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Published: December 27th 2008
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So we rearranged the flights and departed Patagonia arriving in Santiago for a stay of around 1 week. The intention was to chill out around the city and meet up with our friend Sandra, who was on a whistlestop tour of chile. We stayed at a cool laid back hostel close to the city centre called the Eco Hostel and did a little shopping etc. I (Jim) had another hair cut, not as interesting as the Equador/chinese cut, but the results were a little more pleasing, the fella spoke good English this time. We did indeed meet up with Sandra for a brief Allo at the airport and later for a drink outside the hotel in the Paris-Londres area of Santiago. Sadly Sandra had no more time to spare and was whisked away before sun up to travel to the far north of Chile and Bolivia. We had a few more days to kill in the area so took a metro to the far south of the city followed by a bus to "El Cajon del Maipo" (the Maipo Canyon), a couple of hours south east of the city. The weather was great with sunshine (and no smog caused by pollution
which made a nice change from Santiago) and a campsite with no other campers. The camping was 5 star after the wilds of Patagonia. We had a roof to shade from the sun, a picnic table, a bbq and our own dogs for a couple of days. As we said previously the country seems full of stray dogs, and we had 2 nice ones that appeared the first night, a girl, Spot (she wanted her belly tickling) and a boy, Chocolate ( who was a bit scary at first with his big scary face and massive paws but turned out to be quite a character). We got slightly concerned when they started barking in the middle of the night and right next to our ears considering we were the only people in this big remote campsite... it seems that they were only barking at other dogs getting too close to their pet humans and it was quite funny when we both got up in the pitch black to go to the bathroom block, the dogs didn't really react to us getting up but when we returned to our tent they got really excited and started jumping on us and barking
joyously as if it was play time. We had to explain to them that it was still the middle of the night and that they had to go back to sleep... not sure they could understand English but did as they were told... The next morning followed us to the local bus stop (we had to go to the nearest village which was too far to walk) and looked sad to see us get on. We decided to get them a treat for being good guards in the night and bought a big bag of dog biscuits which Chocolate appreciated greatly, sadly Spot had disappeared and we weren't able to feed her, she must have had a better offer. We were very sad to leave our new pet friend when we returned to the city after 3 days of doing nothing but eat and stroll in the nearby National Park.
However, back to the city we went to meet up with a couple of guys we had met in Galapagos, Steve and Tracey, they too are doing a bit of a round the world trip, having done the Asia part already. It was cool to meet up and Steve prepared
a meal of Burritos or Fajitas (still don't know which is which but they were very good) in the kitchen of the Eco-Hostel.
The time had come to say goodbye to South America, but not before a visit to the remote Chillian outpost of Easter Island, population around 3000. We arrived to be collected at the small runway and taken to the only campsite overlooking the Pacific Ocean. We had lots of Japanese neighbours, it seems that the Island is on the list of Japanese must do destinations. The Polynesian owner of the campsite was finding them rather entertaining with their habit of cooking a big tuna head - which they would have been given by the local fishermen - on the barbecue and to quote his words "20 people are going to eat that!" (i.e. the one head). We took a guided tour of the Island and visited most of the Moai sites (the big head statue thingies) on a nice blue rented scooter. Jim was behind the wheel as I (Laure) had bad experiences with a friend's motorbike when I was about 13 and it scarred me for life! No, I didn't have an accident as such but
was unable to control the bloody thing as it seemed to have a mind of its own and wouldn't stop. Anyway, our scooter rides on the island were cool, definitely a great way to see the place and we only got wet once!
Leaving the island after 4 days marked a definite end to the South America section of the trip and it felt strange to be leaving the Latin way of life behind, our Spanish had not improved much, although I (Laure) must say that I was quite proud of myself when I managed to ask for a metro card for 10 trips and then ask how to get to a place and actually understand the response!!! Jim decided to save his words until we got to the colonies (!!) but we 'd both got used to the pace and to the way things work in this part of the world.
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