand architecture reminiscent of squares in Barcelona (he says randomly picking the only major Spanish city he’s been to!).

Although it seemed like Spain, it also seemed like a Spain from years ago. Poor subject matter I know, but this was probably summed up by the exterior of an Adult Cinema we passed.

It was this blend of typical Spanish architecture with a slightly older, battered feeling to the outlying buildings which made the area so distinctive.

From Plaza De Armas, we headed briefly into a shopping mall, enabling me to eye up and price up a Chilean football shirt. Definitely going to be a purchase later in the week I think, if the money holds up!

And then, not wanting to do too much on the first day, preferring to have a rest at the hostel, we headed back to the metro system. Again, my prowess at Spanish came in handy as we purchased the two tickets! And we headed to the entrance barriers, cocksure as to our knowledge at where to stick the tickets! Unfortunately, the barriers here were completely different and none of us had the sense to look where the big yellow arrow was telling us to insert them! So, for the second time in a row, we needed the attendant to show us the way and, mildly embarrassed at the lines of people behind us, we jumped quickly onto a train and got away from there!

Safely tucked up in our room, where no-one would need to show us where to stick a ticket, we played out the rest of a day in a battle of wits with the unstable internet connection and generally took it easy. The only semi-difficult thing left to do was buy a couple of coffees from reception. But, putting my acquired knowledge to the test, it was easy. So if you’re ever in Santiago and need a couple of caffeine beverages, the correct phrase is :

“Dos” point point “Por Favour!”

Getting up early, having the last of our magnificent breakfasts at the hotel, and getting our free transfer back to the airport, we were given yet another leaving necklace; this time a little shell with a white feather sticking out of it! Again, a nice touch and leaves you thinking highly of a place when you leave.

We took in our last views of Easter Island,

and then went through security control into the departure lounge.

Having just found, inspected and bought a T-shirt from a shop, we heard a loudspeaker announcement in Spanish, with my name inescapably mixed into the phrase. Not having a clue what had been said, we went back to the security control and identified ourselves. And the security guard just said rather curtly “Wait here” and left us.

All sorts of things were going through our minds at this stage.

Had we committed some off-roading violation in the 4x4?

Had our credit card transaction for the hotel been declined after we left, and they were holding us for non-payment of a hotel bill?

Had the 30 foot Moai I’d stolen and disguised cunningly as a toothbrush in my rucksack been discovered?

After a ten minute wait, a representative from LAN (the airline we were travelling on) came up to us and asked for our boarding passes back. At this stage, it really was becoming squeaky bum time!

And then, having checked our names and passports, she announced that we had received a free upgrade to BUSINESS CLASS!!!!

In all the years we have been flying (thirteen to be precise as we were quite old before we took our first flight) we have never, never been upgraded! So, suffice to say, we were ecstatically happy at the prospect. The waiting plane had never looked so good!

So, when the call to board began, we ignored the “tourist/ economy class” line and headed straight through the VIP section (ok so it was only a case of heading to the right of the barrier instead of the left but you get the idea!). And instead of being on row 24 in a seat with just about enough room to squeeze my knees in, we were in row 2 in a brand new Business Class seat with fully retractable bed seats, a 17 inch LCD monitor, sipping complimentary soft drinks delivered in proper glasses, watching the plebs in Poor Class trundle through to the back of the plane! One or two of them looked in our general direction, but we studiously avoided eye contact with them; after all it just doesn’t do to fraternise with the lower classes!

So, stretching out in the seven feet of space the seats had (and yes I did measure it!), we took off from Easter Island. As soon the plane had reached cruising altitude, our personal flight attendants presented us with our menus and wine lists for luncheon, where we both selected the Steak with New Potatoes followed by Crème Caramel with Sauce de Chocolate! And so they lay down our tablecloths, delivered our fine cutlery, served our excellent meal on the finest plates, and invited us to select from a range of breads. The meal was easily restaurant standard, and we would have been happy paying for something equivalent on the ground. And of course, the meal was accompanied nicely with a complimentary beer, the wine list not being up to our exacting standards! When we had finished dining, the flight attendants then dealt with Poor Class, wheeling the trolleys of barley digestible swill quickly past us, lest we were inconvenienced by the foul stench of both the food and the commoners behind our rear curtain!

So, our fine dining complete, we put the seats down into the fully horizontal bed position, and positioning our pillows and quilts, settled down to a mixture of watching Watchmen on our 17 inch screens and listening to various audio tracks on our padded headphones, drowning out the sounds of cattle and misery from the Poor Class transients.

All too briefly, after a four hour flight, it was over. We caught our first ever views of continental South America, along with our first views of the Andes mountains from the plane as we descended.

And then, disembarking before Poor Class (it just doesn’t do to be seen travelling with such people on Terra Firma), we picked up our luggage, were in a taxi in a blink of an eye, and were heading to Santiago.

The sunset reflecting on the snow covered Andes was an unbelievable sight. The snow reflected back as a pink glow, and was a totally wonderful way of seeing South America for the first time.

And finally, for the first time in our lives, the correct answer to the age old question

“Where are the Andes”

was not

“At the end of your wristies!”

but was

“Just there – through the taxi window! Them pink things!!”

Pulling up at our hostel in the centre of Santiago, which on first impressions seems pretty good, we had time to nip out for something eat. Using the old “KFC as indicator of how expensive a country is” method, we quickly deduced that the cost of living in Chile is very cheap; the cheapest for us since Asia. For example, you can buy fries and a drink for 300 pesos, the equivalent of 33p in the UK!

So, suitably fed on the first hot evening meal we had eaten in nine days since leaving New Zealand, we retired to our chambers to reflect on our earlier introduction to polite society and to contemplate the start of our South American adventures!

We had the luxury of a day off today. We had toyed with the idea last night of hiring the 4x4 for another day, but had come to the conclusion that we would have been just revisiting areas we had already seen by doing so.

So, off we went back onto the main/ only street in Hanga Roa, and dropped off one, slightly soiled Grand Vitara back to the hire depot.

They obviously must expect them to come back in such a condition, as the guy didn’t bat an eyelid; for us, though, if there had been a carwash on the island I think we would have used it before returning the vehicle!

Refusing a lift back to the hotel, we decided instead to walk back, taking copious amounts of photographs of, what is, just a small street with very little going on. So I now present to you the highlights of Hanga Roa and therefore Easter Island’s commercial centre.

Reaching the hotel,

we took an opportunity to grab some more photos of the reading room and carvings dotted around it, before spending the rest of the day relaxing and packing our rucksacks.

It really is a wonderful place to stay, (with the Muri Retreat on the Cook Islands, its probably been the best place we’ve stayed on our entire travels), and we feel so relaxed and at home here that it’s hard to think we will probably never manage to get back.

And the same can be said for Easter Island as a whole. Even with the increased tourism that has occurred in recent years, it still retains a feeling of being cut off from the rest of the world. The Moai are amazing, and the scenery of the island itself is quite magical. By hiring the 4x4, we had the opportunity to do things at our own pace, and often without having to fight past hordes of other tourists to see things. And the off-roading was extreme to say the least!

Around 9pm tonight we had the unique experience of hearing and seeing our plane for tomorrow land, and then take off to Tahiti. We knew, from our previous flight that it would be landing there later that night, picking up a new load of passengers, and then be coming back to take us away tomorrow!

So, tomorrow morning we leave here at 10:45am and catch the flight to continental South America; specifically Santiago in Chile. This will be the last continent on our journey, taking in Chile, Argentina and Peru (as well as briefly passing into Brazil and Uruguay if everything goes according to plan) and we’ll be spending just over a month here before flying home. So, although all our instincts are telling us the trip is nearing an end, we still have over 5 weeks left which normally would be one full year’s annual leave entitlement! So, not quite over just yet!