We've made it to South America for the very first time - exciting!! And crossing the international date line and arriving in a new continent 5 hours before we had left the last one was also a bit of a novelty - that is, until we were hit by a serious dose of jet lag........for a whole week!!!.....be warned time travel has its downsides!
It also meant that 'Wee G' was able to put off turning 35 for an extra 24 hours. Alright for some - time travel and slowing down the ageing process! Although, we're now not sure if his birthday should really be on the 19th next year?
But it wasn't difficult to party this year in Santiago - as Santiago Rocks!! ..... and there was no sense in wasting the extra time we'd been gifted so we got stuck into celebrating with some Chilean Homebrew. And would you believe it the guy crooning at the bar started to sing "Wise Men Say" - now if my Spanish had been more advanced than "uno, dos, tres" at this point I would have requested that one myself!
I'm afraid there's then not much to blog about for the next few days as we pretty much slept until 4.00pm each day and chatted at 4.00am! But no time to rest too long as we had to make our way down to Pucon to meet Stephen & Natalie - so we headed off to the bus station for the first of our many bus journeys in South America. Bus travel in itself is a highlight here!
Have to say it's pretty weird when your brother and his fiance just pop round to your hostel thousands of miles from home when you haven't seen anyone for 8 months. Mind you I think it was pretty weird for them too, particularly as G has turned all hairy! But it was great to see them and Mum now has proof that we are still alive and well and we're not just a recording on Skype!
And we were lucky to get the chance to be the first to celebrate their engagement with them......and to hear their plans for the Big Day when we get back - exciting!!!! (but Susie - you will be disturbed and worried to hear that Natalie has asked me to help with the arrangements......the day I have been elevated to a Wedding Planner is not a good one!!!!... I feel alas I'll never be able to do as good a job as you but I perhaps have a more willing client :)
However, I still need to split my time between weddings and travel so back to Chile. Well, I forgot to point out the obvious - Chile is as long as Australia is big! And after 8 months on the road I think we've nearly peaked with the amount of long distance public transport we can cope with so alas for this trip we've had to put some of the best bits of Chile on ice :( - and some of the best bits of Chile involve a lot of ice!
But not to worry I have already planned our next holiday, granted that may not be until about 2015!....but we'll be able to ramp up to holiday comfort with flights everywhere! - one to Santiago, another one to Easter Island and another one right down the bottom to Torres Del Paine (I'm looking forward to it already but to really top it of we'd love to come back here with Elaine & Manuel - Manuel, you are rightly proud of Chile it is a beautiful country).
Although we have still managed to see some of the sights and soak up the culture this time - we had the most amazing seafood in Castro on Chiloe, (which included the biggest oysters ever for about 40p so was also the biggest bargain ever!), gawped at the snow clad volcanoes, fished on one of the many rivers, learnt a bit about the ancient history and admired the skill of the ChinChinNero man!!!! (he is a talented one man band who also twirls at the same time - it did not look easy!)
And we've had a good time interacting with the locals - Chileans are very congenial and warm in nature so it's not been difficult! We've also been intrigued by Spanish so we are hoping we will be slightly better than pigeons at the end of 3 months. But it would be great to go to some classes when we get back too as there is always an element of embarassment to travelling when you are from the UK - as we are always the ones who have to say "habla ingles?".
However, that's not to say we haven't tried, and if you know Graham well you'll know that he'll give most things a shot, but sometimes regardless of his skill level!! An amusing example of this was when we were trying to get somewhere nice booked in Copacabana at Lake Titicaca for Chrimbo. Our first attempt of emailing failed with no reponse, so we gave them a call but alas this also fell flat on its face as the chap on the other end was using all his 40/50 years of native Spanish and wasn't up for talking to pigeons! So what did G do?
Well, he still likes to call on his nerdiness when faced with a challenge so he googled babel fish and got it to translate what he thought would get us the Honeymoon Suite booked for Christmas. Starting with " I speak only a little Spanish......".......you ain't kidding!!!.... he was just about to tell the guy all the Spanish he knew and that didn't include the other 3 lines!!!!! I did have to stop him before he actually embarked on this call as the guy had already put the phone down once! But we compromised and used babel fish to ask the hotel owner to call for us instead, which was just as well as the guy even cut her off 3 times!! Anyway, we have it booked now :)...just New Year to sort out!
P.S. If you fancy seeing where we are going to be for Christmas check it out below (nice?) :-
http://www.hotelcupula.com/
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