Chilean Life

Well we made it after what felt like a 3 day flight, it was only 12 hours from Auckland but felt longer that the flight to uk. This photo is the view from the plane heading in to land.

After we landed, we were met by what seamed like half of the Chilean population, they hired a minibus to come and pick us up.On arrival at Lili's house (Lili is Maggie's twin sister), we quickly sat down to lunch Chilean style, which means "Enpanadas" (enpanadas are basically Chilean pies), followed by lots of drinking into the night.


The next day we went walking around Santiago, this photo is from the top of Cerro Santa Lucia, which is like a little tower on top of a knoll in the middle of the city. you can see all around Santiago from here. Santiago is in the bottom of a very large basin and its very flat except for a few of these Cerros, The basin gives Santiago its very own micro climate which is made worse from all the smog which cannot escape.


This is the centre square, Plaza de Armas, on sundays it's full of Peruanos who come here to sell or just hang around in the numerous cafes.


At the Palacio de Monedas, which is the presidents palace when she is in office.


The norm for a country town is to sell half kilo enpanadas, I'm sure Tom and Rachel would like it here.


On our way to Valparadiso on the coast, the is what happens to most of the clouds when the hit the mountains around Santiago, just under the cloud line there we went through a 5km tunnel and popped out on the other side with thick cloud.


This is the house that we stayed in, it's a bit run down but still an amazing house, built sometime in the 1800's, very spooky inside.



Maggie's sister Lili in Valparadiso, Valpo' is a strange place, so many people wanting to live ontop of each other, driving around the place is a nightmare, most people tend to walk up these stairways or take the lifts.


We went out for a drink in Valpo' at a bar called Margarita, there Margarita had 2 margaritas, the size in the photo, well needless to say, someone wasn't feeling to well later on or the next morning.


Just yesterday, Jano (maggie's son) & myself went to the outskirts of Santiago to climb up one of the mountains, practice for Machu Picchu, and to burn of some of the beer and food that we have been consuming since we got here. One thing about the Chileans, they love to eat, maybe we will get stung for excess weight on our return flight.

Ok, well that will have to do for now. Tonight is the birthday party for Maggie & Lili, sowe'll see how well we all pull up in the morning. On Monday we will be setting off on our journey north, I{ll try to blog somewhere along the trip.
Ok, bye for now, hope all is well in you different timezones.