Our final day in La Serena was pretty uneventful really. We had a look round the big shopping mall next to the bus station but refrained from buying anything. Chile is comparable to the UK in terms of the price of things. We then spent the rest of the day in the hostel sorting our stuff out for the bus the next day and enjoying the good outside space which it offered.

It was an early start on Wednesday as we had booked a bus to Santiago at 7.15am. We woke up at 6 expecting it to be light but it was still very dark. On our way to the station it even started raining which we have not seen since the Inca Trail about 5 weeks ago. Again, we were booked with Tur Bus and the journey was pretty comfortable and we both managed to get some sleep despite the noisy films which were playing. We made it to Santiago for about 1.30pm and had to get a taxi to the apartment which we had booked for four days. We headed out of the bus station only to find no taxi rank which seemed strange. After a couple of minutes a taxi came along which we flagged down. However, when we gave him the address he looked at us as though we were aliens. After a bit of toing and froing, he then had to flag down a taxi to find out the directions to the street. I'm not sure what it is with us and lost taxi drivers but we seem to find them. After not being sure that he was taking us o the right place, we eventually pulled up outside an apartment block which looked about right. After a bit of help from the concierge, we made it to the room where the guy off airbnb was waiting for us. We were happy with the apartment we had booked. Beth especially so as we had a bath with a plug which is the first so far in South America. Our first task was to locate a supermarket which I slightly ballsed up. Lets just say we went straight on when we should have went left!! Anyway we made it to the supermarket after a detour through some slightly dodgy neighbourhoods. We stocked up and headed back to the apartment to sort our stuff out. When we got back, we realised that for some reason, the steak we had bought for tea had not been put through. This meant another trip to the supermarket which I successfully located first time.

When we were eventually back, I decided that I fancied a bath so jumped into a lovely hot bath. I'm only mentioning this because when Beth went to go in an hour later it turns out that I had used all of the hot water. Someone wasn't happy!!! Tonight we have had steak and mashed potato for tea. The mashed potato was excellent but we think we may have bought the wrong type of steak as it was pretty tough even with the minimum of cooking time. We are now relaxing with a few drinks, I'm on the cheap red wine again which is really good and Beth is attempting to demolish the bottle of Bacardi we bought earlier in the week. Happy days!