Day 86: Flyyying!!

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Well, after 87 days, 12 countries, tears and triumphs and about million miles, we are finally on our final day of our adventures. Before I get to the awards ceremony for this trip's winners and losers, I'll quickly blog the happens from waking up to now, 3000km off the south west coast of South America hurtling back towards Oz.

We woke up to another cracking day in Santiago, quickly got ready and all packed up and took a short walk into the centre of Santiago in search of breakfast. We decided to head back to Vanilla Cafe given that it had good coffee and croissants last time we visited. We ordered, both having ham and cheese croissants and Rach decided on a mint-chocolate cupaccino. Unfortunately, the waitress came back shortly after and explained that there were no croissants left. After looking at the menu again, we decided that we might get better elsewhere. We strolled around the square, looking at menus and coming up disappointed. We decided on a 'Business Coffee' cafe. These in Chile mean a cafe where the waitresses get around in the tightest, shortest minishirts. It is so bizarre. I was reluctant to go given I think it was demeaning to women but Rach brushed me off; “they probably lap it up”. We sat down in one of the 'business cafes' and asked for a menu. The bird in the red miniskirt told us they don't have menus?! Weird, we tried to order a croissant and were informed that they'd run out! Bloody hell, we are never going to eat. We couldn't really understand what else was 'on offer' so we bolted out the door and went to the next place. This one had croissants written on the menu board out the front so we thought we'd found a winner.

We ordered and to our annoyance the waiter brings out 2 ham and cheese toasted bloody sandwiches on white bread!! Really, how hard is it to get a croissant in this town! It filled the spot I suppose and the coffee wasn't too bad. Better still, they had wifi and we watched the closing stages of Williams' departure from Wimbledom to some German girl I'd never heard of (until she beat Sam Stoser). It was getting on 10.30am and only had a short period of time til our lovely taxi-man would be on our doorstep to run us out to the airport. I asked for the bill and tried to pay using a 10,000 Peso note that I'd gotten from a bank's ATM yesterday. The lady behind the counter looked at it and said “fake...this is fake”. What the hell!! I pulled out another 10,000 and fair enough, it did feel a bit more papery than the other. We walked out of there, totally baffled that a bank would issue a phony 10,000 Peso note! We decided that we'd visit a corner shop on the walk back and buy some treats, hoping to discard this thing. We found such a shop, bought some M&M's and Skittles and thankfully the shop owner didn't batter an eyelid, handing me my 8,500 Peso's change! Poor bloke, hope he can get rid of it now. Can you believe it, a bank issued a phony note.

We got back to our apartment, and packed up the last of our gear. I quickly gave our friendly useless Travel Insurance company a call about getting our money back on the flights we forked out for. The bloke I spoke to was pretty useless however I kind of got out of him that we should be in a pretty good position to recover the $1,000...now just have to add 'filling out a claim form' to my piling list of things to-do when I get back to Oz.

Anyway, our taxi driver arrived shortly after 11am and we hurried out to the airport. We got ourselves checked in and bummed around the international departures until boarding, looking at duty free however Rach couldn't find her amazing moisturiser that she found in Argentina. We enjoyed our final South American Starbucks coffee and had just enough Peso change for a diet coke. We boarded, still finding ourselves thanking the Qantas staff using “gracias” etc. And now here we are, flying back over the Pacific, 10 hours back to Sydney with Rach huddled up balling her eyes out to some stupid movie like the Notebook.



Now...without further ado, here are the finalists and lucky winners to the Trip Home 2013 awards..

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