So the time came to say farewell to our lovely b&b and owners in Vicuña and head back on the road in our quest to go south. A 7 hour bus from Vicuña to the capital of Santiago was on the cards, and this one is very likely to be our last long distance bus journey of our trip, two very happy travellers there will be if no more long bus trips are required!

On we jumped onto a nice comfortable Chilean bus and we headed out of the valley to the Pacific coast and then off we went heading along the seafront south.

The journey was rather pleasant apart from Dave getting hit but the Latin American obsession with egg in everything. The tasty looking corn cakes that were brought to keep us going during the trip had a massive egg hidden in the middle. So Dave had to survive on some mints until a person appeared at a stop selling Pollo sandwiches and a kind of chocolate pastry cone things.

Next thing we know the bus is borded by a drug sniffer dog who rummages around and has a good sniff of Dave and Emily smelling of corn, egg, Pollo and mints. Then a very detailed sniff through all the luggage (this took a while) then off we go.

At about this moment Dave and Emily realise that they do not have the address for their hostel in Sanitago. The name only, our confirmation seemed to have missed out the all important location.

This may not be a problem in such small towns as Vicuña were anyone on the street will direct you (and probably know the hostel owner personaly) but Santiago is the capital of Chile with a population of 5 million people, over a third of all Chileans live here.

We arrived at what we hoped would be a relaxing bus terminal but no, it was packed and super chaotic. We found a phone but as is customary in Latin America it appears that the phone was there for show only as again they didnt work for us. So we tried to find an internet cafe but also failed so we took our chances and got in a taxi in the hope that the driver knew where are hostel was....which he didnt.

However Emilys Spanish came to the rescue once again (you wonder what would of happened to Dave is Emily wasnt there to save him everytime?) and she helped the driver call our hostel. After a few wrong numbers reaching a shop, he finally got through with suitable directions, so after a while of Santiago problem solving we finally got to our ´boutique´ hotel in a building that most resembles a castle.

Not much time to enjoy the boutique´ness however as by now it was about 21:30 and we had our flight to Patagonia in the morning. So we found a local Chinese, eat far too much and then crashed out for the night.

A short but a little too eventful time in Santiago. We shall return at the end of our trip to explore this city some more but for now we just got lost, eat too much chinese and then wandered off in the morning with our backpacks to the airport. Note how large our backpacks are getting what with cows and various items brought for our future house packed inside.

Next stop....the end of the world.