Because our flight to Santiago left Guayaquil at stupid o'clock, the hostel organised a 6am taxi for us, and a packed 'breakfast-to-go' which included a piece of fruit, a juice box, and some crackers. We managed to lock our water bottles' gel freeze bit in the kitchen and couldn't get to it before we left, so alas, in Ecuador it stays.

Once at the airport, we flew through security and the border, nearly bought everything in sight in Duty Free, and then began the really fun wait in the lounge.

Fast foward three hours of waiting, and five hours flying, we landed in Santiago and paid the lovely $117 USD reciprocity fee (that we would not have needed had we bussed into Chile). Then Duty Free. Here we (or more Jeremy in this case) could not restrain ourselves and bought a litre bottle of cognac and a chocolate bar filled with Famous Grouse whiskey. Then there was the issue of explaining the garlic to the border security guys...

Leaving the airport was supposed to be a cheap metro ride into the city, but the eat and our tiredness led us to tmistake the conversion rate ($1AUD = 500 pesos, not $1 = 1000 pesos) and we ended up paying nearly $50 for a taxi to Barbara's house...whoops.

Barbara was fantastic - a lovely 24yo Chilean who was taking advantage of her mother's absense to host Couchsurfers in their apartment. She ran us through important things to do in Las Condes and Santiago, and showed us where to get food (supermarket). So we headed out, visited the park (no lizards here) and picked up ingrediants for a risotto. When we returned, we learnt that they eat dinner quite late in Chile (8-9pm), so we started cooking at 8.30pm, and drank our Chilean beers. Barbara introduced us to a few of her friends later that night and we drank 'piscolas' - pisco and coke - until the wee hours of the morning.