On Thursday we had another drive day as we headed towards Santiago and the end of this leg of the trip. We stayed the night in a place called Salta del Laja which is home to a mini Iguassu Falls. Fairly impressive if you haven't seen the real thing. Stayed in cabanas overnight which were fine except that I didn't know anyone was upstairs in our cabana (Michael and Gaetano were there) and I could hear noises in the night and was convinced that we had ghosts!

Made it to Santiago which is a dump of a place! Very few signs of the earthquake damage which is a good thing although I suspect we didn't go to the areas that were most badly affected. Great setting in amongst the Andes mountains but most of the time it's surrounded by smog so you can't see it. Anyway, we went out for our farewell group meal that night which ended up being a bit of a disaster. It was a seafood place (specialty of Santiago) but the food was no good and the service even worse!

On Saturday, a few of us went to explore the sights and sounds - got the funicular up a hill and had lunch - that was about it! Then came the sad part as it was time to say goodbye to a number of people. I had a few tears to say the least but hopefully we have plans in place to get together in the not too distant future. I have to say that I have never laughed so much in my life as I have on this leg from Ushuaia to Santiago - it's been one huge giggle and lots and lots of fun. We don't normally laugh enough in my opinion!

Saturday night as also the welcome meeting for the new group for the next leg of the journey (which takes us up to La Paz in Bolivia). I wasn't in the mood to be sociable with the newbies and had already decided it was never going to be the same as with the previous group so I didn't go to the welcome dinner (apart from the important fact that I had goodbyes to say that evening followed by a lot of wine to drown my sorrows!).

On Sunday a group of us had decided to go to Valparaiso and we ended up adopting a few of the newbies who came with us. Valparaiso is considered the cultural capital of Chile; it's on the coast and classed as a Unesco World Heritage site. I'm still trying to figure out why! It was ok (and better than staying in Santiago for another day) but was very worn and battered. There are a load of lifts and funiculars to get you up and down the hills which are pretty cool (although the 1st one we tried was broken so we had to walk up a million steps!). The best part of the day was actually our late lunch as we managed to bond with a few people from the new group. We went up to the communal room in the evening for a drink or two (and were nice enough to extend the invitation to some newbies!) and had a rather large tremor where the lights were rattling. This place is definitely active!