Advertisement
Published: October 7th 2007
Edit Blog Post
We caught the 6pm flight from Auckland on Tuesday 7th August, flying east for 11 hours to South America and landing at Santiago on the Chilean coast midday on the Tuesday 7th August…. Always a bit confusing the old International Date Line… To add to the 8 Hour time change, we had a rather uncomfortable flight and essentially missed a whole nights’ sleep on the plane, only getting a couple of hour’s kip. We had a funny moment just before takeoff as I adjusted my headrest and it came off in my hands… various attempts by stewardesses and myself failed to reattach it and I just held on to it as we left the ground and afterwards moved to another seat which was almost as bad. In hindsight having been on two Lan Chile flights now, I can say that their pilots seem infinitely better at landing than those at Quantas, but the quality of seat leaves much to be desired!
Arriving at Santiago in a daze it was lunchtime for the locals in Chile, but 4am in the morning for us weary travelers still on NZ time - this jet travel is not natural. We stumbled through the airport
with our 22kilo rucksacks (that’s about 48lbs for the old folk) and that’s not including our ‘daypacks’ that we hold onto in front each weighing another 5kg + … and declared our cheese and ham sandwiches to customs. Much to our relief the sarnies weren’t confiscated, but what with them, half a kilo of white washing powder in a clear plastic bag that looked very suspicious and a whole bunch of shells that we found later in the side pocket of Lexa’s rucksack, I’m surprised that we weren’t locked up. Anyway, a couple of hours later after successfully extracting some Pesos from the cajero automatic (ATM) and paying another hidden airport tax to leave Santiago airport (US$20 this time) we took our second flight of 1.5 hours north to Antafagasta. Landing around 5pm Chile time, (9am NZ time) we jumped in a taxi for the 25km trip across a barren desolate wasteland to Chile’s second largest city.
Other than noticing that it was very murky and that a strange smog seemed to hang in the air, the only thing on our minds was finding a bed before we collapsed. The first place we tried was habitable, but very dingy
and unappealing - so we made it 400m around the block to another place that was twice as expensive, but had its own shower, toilet and was much brighter. It cost us 16,000 pesos or £16 which was the most that we had ever spent on accommodation and even that had some pretty special mould going on in the bathroom, but we were too tired to care. The next morning came around all too quickly and we had to drag ourselves out of bed fighting against the spectacular jet lag and trying to ignore the fact that Lexa’s watch still said 1AM!! We left our bags at the hotel and wandered around town in a daze, feeling very inadequate about our lack of Spanish, but managed to buy some breakfast (in McDonalds admittedly), another electrical adaptor for our ever growing collection and a bus ticket to Calama for the next day. The city seemed really busy for a Wednesday, more like a Saturday morning when lots of people weren’t working and we have found this again later in other places and have had to check what day of the week it was. Anyway, we picked up our bags and moved
back to the dingy hostel we had first visited the night before, which was half the price at £8, but still expensive for what it was with a completely knackered bed and holes in the mattress and the sheets.
Amazingly we managed a little sight-seeing, visiting the Torre del Reloj (clock tower), which is a small replica of Big Ben in the square, complete with authentic chimes and yet another leftover from the Brits. We then checked out the fish market/wharf area and were entertained by the sea lions and pelicans for a while that loll around in the hope of some free fish. We then headed to the local supermarket for supplies and were pleasantly surprised by the prices, somehow managing to waste about an hour in there before trudging back having spent £2.40 or something. We had started filtering water again with our fancy silver/ceramic pump thing-a-me, which unfortunately only stops the bugs and doesn’t make nasty tasting water any better. So we had got ourselves some lemons to squeeze into our water bottles over the next couple of days and some powdered drink mix that was more toxic, but far easier to carry than a bunch
of fruit!
We had learnt a little Spanish from a course on our MP3 player, but had only got as far as lesson 18 of 100, so weren’t exactly fluent. That combined with the jetlag made for some interesting conversations… That night we successfully managed to order food again in a cheap side-street place and our impression that most people seemed genuinely friendly and happy to suffer a couple of hapless gringos who at times were still struggling to say hello and goodbye!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.07s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 13; qc: 27; dbt: 0.0423s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb