Sad as we were to be leaving New Zealand we would have rather not endured the 7 hour delay that extended our stay and which was inflicted on us at Auckland airport. Luckily for us the airport is rather nice and it seemed like no time at all had passed before we boarded our flight bound for Santiago de Chile. After our adventures in Asia and Australasia we were both excited at the prospect of entering a new continent, but on the other hand sad that we were technically starting to travel back to England and home. The flight was great for Gemma as she managed to stretch out over 3 central seats leaving poor Craig cramped up on one seat watching 4 movies during the night flight.

We arrived in Santiago during the early evening, caught the bus into town, jumped on a tube to the neighbourhood where our hostel was located and found the establishment with no fuss at all. We´d eaten what seemed like synthetic food for a prolonged period at the airport and on the plane and it was a relief when we found a lovely gastropub and discovered Chile´s drink of choice: pisco sours. They rock!

We´ve been lucky on this trip that jet-lag hasn´t affected us, but the New Zealand to Chile flight (crossing the international dateline and arriving before we set off) knocked us for 6. As a result of jet-lag we couldn´t sleep well, found ourselves up at odd hours and this made us sluggish throughout our stay.

Santiago is not really a destination in itself and we´d really just dropped on to break up the journey to Colombia. We visited quite a few places in Santiago like Plaza de Armas, the cathedral, the central market, the presidential palace, the modern art museum , took the funicular to Mount San Cristobel and visited the bohemian Barrio Belavista. All in all we found Chilean people to be really friendly, the streets clean and safe, but the attractions and sights were more miss than hit which was a great shame because the place is so friendly and the locals seemed genuinely pleased to see us.

There is lots to do in Chile outside of Santiago, but we have no time for this and after 2 days in Santiago its tiome for a 6 hour flight to Bogota. Maybe we´ll get to see some more of charming Chile when we are travelling south through Argentina.