Standing outside the hotel waving our arms at taxis going by resulted in a normal looking car stopping. It probally was a local that happend to be going in the direction of the airport as it was a nice clean car and cheaper than expected. He looked ok so we agreed.

We went to check in the bags, pretty much everyone had their bags wrapped in the plastic security film. The locals know that the aircrew steal items from your bags, the only people that we met in Venezuela that hadn't had anything nicked had their stuff taken here instead.

With the bags not safely in the care of the airport we started to think about our last task for Venezuela - changing Bolivars into dollars. You had to do it in this country and on the black market in order to get the real rate. It wasn't long before someone approached us offering to change money. He offered an excellent rate straight off, which rather than making us pleased made us overly suspicious. Liz thought that the money might be forged but without something to compare with it was difficult to decide. We had no real choice, we changed the money.

The flight was with LAN, a vast improvement over American Airlines, for starters they serve you vegy meals and secondly they are nice. All was good until we had a surprise landing in Equador. I say surprise as our ticket said nothing about connecting flights. It transpired that it was simply a stop for passengers to get on or off. We got this annoying little kid sitting next to Liz. He seemed to be pumped up with E numbers as he didn't sit still for an instance. We also had two kids behind us kicking our seats. Mutley as I called him was good at being annoying his arms went right over the arm rests nudging you constantly. Liz was very quickly building up steam, we changed seats. I had a few tricks to combat Mutley but he had a few more also. He developed this cold during the flight sneazing and when bored of that wiping his nose with his hands and staring at you.

First impressions of Santiago were very good. Things are clean, people are pleasant and it feels and looks like a normal European city. Walking out of the airport you don't get decended upon, things are so much calmer.

We were going to get the bus in but was tempted by the lower prices of the unofficial taxis. We were dropped off at Don Santiago Hostel which proudly claims to be the cheapest hostel in the city. It is run by travellers, with refreshing twists from the usual hostel experience. The small place looks more like a student house, pictures from magazines cover the walls in the music room where guitars, keyboards etc are left for people to use. The big selling point is how friendly it is, you feel at home as soon as you walk in.

In fact we walked in and was instantly invited to go with pretty much everyone from the hostal to see a live band playing nearby. We had to do it, so went to get some crisps rather than going to a Hare Krishna restaurant for a guaranteed vegy curry.

We didn't see the band, they sold out just as we got there. We hed back to the hostal instead. We couldn't get in as everyone apart from an Irish girl were watching the band, a sign saying "back at 2am" confirmed this. We headed off to a nearby cafe to kill some time. However the group, finding out we weren't there came back to find us and make sure we could get back in. Back in the hostal rather than going to bed I must have had one too many coffees as I fancied the Internet which took us up to 3am.