Archive for the ‘13-Chile’ Category

Sorry for the lack of updates in recent days we’ve been hiding away in our Santiago hostel crunching numbers and routing an onward itinerary to match our diminishing fund.  We were (and still are) sweating like the Chancellor on budget day and wondering if the numbers will tally.

As you can probably tell from our posts, we had an amazing time in Oz and NZ but completely blew our budget out of the water.  The strength of the British Pound hasn’t helped either.  We are now left with the difficulty of estimating our onward travel to see how far and how long we will last – a hell of a challenge! 

It was expected from the off that our savings pot would be gone by the time we returned home, bar our return reality fund of course, but it’s scary nonetheless to see our life savings disappear on a daily basis, especially as we near the end.  Don’t worry, the wolf’s not knocking at the door just yet and we still have a few squid for a bottle of vino of a nighttime – but they only cost £1.

The route we decided: from Santiago we head north to Valparaiso, then across to Mendoza, Cordoba and Buenos Aires in Argentina, up though Uruguay to Rio in Brazil, back across Argentina to Iguazu Falls and Salta before San Pedro De Atacama in Chile and then finally up through Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador and Columbia. 

This of course is best case scenario, how far we get before the money runs out god only knows.  Whatever happens, we will go home having seen and done some amazing things and if we have to go to these places some other time, so be it.

This picture did make us laugh as we are constantly checking the value of the pound and wished we had converted our savings pot into Euro before we left.

There you have it, we have arrived in Santiago, Chile.  The check-in lady at Auckland airport kindly allowed us to check out our bags at Santiago rather than San Paulo.  The 11–hour flight was like any other, we didn’t sleep a wink and were pretty shattered having checked into our hotel.

After a 14–hour nap we ventured into the city, phrasebook in hand, wandered around and were pleasantly surprised with the laid back attitude.  We had a few glasses of wine in a lovely cafe at a mere 90p a pop, wow, and nice at that!  We have found it difficult to communicate as most don’t speak a word of English, who’d expect them to, so it’s up to us to make a conscious effort to learn some Spanish.

Loaded with a new camera, as our previous one finally gave up the ghost, we took a few shots while on a walking tour of the city.  Looking back, we wish we had taken more but it’s really unsafe to take your camera out willy nilly.  We’d been warned about taking out our valuables and already we’ve seen one mugging attempt right in front of us.  Mind you, this guy was walking with his Nikon swaying from side to side. Thankfully the perpetrator got away empty handed.

We know we are going to enjoy Chile and indeed the rest of South America. The place just has a certain vibe that gives us a good feeling.  Let’s hope our funds can match our itinerary.