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Schbang! I'm back. Been a few days owing to a combination of sketchy web connections and crossing the international date line! From being about 6 hrs behind you all in the UK we've jumped about 10-12 hrs ahead I think. How's that for time travel? Closest I'll get to being Doctor Who.
So what's fresh? Well our three days in Santiogo were fantastic. We arrived at a time of great celebration which was good and bad. Good because in celebrating their independence from Spain they had a massive street party. Admittedly we walked through it, out the other side and found a bar for a few beers as although the 10,000 revellers seemed to enjoy the tunes, we thought they were rubbish!
We did enjoy some very old school service in a nice restuarant serving my new favorite drink 'pisco sours' (like caipirinha but doesn't give you the awful heart burn). A slight blight on my copy book was the confusion that ensued when faced with the choice between a toilet marked "M" or "H". Now I know what you're thinking "H" for hombre, right? well I thought so too but a quick peek revealed a toilet more suited to the chicks (ie it was clean) and I didn't see the expected urinals. So I scuttled back to the one marked "M". A similar peek into this one revealed what I expected from a blokes bog. Dank and smelly. Suspiciously, however, no urinals. 'Hey hoe, in we go', I thought.
They waiters were amused, the ladies that followed probably were not. Nuff said. (The urinals, as I later found out, were tucked away behind the doors of the gents. Doh!)
After these huge celebrations however Santiago effectively shut down, so there was absolutely nothing to do. Nothing that was except accept the offer of an afternoon barbeque and gallons of chilean wine supplied courtesy of our marvellous hosts Walter and Marcello. These guys are officially the best B and B hosts we have ever met and if any of you are ever in Santiago then I would strongly recommend you stay at B&B Santiago. We met lots of their friends and the other guests were there as well so we had a great time and met some cool folks.
The next day we had hoped to tour a vineyard but again all was shut so instead we hit the shops at the local version of bluewater/the metro centre/meadowhall/insert name of generic local temple of consumerism.
All too soon we were back at the airport for our overnight flight to Auckland. We arrived pretty early so got a couple of hours shut eye before heading down to the water front so look at the prettyboats in the 'city of sails'.
WARNING FOR EX 'KIWIS' (Look away Neil and Crooks-meister for the next few paragraphs, I don't want you both crying).
We turned the corner and bobbing around in the quayside were two huge Americas Cup yachts, all decked out in Team NZ colours. Wow, wouldn't it be cool to get out on one of those I thought. 1 hour later T was at the helm guiding the racing yacht to a healthy 14.01knots!
2 hrs after that we were in a quayside restuarant quaffing a bottle of Cloudy Bay. Life, it seemed, had down-shifted from "on your guard" to "relax bro" mode in an instant.
Embarrasingly, I couldn't stop trying to order in Spanish and saying Gracias, instead of thanks. And apparently my new favorite word is "sweet". Which I hadn't noticed. Doesn't bode well for avoiding a new accent does it?
So that bring you just about up to date. We've hired a camper van and driven north. Overnight we stopped in a place called Waipu Cove (where I'm typing from). The beach here is awesome, the scallop shells are as big as my hand and littter the beach. Their sworn enemy 'the mussel' are even bigger, with a couple of shells the size of my foot. There must be one almighty war raging between the clams and the mussels to be this many shells on the beach. We (read I, I had to drag T kcicking and screaming from her pit) got up at 5:30am and brewed some coffee and went for a sunrise walk on the beach. (To be fair we were asleep in bed by 8:00pm so that isn't as freaky as it sounds). The beach was beautiful and the colours of all the shells is amazing. Nature's palate is pretty remarkable.
OK, one minute left on my web-meter left so just time to upload and say ciao for now.
Talk soon and keep the feedback coming. Love to you all. D/T out.
ps sorry for the typos.
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