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We were very glad to be leaving Mendoza and set off on a 7 hour bus to reach Santiago in Chile, where we were to catch our flight to Easter Island. The road snaked along beautiful mountain passes and we got to see lots of ski slopes in use. When we reached the border all our bags were scanned to make sure we weren't carrying any fruit or vegetables - seriously. Lots of people had things confiscated, including a packet of dried lentils. We had anticipated the higher cost of living in Chile before we set off, and as a result had done a supermarket shop in Argentina to bring some food with us to last us on Easter Island. Uh oh! Not wanting to lose our precious snacks, we didn't declare them and luckily the Ann who was watching the scanner didn't spot our things, so we managed to sneak our stuff in. We eventually reached the Chilean capital which struck us as quite dirty and poor. We got in a cab that was absolutely extortionate and went to a hotel that we had booked online for a bargain price of 4p! However when we arrived, as we suspected, the man did not want to let us have to room for us as it was due to an input error. Falling back on Plan B, we got a cab to the airport and decided to sleep there. We found a lovely carpeted area by all the airline offices that was totally abandoned apart from the odd cleaning kulak. We set up our refugee camp and tried to sleep as best as we could before our flight the following morning.
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