Santiago Chile (3 Days)

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Days 76-78 Our final long bus ride (8 hrs) was spectacular, crossing the Andes by the Paso Los libertadores, a mountain pass between Argentina & Chile & on to the capital, Santiago. From the Argentine side the route is a slow, gentle incline until entering a tunnel at 3200 mtrs while on the Chilean side the slope has a far steeper grade descending down 28 hairpin curves over 7 km's. The path can be closed during heavy snow falls as was the case a few days ago. Happy that this was the last slow border crossing before heading home. Our stay was for 2 nights in a hostel before the tour officially finished.

We had a quick orientation tour of the city before heading out to dinner. We won't be short of good restaurants to try!

Next day we booked a full day trip to Valparaiso but not a lot went right and we were quite disappointed with the day. While it was our own private trip in two minivans we didn't have an official plan & the drivers started to take us on an excursion to tourist trinket shops on the way & then to winery stops which were meant to be on the way back if we had time & not at 10am in the morning. We were then going to go to Vino del Mar (which is the modern Gold Coast type part of Valparaiso) for lunch before we took control of the trip and requested we go to the old town which was the main focus for everyone.

Unfortunately things still went wrong. Nature played a part when a heavy mist blanketed the city, one of the main funicular rail lines was closed for repairs & then the restaurant we chose for lunch was completely incompetent & took forever to do anything. The mist did start to burn off while having lunch but we had wasted a lot of time & even then we still didn't get to see some of the more colourful streets in the town. It was an unfortunate end to our group tour as we were going to go out for a final meal together but it was too late by the time we returned & we all stayed in without dinner.

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