Auckland, Coromandel and Santiago

Hello and Merry Christmas!

I am writing this latest blog from Valparaiso in Chile, on a sunny Christmas Day. Since last catching up we have had a whirlwind tour of friends, family and the Coromandel Peninsula in North Island of NZ.

We left Queenstown on a cloudy day, our Qantas flight being 3 hours delayed because the Qantas pilots aren´t trained to use the necessary navigational aids to take-off/land in cloud. (What??! Surely that should be standard in this day and age! Next time we are definitely going Air NZ, whose pilots are fully trained in such things.) As we couldn´t collect our hire car until the following morning by the time we arrived in Auckland, Tim´s friend Bryce was nice enough to come and get us and take us out for a lovely Thai meal - thanks Bryce!

The next day we drove off to Tauranga and caught up with family including new baby cousin Theo, then it was off for to the Coromandel for some beach time. There was Hot Water Beach where the hot springs come up through the sand at low tide and you can dig a hole and have a hot bath on the beach; Cathedral Cove, a beautiful beach with a big walk-though hole in the rock; and the huge deserted beaches of Matarangi and Whangapoua, to name just a few. We had a lovely time, me seeing these places for the first time and Tim remembering childhood holidays in the area.

Back in Auckland we caught up with a few more friends on Friday night and Saturday morning, then said goodbye to NZ and headed off over the date line to arrive in Santiago 2 hours before we left Auckland.

I was surprised at how seemingly affluent Chile is compared to Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador (which I visited on my last round-the-world trip). It has a very Mediterranean feel with a great cafe culture and a totally different sense of time to home. When we arrived in the early afternoon, we had a bit of sleep and then thought we would go out for something to eat at around 6pm. A perfectly reasonable time to eat dinner, we thought, but when we asked the hostel owner where was a good place to go, he looked at us strangely and said it was a bit early to be eating dinner! Restaurants here don´t even open for dinner until 8pm and it is far more usual to go out around 9 or 10pm to eat. We soon got into the swing of this and the next day were surprised to notice the time was 9.30pm when we thought about getting some dinner! It does feel a bit lazy though as it means we are getting up much later! Oh well, I guess that´s what holidays are for!

After a couple of days in Santiago seeing the sights we caught a bus to Valparaiso on the coast, where we are now spending Christmas. Valparaiso is a big and bustling port which doesn´t sounds hugely appealing as a relaxing tourist destination, but the city is oozing character with brightly coloured houses perched on the hillsides and murals and mosaics everywhere you look. Yesterday we caught a bus an hour and a half up the coast, past all the industrial areas and oil refineries (not very pretty) to a small fishing village called Horcon. By the time we got there (we spent about an hour trying to flag down the right bus in Valparaiso!) we had time for a fish and chip lunch and a quick stroll on the beach to see the pelicans, then it was back on the bus to go home before all public services ceased for Christmas!

But we´ve really enjoyed our time here. The next couple of weeks are looking a bit hectic as we are going to be racing around the Chilean Lake District and then down to Torres del Paine National Park, so it´s been good to have a bit of time to charge up the batteries.

Until the next update, wishing you all a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year! (And a very happy birthday to Jo S, Lucy, Jennie and me!)

Lots of love
Kirst and Tim xxxx

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