Christmas at 35 degrees!!!

ok chaps, its been a while, guess weve all been caught up in the christmas and new year festivities! what a christmas its been, not like the traditional wintery one we´re used to! We celebrated xmas argentian stylie on xmas eve, which was fantastic. we went to what we would call a gigantic barn dance (minus the cow s*** smell) with the manager of the hostel and his buddies!

Waking up xmas day sweating buckets was a new experience for us, it was about 35degrees!! people were sunbathing! we tried to find a xmas turkey but no such luck so settled for a pizza and an omlette!!!!

When we think about it, we had no xmas presents, heard no xmas songs, no xmas turkey or mince pies, and most importantly we heard no queen speech! but we had a belter!

Leaving buenos aires was a god send, we just had to leave that place in order to survive! we left in a slighty erratic way though!! the taxi was late, so we had 50mins to check in and fly out, salts NEW passport was minus an argentian entry stamp so had to cue up with the immigrants to get out, then she had to fill in some forms, join another cue pay the bank to let her leave, but the thing is salts card didnt work, the cash machine was broken so sez couldnt use hers. Sez had to run and find another one (which happened to be in the middle of being refilled)......basically we got called to the gate at last call and made it with 2mins before take off!!! phew!

P.S Diego Maradona looks like willow (the dwarf from the film)

Santiago

Pretty cool flying over the andes - kind of surreal!

Anyway had a couple of unexpected chilean experiences within 5minutes of landing

1. It was actually hotter than the sun, in fact it was the hottest day they have had in 10years, 43 degrees - we just melted - ych a fi!!! and

2. 2 botttles of water cost us 2,300!!! can you believe that! Other travellers warned us Chile was expensive, but 2,000 for water thats taking the biscuit!

Spent the first day walking to the only panaromic spot in santiago (excluding the andes!!) and nearly died it was so hot, pretty amazing to see such a hectic city with the incredible snow covered andes as the backdrop! (couldnt walk down though, had to get a wobbly chair lift).

New years was brilliant, we were kinda sorry to leave such a good bunch of friends partying in BA without us; but we spent new years havin a street party with hundreds of thousands of chileans, all wearing silly hats, throwing hole punch holes everywhere. The fireworks display was the best either of us have ever seen! By the end we felt like chilean citizens screaming patriotically "CHIL - E, CHIL - E" brilliant (photos to folllow, check out salt with the random family!)

Anyway, hope you all had as good time as we did and are as fat as we are (yuuummm beer and pies!!)

HAPPY NEW YEAR, BLWYDDYN NEWYDD DDA PAWB!!!!!