Our arrival into Santiago was delayed by around 5 hours due to a somewhat eventful coach journey which involved waiting at a random truck stop for about 1.5 hrs without having any idea why (we later found out it was due to an overturned lorry on one of the cliff roads) and then a horrendously long wait at customs because one of the guys on our coach tried to take 2 apples across the border (it seems the Chileans are obsessed with people not bringing food into their country). All in all it made for a pretty frustrating journey so we were really relieved when we arrived at the really chic boutique hotel where we were staying for the night! Also I was pretty glad to change out of my travel pants because people had been pointing and even taking photos of them at one point.... At least when we were a group of 8 there would be several of us wearing them at once therefore safety in numbers!!

For one night only we were treating ourselves to a hotel instead of a hostel and went for a nice meal too- almost forgot we were backpackers!

Next day we set off early on a city tour which we both really enjoyed - we saw the regular sights such as the cathedral but then some other stuff like the capsule which rescued the Chilean miners and the 'coffee with legs' bars. This is a coffee shop where the drinks are served by attractive women in really short skirts. Jonny wanted to go in but unfortunately we didn't have time!!

When the tour finished we chilled out in a pavement bar then went for dinner in a typical Chilean restaurant recommended to us by the tour guide before heading to the airport to fly to NZ!

We had a really nice day in Santiago and Jonny thought he had seen a better side of it than he had done 3 months earlier, purely because of discovering the Bella Vista area.... And during our 24 hours we walked up and down the same road about 500 times trying to find the best bar!!

We were 5 mins from boarding the plane to Auckland when they casually announced that the flight would be suspended for 12 hrs so that we wouldn't be taking off until 11am the next day. These are the words u dread and everyone went into uproar demanding hotels etc. One guy in particular was reading the riot act threatening solicitors and basically trying to make life as difficult as possible for the airline staff making threats like 'i am about to leave the airport' (ok go, no one cares). It didn't help though that no announcements were made so noone had the foggiest what was going on! Anyway due to lack of hotel rooms the best they could offer us was to clear a conference room downstairs and give us a piece of foam to lay on, a pillow and a blanket! Despite the dead legs at least we could sleep a bit so the time went faster and before we knew it (!) we were on a 13 hr flight to Auckland, hoping for some good travel fortune for the next leg of our trip!!