Sunday 30th June to Tuesday 1st July, Santiago and Valparaiso

uploading this via a slow connection, so the album isn't there yet. however, here's the text....

Somehow Chile has passed us by, and we were really hoping to enjoy it. We've had such a fantastic time in Portillo, I guess it was bound to be a bit of an anticlimax. Still, we've had a nice couple of days.

When we got back to the apartment, we were a little surprised to find that Hector (aka Tito - seems all his names end in ...ito) was expecting us to go to his house that evening, and not pick us up the next day as we'd anticipated. So 20 minutes of fast packing and we left the apartment (looks like it was destined to be an expensive luggage store!).

After a couple of hours we arrived at (naturally..) Hectors House J where we met his partner Piti, Canella and Trufa the dogs. This was to be our home for the next two days, and it was easy to treat it that way - they were very welcoming and it was good to feel part of Chilean life and normality rather than organised tours or hotels. As it happened, we were part of a tour, it just didn't feel like it and was very informal - to the point of disorganisation!

We slept late the next morning (well 3 of us did, the youngest 2 were up and eating eggs early!) then eventually left to visit Valparaiso and Vina Del Mar. We didn't do much other than climb the short cable car up to the view of the docks, buy some stuff, quickly visit a church. We spotted what we thought was HMS Clyde, the navy ship we had met some soldiers from earlier in the week on the slopes. Valparaiso looked fairly ordinary from what we saw of it, based around a significant port. Then we tripped through (past!) Vina del Mar, which looked nice, and we were eagerly anticipating our lunch stop, which turned out to be a seafront (well, nearly) snackbar where at least we had something new to add to the experience - fried pancakes like samosas - Pinada (?) filled with cheese, chicken, shrimps etc. we also had a view of dancers celebrating St. Peters day - but missed the boats out on the bay all decked out in their finest decorations (peter is the patron saint of fishermen). We hadn't realised we were on an itinerary, but with our hosts not really knowing what was happening so missing the best parts of the celebration! It's happened quite a lot on our tour, we've missed every festival so far!

We passed back through Vina del Mar to the Valparaiso docks once more where we visited the Clyde, and after the standard tour on their open day (which was good enough for Finn, testing all the guns), we had a VIP tour which included sitting on the captains chair, and visiting otherwise closed parts of the ship! This was courtesy of having befriended the crew on the slopes and only being Vaguely rude about their skiing skills (and complementary in comparison to the Chilean army skiers!). everyone thoroughly enjoyed that part of the day, including Gordon and Mallory who magically appeared as we entered the dockyard. I think the military police on patrol at the entrance were getting nervous as we returned in the dark an hour after every other civilian had left! The Clyde is a fishery protection vessel, which lives in the Falklands, and was returning for a short break. The crew of 40 seemed very relaxed, friendly and welcoming, especially those who were just about to go on 2 months leave! There again if you're stuck on a ship with 40 others for 6 months it's no surprise you might want to chat with new people!

We returned to Tito & Piti's for another meal and bed. Next morning was the same routine, with a lateish start. (again, bear in mind we thought we were staying over by generosity rather than as part of a tour!). the kids managed to serenade us with various renditions of the star wars theme and celine dion on the electronic keyboard (funny how it keeps the interest more than a piano when a red light shows you what key to hit next !).

The late morning had us missing a visit to Isla Negra - a famous poet's place and handicraft market - because our tour operators weren't aware it's closed 14% of the week.(no I'm not bitter!). so we went direct to 2 vineyards, where we did some wine tasting - very nice - and llama chasing - less interesting. One was a reasonably sized operation, and the second an organic vineyard. Hard to tell the difference between the wines though! Of course we managed to buy some - well, we have future hosts to provide for, eh Colin?!

We were running quite late, so after a home made pasta lunch (now we have another gadget to buy) and chasing the cow out of the gate (Derry was well up for it but the cow was a bit big, she is far better looking after the dogs - which we had ot drag her away from!) we were on our way back to Chilestay in Santiago. It was rush hour by the time we got there, so Tito raced up the hill in the centre of Santiago where we walked for 3 minutes round the top - but weren't able to see much L then crawled in traffic back to the apartment.

It was only then when it dawned upon us we've just had a very expensive few days. We hadn't seen the sheet of paper listing the tours and the price - if we had we would have chosen differently - so it left us a bit disappointed. Tito and Piti are lovely - they are charming, have a great sense of dry humour, but they fall between 2 posts and are neither just a nice family who want a little pin money and meet new visitors, to show them home life and a bit of Chile, but nor are they tour operators running a slicker show and ensuring we see the best of what Chile has to offer.

The final sting is that Tito is the parent of the owner of the apartment, and where they get most of their referrals from - so not only are we paying for the apartment while we don't use it, we pay the tour too. Grrrr. Anyway, best to remember the good bits, we had a lovely couple of days. We'll just have to come back to Chile to see more of it. We dined in the fat cow! - a restaurant just up the road from the apartment. Very nice - specially the steak! Closest we'll get to Argentinian beef!

The next day was spent in Santiago. A good start where the boys went out to get breakfast, which was nice to have under our own control for once. However, as we might have predicted, after a couple of days of moving around the kids just want to have a quiet one, but everyone was niggly today, so it wasn't a good day. We eventually went out to see the town and managed to buy.....socks and selotape! We were frustrated by the banks - closed in the afternoon so we are struggling for US dollars now, and a rubbish starbucks lunch!

All in all a grotty afternoon, and I guess what has made us sad that we haven't seen the good side of Chile. At least the waiter recognised us in the Chinese restaurant we revisited to sit at our 'normal' table! See, we didn't even eat Chilean!

Anyway, I'm writing this on the plane to Costa Rica so I can look back on it all now - the morning went well in spite of a 3.30 am start - at least that's the only early one on the trip, everyone managed it really well. We're over half way now, and are finally leaving South America, where we've had a fantastic time. Roll on Central America. Derry has less to carry now, having lost a tooth (it was supposed to come out in Bolivia but made it out on the plane just minutes before we left the ground in Santiago!), so everything's looking good for the next instalment!