Day 34: 3/8/12
Hope ye all had a ball at the wedding!!
Had a lazy morning this morning- didn't get up til it was time to check out. Headed down the town then for some breakfast/lunch.
I had a few hours to kill then before heading to the airport so I wandered round the markets an bought some postcards (not for posting to ye though- for me to keep!!) and some jewellery. There's a special stone called a bolivianito which is nice- it is purple and gold so I bought a ring and a chain with that.
The witches market is so weird. They sell the things you would need for offerings to the pacha mama and stuff like that. They have dead llamas hanging up and llama foetus'. It's crazy! Don't worry I won't be making any offerings with any part of a llama any time soon!
The women all wear little bowler hats that sit on top of their heads. We learned on the bus tour yesterday that years ago an English man had made the hats for men in England but they weren't selling. So when he was in Bolivia he told the rich ladies that they were all the style in England and they all bought them. Now all classes of women wear them. Trust the english lad to make a profit selling men's hats to women!
I had booked a taxi to the airport for 2, but I think they forgot cos by 2:15 when it hadnt come I went up to the desk an when he remembered he practically ran out the door to hail one down! I was in plenty of time anyway- after being so slow through immigration in Lima I'm going to be at every airport extra early!!
As well as the normal machines tou put your bag through there was a special section labelled narcotics search and two policemen going through everyones bags!
When everyone was at the gate they announced that the flight was going to be an hour late as we were waiting for people to arrive from Santa cruZ, on a connecting flight. But , we took off within a half an hour so it was grand.
It wasn't a direct flight to Santiago- we had to stop in Iquique, which is in Chile. So we had to fill out immigration forms and go into the airport to get them all checked through, put our bags through more machines and then go back to the gate to board the plane again! I had the same seat and everything for the flight to Santiago- it seemed to be a huge waste of time walking through the airport!
Got to Santiago anyway. I didn't need to get my bag or anything cos that was checked all the way to salta and I had all my boarding passes. I went to the main section of the airport where people were checking in and I had dinner and some tea- tried to drag it out as much as possible! I got some money out. The chilean money is written in hundreds and thousands. I only wanted a small bit so i could by a drink or something during the night. When the options came up I pressed 100. I could hear a lot of money being counted in the mahine and it turned out to be 100,000. Its only about 170 euro, so its not that bad- ill spend it in a few weeks time when im back in chile! Then I went into departures and checked through more bags and more immigration as I was leaving the country!
The departures area had lots of shops open and lots of peopke waiting for flights and going to sleep. It seemed busier at midnight than heathrow did- it felt like the middle if the day! I wandered around for a while looking for computers/Internet but couldn't find any! Then I looked for a connection area to plug in my phone and eventually found one that worked. I didn't want to go to sleep with me phone plugged in incase anyone took it and I had to leave it out for a while cos I needed the alarm to be set on it so I wouldn't miss the flight! So it was nearly 3am before I got to close my eyes for a while!