A brief stop in Santiago

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The air conditioning in our room didn't manage to bring the room temperature below 20°Celsius all night which made for hot and uncomfortable sleeping conditions. Despite that, and our body clocks trying to adjust to South American time, we managed to sleep for a few hours, although this was interspersed with a certain amount of wakefulness. We set an alarm for 7.00am and managed to get ourselves going about 7.20am so that we could have a leisurely breakfast before meeting our tour guide, Terry, in the foyer at 10.00am.

The hotel had a delicious array of fruit, cereal, cooked breakfast and pastries to select from. We did our best to keep our calories in check choosing to start with fruit and cereal with natural yoghurt. Although that's all we would normally eat Bernie was tempted to have some eggs and bacon and I had a small pastry with my tea!

With teeth cleaned and bags re-packed - the first re-pack of many! - we ventured down to the foyer at about 1/4 to ten. The last two members of our group, Geoff and Lyn, returned to the hotel late last night after an overnight trip to visit to the family that hosted their son when he did a student exchange about 15 years ago. As our little group assembled in the foyer they introduced themselves to all of us. The group members are all very punctual so our bags were stowed in the minibus and our city tour commenced a little before 10.00am.

We spent the morning touring around the city of Santiago which is much greener than we expected, especially its lovely tree-lined boulevards. As we drove around, Terry pointed out the new and modern city centre, the financial district, the residential district, the Presidential Palace and several beautiful parks. During the tour Terry told us about Chile's geopolitical history from the time that the Spanish first arrived, through the War of the Pacific and the coup d'état of 1973.

We disembarked from the bus and took a short stroll past the Palace of Justice and then through the Catedral de Santiago and into the Plaza de Armas. Terry gave us 15 minutes to explore the church further or take a turn around the square. A couple of group members raced off to exchange currency or use ATMs.

With everyone back at the allotted time, we re-boarded the bus and headed up San Cristóbal Hill for a panoramic view over the city. It was hazy again today, but I think this is because the city sits in a north-south running valley between the coastal range and the Andes. The smog probably only clears if the wind blows from the north or the south, otherwise it tends to sit over the city.

After our quick trip up to the panoramic viewpoint we were taken to a lapis lazuli factory. Apparently Chile and Afghanistan are the only producers of lapis lazuli in the world. Despite the fact that only two countries in the world produce lapis lazuli it is only considered to be a semi-precious gem. Terry said it is definitely not in the same league as Australian opals! They had some lovely pieces, but I resisted the temptation to buy anything. I already have so much jewellery that I don't wear that it didn't seem like a good idea to buy anything else. They did have some other ornaments and trinkets, but we try to avoid buying dust collectors these days too!

Our next stop was Restaurant Prego where we enjoyed a delicious and substantial lunch. We started with some really tasty appetisers and a basket of bread rolls ... which would almost have been enough in themselves for lunch ... but were followed by a choice of three mains AND four desserts!! Bernie and I both had the steak which was fantastic.

From the restaurant we were taken to the airport for our late afternoon flight to Guayaquil. We have lots of flights between the various destination on this tour. I haven't tallied up exactly how many it is, but I am quite sure that we are all going to be throughly sick of queuing to pass through immigration, queuing for security screening, queuing to board the plane, using aeroplane loos, waiting to disembark and standing around at baggage carousels hoping that our bags have arrived at the same destination that we have!!

As I write this, we are four hours into what we all thought was a three hour flight. Oops, that would be because we all failed to note that there is a two hour time difference between Santiago, Chile and Guayaquil, Equador! The really weird thing though - we will be geographically closer to Australia because we are flying west, but we will be further away time-wise with the time difference increasing by another two hours. Who says time travel doesn't exist?!

We finally arrived in Guayaquil after dark. We were met at the airport and ferried to our hotel which is lovely. After some of the dodgy looking streets that we drove to on our way from the airport the Oro Verde Hotel was a very pleasant surprise. We were briefed by a Bunnick rep who told us a little bit about what to expect from our visit to the Galápagos Islands over the coming days. After dropping our gear up to our rooms we all met back down in the bar to redeem our drink vouchers. That was before we even thought about what we would do about dinner which we seemed to have missed out on - you have to get your priorities right, eh?

After a free drink nearly everyone decided to go to bed without any dinner. Lydia, Bernie and I decided to stay down at the bar to order some bar snacks. We shared an interesting dish consisting of deep fried sea bass and plantain chips and some nachos. The nachos were very good, the fish was delicious and, believe it or not, I even ate a plantain chip - only because it didn't taste like banana!

We have free wi-fi tonight, but we're not sure what Internet access will be like out on the Galápagos Islands.

After being cooped up on a bus or an aeroplane for most of the day only a paltry 5,778 steps (4.20km) today.

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Comments

[Joy]

Happy traveelling
Looking forward to reports of your latest trip, especially photos from the Galapagos. Hope you have a great time, Joy