After a rather uncomfortable and bizarre night bus (being tucked in by the insistent attendant was hilarious), we arrived in Chile's Capital Santiago at around 9am. With our rooms not ready until midday a bunch of us headed out for a walking tour of the city with a great local guide called Franco. He gave us the low down on the city's political and social history and after 4 hours of pavement stomping we jumped on a funicular to the top of San Cristobal hill for some rather spectacular views of the city and a well deserved chill. As it was the final evening of the third leg of the trip and we would be saying goodbye to Leslie and Allison the following day we all went out for a meal in a traditional Chilean restaurant recommended by Franco which was nice. The girls were hanging out for a local cocktail called 'The Earthquake' (everything goes a bit wobbly after a couple) before leaving Chile, so after a bit of searching we found a cool gaff called 'The Clinic' (run by a group who publish a satirical magazine similar to private eye... cue politician bashing themed pictures and quotes all over the gaff) that served the concoction of white wine, Pisco, Fernet Branca and pineapple ice cream - needless to say it was vile. With hindsight the previous nights earthquakes may not have been the best idea as setting off on a days wine tasting at 9am with Tom, Cat, Leslie, Allison and Mauro, on top form I was most definitely not. First port of call was a tour of the Concha Y Toro vineyard. Although very picturesque with beautiful gardens surrounding the vineyards it felt as though we weren't getting the whole story. At no stage were we shown any of the production methods and the alarm bells started ringing for me when our guide talked about their ethos of quality over quantity in the same breath as being the worlds third largest producer of wine... oh and they sponsor Manchester Utd which definitely soured the experience for me ; ) After lunch we went to a small independent vineyard for a tour with the very friendly and charismatic owner who gave us a full insight into all aspects of his production from the harvesting and pressing to bottling and hand labelling. He also confirmed our suspicions of the slightly dubious methods and ethics of the big producers. We tasted some cracking wines then jumped in the minibus back to the hotel. Having said our fair wells to Leslie and Allison we met the newbies joining us for the next leg of the trip and our new guide Jared. It was another tough day of goodbyes as Cat (the final member of team FF) was flying to Lima bright and early the next day and Mauro (who had been shadowing Pascal on this leg) would be taking his first group as a guide back on the route we had just come to BA. It was particularly hard saying goodbye to Cat as we had become pretty tight over the previous month sharing some fantastic experiences, fun times and generally looking out for each other. So with a certain amount of mixed emotions we all had dinner at a lovely little restaurant in a rather charming part of Santiago followed by a return visit to the clinic for a final beverage together.

Cat - hope you had a fantastic time on the rest of your travels and look forward to seeing you either in NZ or London... a FF reunion would be awesome! As a little nod to your grammatical complex I've thrown in a few double spacers along with my regular poor grammar in this entry just for you ; ) x