22:55 - Just got back from dinner at Liguria. It was one of the places Sally had actually suggested had my flight been on time on Saturday, so glad I got to try it anyways. Food was great, the waiter cute and I sat next to Toby (the tour leader) and got a chance to chat with him. His brother works on the options desk at Tradition and he was curious to see if I knew him.
This morning we visited Valparaiso on the coast. It's a couple of hours from Santiago and where Pinochet has transferred the congress building. I believe this was done to give back some pride to Valparaiso as it had been steadily decaying over the last 100 years. It is a little San Francisco like. There are lifts on the sides of the valley that take you up and down. The houses are mainly wooden houses painted in different colours. Some areas are pretty rough but others are quite charming. Sunitta on the way was reading her guide and decided we would all benefit from taking a boat ride in the harbour. About half of us decided not to take up her suggestion and when she came back she complained that the boat ride was not like it would have been in europe...whatever that means. She has also decided she will not visit the Salar de Uyuni as we europeans may find rough accomodation charming, but she has no intention of sleeping in dirty places! (this was after looking at my pictures of Culpina :-) ) If she didn't come from India I would understand...We had lunch on one of the hills. Me, Tina, Peter and Karen sat outside a lovely restaurant in the shade and had a salad. Very civilised. We then left for Santiago. On the way back we were about to stop at a vineyard and she said: but i don't drink! Luckily Toby pointed out the rest of us maybe did and it was going to be a brief stop anyway. She spent the half hour we were in there sulking in the van.
The weather has been pretty hot all day except for a brief foggy moment in the morning and the van was pretty hot. We got back early enough to have a couple of hours of relax before dinner. Sunitta skipped dining with us for the second night running. She decided she wanted to try the place where we ate last night. Go figure!
Oh well, not much more to add. We leave tomorrow for Pucon.