It all begins with a flight from Melbourne to Punta Arenas.At 5:00 am
Melbourne time it´s time to rise. The flight was at 7:00am, I left 5:15am,
tired as I never sleep well before flights. The drive to town was slowed to
40kph by roadworks on the Tullamarine, but I made it in time for the big haul.
The quality of LAN airways is as good as any airline I´ve been on, up there
with Qantas and the other majors. The flight was smooth and passed quickly
despite the length of time flying - magic of in-flight DVDs these days. The
only chore was the lag time of 5 hours to connect to Punta Arenas in Santiago,
made longer than expected because we arrived an hour 15 earlier.
Santiago airport ´Aeropuerto Internacional Arturo Merino Benítez´ was affected
by the earthquake recently, cosmetically anyway. Quite a few of the ceiling
panels had fallen. With a tired fogged brain and Spanish lingua no comprende -
I got a bit confused to where I should go thinking that I should go to
transfers instead of immigration.
Here I was stuck in no man´s land and couldn´t work out where to go once
trapped in the wrong area. One of the LAN staff was saying go to level 1 via
the lift and the lift was undergoing repair, ultimately I nutted out that I
should backtrack through all the checkpoints explaining in double Dutch to
all who cared to listen, and take the alternative option I vaguely
recollected seeing - dumb foreigners !
I wandered out of the international terminal after passing through customs.
Some of my food was confiscated - Chileans are as strict as Australia when it
comes to dried fruit, I just hope I have enough time to restock in Puerto
Natales. Outside there were taxi and accommodation spruikers, but that is not
what I wanted, I needed domestic. Some guy knowing how bewildered we tourists
can be assisted in direction, he got me to the right place so a small gratuity
wasn´t out of place.
After all that kerfuffle I still had 4 or more hours to wait. I was
supremely afraid of falling asleep and missing my connection so here I was
in the desert of a large almost vacant factory space having empathy for
those who are forced to undergo sleep deprivation torture. But somehow
relief was at hand and people arrived and I was off.
A friendly face - Luis from
La Casa Escondida was on hand
to pick me up. This guy went out his way to assist me well appreciated after
25 hours or so of travel - what a nice place he has. A nice shower, you
beauty, I am in desparate need of a rinse. Credit to TripAdvisor, the
recommendations are accurate. Here I am in top quality accommodation at a
price (30000clp - $60) I could easily pay fourfold in Australia. Good time
to travel in Chile is off season .
Luis built the place himself and had an excellent command of English. The
fires were going, I got an en-suite room to myself and enjoyed a beer with
him. He is even toying with organising bike trips down the road to Fuerte
Bulnes in the parks, which piked a bit of interest from me. Good start to my
trip.
Oh, we are now a day behind. The dates here are according to Melbourne, but
in Chile I am 14 hours behind so the dates are effectively minus one from
the dates posted on this blog.
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