The alarm rang at 2:30am, any earlier then we probally woudn't have bothered going to bed, but as we did this makes it the earliest start yet on this world trip. It is also the start of coming home, every flight, and bus from now on takes us closer to Bretforton.

We were catching the flight to Beunos Aires via Puerto Montt and Santiago. Were were very nervous on whether the taxi was going to turn up - but it did and we were soon in the familiar environment of the airport.

We were saying goodbye to Patagonia, we both liked it here. The place is clean, fresh, beautiful and westernised. The later was of particular importance to Liz, it was the carrot I used to get her through Venezuela.

For the two flights to Santiago and then Beunos Aires we had biscuits and crackers, the Chilians hadn't yet mastered getting meat into these so we were OK.

The general feeling that something could go wrong reared it's head in Santiago airport. You had the typical departure screen clearly showing our flight number and departure and boarding times. Despite being after the boarding time and only 30 mins to the departure time there was no gate number shown. The absence of any associated remarks, such as 'delayed' or 'cancelled' gave me the feeling that everything was OK and the gate number would be shown soon. I thought that it was very strange however that there was another flight by the same airline, at the same time with the same destination but with completely different flight numbers.

Liz is a lot more nervous at airports, she spotted a LAN desk and went over to ask where we could board the flight. The person behind the desk simply messed around with a machine to create new boarding passes to replace the ones that we were given on departure only a few hours before. The LAN person then explained that the flight was 'Cancelled' and that we should join the other flight. Scary there was nothing over the PA system or on the departure board to indicate this - we could have missed the flight.

We waited a short while to board the new flight. The usual thing sitting watching the que get small enough before joining. My gaze met with a guy waiting at the desk. At first and then second glances it looked like he was wearing bandages. The bandages turned out to be the most tattered jeans I have ever seen, they were that torn it looked like they were in three sections, how he got these on without them coming completely adrift I don't know. The rest of his clothes were equally bad, his denim jacket had a rip from arm to arm and there were numerous rips everywhere else. As soon as you got round to checking out his knackered foot wear he leaned forward giving us something else to goggle at. His jeans were very low cut, you could park your bike in what we saw. From the frount it got worse, his jeans were that low his pubic hair was on show and this tatty tee shirt hid very little of his pronounced beer belly.

The best bit was peoples reactions, most people stared and then laught, however the flight attendants amazingly didn't bat an eye lid (I always thought there was something strange about them).

It is one thing seeing this guy and another thing sitting next to him. He headed to the very frount seat of the plane between two very prim looking people. They looked like they were already having a bad day due to the lack of first class on this plane - their day got a lot worse.

They had a look that you would normally reserve for when you step in dog dirt. He headed for a seat between the two of them, the last thing I saw was the two prim people leaning in opposite directions. Despite this guy being put to shame by everyone else on the planet he didn't smell. He wasn't a tramp, punk or rocker he looked more like a person that you would see in a suit - wierd.

Anyway the flight took us over the Andes, the pilot said that seat belts would remain on during this section. This part of the Andes has the highest mountains, Anconagua is just below 7000m making it the highest mountain outside of the Himalayas just 1800m lower than Everest. I was on the wrong side of the plane but looking across through the left hand window I could see mountains rather than sky - they were almost at the same altitude.

The mountains gave way to the flat pampas and the decent to Beunos Aires. It is pricey here so we went for the cheapest place we could find. We dumped our stuff off in a basic hot room and went back to reception to get the formalities over with. The guy behind the desk keen to get review browny points gave us a rambling chat on what to do here. Amongst the go here there stuff was a guarded warning about possible crime, he wanted to warn us but not scare us. I tried wherever possible to circumvent the ramble by saying we know the score we have travelled in Venezuela (something that gets respect within the traveller scene). This didn't work he seemed to be programmed to give us the alloted time, the more we moved him on the more he struggled to find a subject to talk about.

Eventually we had our Siesta, waking up to have a short walk to a nearby shop for some dinner snacks and some vino.