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Published: October 21st 2019
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Unexpected turn of events today. Woke up early to depart for a 10.02 flight from Santiago to Calama to begin our much anticipated cycling tour of Atacama with Ecotours. Checked my phone to find an email from LATAM saying flight is cancelled. Try to look at options online but am 11th in the queue for the chat service. Head downstairs to reception to get some help from Diana who’s on the night shift. Spend two hours working out that all internal flights are cancelled as well as no buses, car hire or any other means of getting to where we want to be. Decide to look at crossing to Argentina for a few days in the hope of coming back to do the Patagonia part of our trip. Manage to book a flight with KLM but can’t make payment. After they try to resolve the problem (and charge us 5x the fare, we agree to head to the airport and make payment there for the originally quoted price of around £300 for the three of us. No taxis available to book, but luckily uber is still working. Drive to the airport on fairly deserted streets...lots of evidence of protests on the
streets, the most striking of which is a number of burnt out and graffitied buses.
Make it to Buenos Aires for 13.30 but unfortunately one of our bags doesn’t make it ?. It should turn up within a day and at least we have on suitcase. Get a cab to the hotel that we booked while we were in the passport queue. We discover that the exchange rate is much more favourable here than Chile - happy days! Our hotel, Patios de San Telmo is lovely and we’re glad to settle in. Then we head out for a wander and a coffee in Plaza de Mayo, to a bike hire shop to book a tour for tomorrow, to a market that looks interesting, to a bar in the market that is like Street Feast/Dinerama, to a street market where we buy some earrings for Maia and finally back to the hotel.
Spend well over an hour making arrangements for the next part of our holiday. With help from Fernando of Antares we’ve decided to fly to El Calafate for a couple of days and then get a bus across to Puerto Natales to pick up our original plan. Manage to book the bus (in two bookings). Manage to book the flight too, but Santander decline the payment - cheers Santander! Try again but the same thing happens. Have an expensive conversation with Santander who kindly unblock our account, but the seats have now gone and we can no longer book that flight. We try for a different flight, but the website is now hanging. Give up and go for dinner at local Steak House.
Lovely, lively evening of steak for David, salmon for me and salad for Mai. Delicious bottle of Santa Julia Malbec. Bargain price (compared to Chile) of $60 including tip.
Looking forward to bike tour tomorrow, but still need to sort flights...
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