First Stop: Santiago de Chile (Part 1)

Wow. It is hard to believe that at about this time tomorrow Andrea and I will have been in South America for one week. It seems like we´ve fit in so much in already -- we´ve seen different and fascinating cities and people, made new friends, learned how to use a digital camera, made sense of the Chilean dinero, and worked out how to order coffee (very important!).

But first things first. Leaving Australia was a slightly surreal experience for both of us. We both had only two hours sleep the night before our flight from Australia on Saturday 24th September -- against all advice from airlines, doctors and friends regarding lessening jet-lag from long-haul flights; especially ones that cross as many time zones as our´s was to -- oh well. After thinking and planning for this trip for so long, the mundane reality of simple tasks like filing onto a big jet, stowing our luggage and taking our seats was sort of underwhelming. Didn´t the aircrew and other passengers realise what a big adventure we were embarking upon? Well, I guess it was only a flight to New Zealand - practically domestic.

Here we are about to walk through the departure gate at Melbourne airport. (When I find a computer with a USB port I will attempt to upload some of the photos we´ve taken of things we have seen and done in Chile this week. In the meantime I have uploaded one of the photos that Diana e-mailed us - thanks Diana!)

The goodbyes at Melbourne airport from Andrea´s family and our friends (hello everyone!) was very sweet, and a little sad. Just as a big goodbye should be. It was really wonderful that so many people trudged out so early on a Saturday morning to see us off. Thanks guys! Andrea and I had already said our goodbyes to my family the weekend before, when we spent a wonderful few days in Cairns for my sister´s wedding - it was a really great day. We love you all!

All in all, the quiet goodbyes at the airport and the underwhelming first flight were kind of perfect - anything more exciting would have been a bit too much for the old adrenal glands I think, which we had already been using in top gear to get us through the previous four weeks.

And we survived the long plane flights from Melbourne to Santiago via Auckland, with remarkably little-to-none jet-lag - just a bit tired really. Our original three-hour stop in Auckland international airport became a 12 hour stop in that city, so we took the opportunity to catch a shuttle into the city and stretch our legs for a couple of hours. This made our whole Saturday a very long day at about 29 hours duration. And that wasn´t the only way we managed to bend time. We left Auckland at 1:40am New Zealand time on Sunday morning, but managed to arrive in Santiago at about 9pm back on Saturday night - crazy.

Leaving Santiago airport took a bit longer than expected as I had to pay a ´reciprocal´entrance fee to the country of US$30 (I already knew this and was prepared. It applies to Australians, Canadians and Americans (the USA type). Each national has a different fee). However, only one of four windows was open to deal with 200 people. Andrea and I were really tired and a bit concerned that we´d miss our airport pick-up to the hotel we´d booked. However, at long last we got through Customs and Immigration and Sergio was waiting to take us to the Hotel Plaza Londres (holding a little sign with our names on it) - but I think he had been about to give up.

Hotel Plaza Londres, Santiago

I will leave this post here, and leave it to Part 2 for us to go over some our experiences and observations from the past week. But the short version is this: beautiful country, very developed but with some deteriorating older areas of some cities and most people are quite poor or exist on low salaries; there is a lot of history here and the Chileans are a very patriotic people; Andrea and I are both proud of our use of Spanish and are getting by
quite well - we haven´t even used a phrase book at any point while speaking to someone; we have already made one really good friend (Joe) who has taken us out in Valparaisio and Viña del Mar; and finally, we both stick out from miles away as gringo turistas (hair, skin, eyes, clothes etc)!

Last day at work; nearly ready to leave Canberra. I think we are excited but very tired. It´s been a hectic two weeks. This is just a quick little post for now to test everything´s working on this Blog.