Chilly

Good food, good wine and excellent skiing, what more could I ask for, maybe some central heating. It's so bloody cold I really don't know how the Chileans manage to survive the winters here without heaing in their homes!! This is one of the most expensive and stable of the South American countries but apparently gas is too expensive. I wish I could speak better Spanish but as far as I can gather from my conversations of a mixture of bad Spanish and bad English in response, the Chileans seem to think that the economy was better under Pinochet although they don't agree with the human rights violations. The people here seem a lot more serious and less gregarious than their Argentinian neighbours, but nevertheless are very welcoming and fun once you manage to strike up a conversation.

I spent the first week taking in the city sights and being shamed at my lack of knowledge re Pablo Neruda, the nobel prize winning Chilean poet of course, but now have sufficient knowledge to bore you rigid on my return!! Have also been going to ski school and am improving rapidly, had I started earlier in life I'm sure I would be pro.

The strange system to buy anything is really putting my spanish to the test though. I have to queue to tell the assistant what I want to buy, then queue again to pay for it and finally join another queue to actually get it - bizarre. It's lucky I'm not in a rush to go anywhere. However, life got more bizarre when I checked myself into Portillo, South America's premier ski resort, frequented by the Austrian, US and Canadian ski teams, famous people from ski and snowboard films (I've never heard of them) and business leaders, it says in my guidebook. The skiing was fantastic but a week was enough, far too many overly tanned Americano's throwing their dollars around whilst I slept in the hut outside the hotel and ate in the basement with the staff. Being especially pikey after seeing the extortionate prices in the hotel bar I had my apres ski in the staff bar which looked like someone's house down the road, this actually turned out to be much more fun. I think I have come to accept my place in life!! Although I still made full use of the hotel facilities and relaxed in the hot tub after a hard days skiing, where I actually did rub shoulders with said business leaders and was offered a job by one of the owners of Minitab and an MD from Goldman Sachs in New York. Ski connections is obviously the way to the top, I'll bear that in mind when I finally stop being a bum.

Back in Santiago now with all bones fully intact and looking forward to heading up north into the desert.

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