A transit day. We packed our things ready to move on. Unfortunately the pick-up we have has only a single cabin so our cases are riding in the back. After breakfast we had to remind Paula that we had the bill to pay. Victor put it together quickly and missed a couple of things off. When we pointed this out he shrugged it off. They sent us off with Christmas greetings and kisses as if we were old friends. We took the motorway south. There were bus stops, vans sel...

Today has been mostly about picking up the truck that we will be using for the rest of the holiday. After breakfast Victor ran us to the airport where we had elected to collect the car. We did this because we didn't fancy driving through central Santiago. However when we got to the airport, there wasn't a counter for Chilean Rent-A-Car and the information woman told us to go to arrivals. There we saw a man brandishing a sign with our names. He explained he would ...

We are staying in a house owned by Victor Ibarra in the outskirts of Santiago. We appear to be the only overnight guests and therefore were invited to eat in the kitchen. This being Chile, there was a jar of Nescafe on the table with a Thermos of hot water, but was asked for hot milk instead. Breakfast was scrambled eggs served in the pan, bread, cheese and jams. On the TV was the Chilean version of Loose Women and they seemed to be discussing how hard it is to b...

It is 10.03 pm and we are sat in the garden of our hotel drinking a very fine bottle of Carmenere by our garden room and the pool. In all our journey to Chile was uneventful. A bit of Hurry Up and Wait but in all mainly unproblematic. We arrived in good time at Heathrow and ate dinner at one of the concessions: Mushroom and leek pie with chips, peas and gravy (but we didn't find any leek but lots of asparagus...not a bad thing!) Can we have our normal moan about ...