Oooh my head. Just got out of Santiago de Chile. We arrived there on the 26th and checked into in a posh place called, "Hotel Vegas" . We then went out for some food, and ended up in the Bar de La Union next to the stock exchange. We had to get past a soldier on the gate and discovered inside a wood panelled haven for good old boys. Naomi was the only girl in there, the waiter was 145 and the wine was fanatstic. We didnt stay long.
The next morning we wondered around the City, which is beautiful and chaotic. It seems much more remote than Argentina. Had to spend a lot of the day trying to sort out our onward itinerary. It is proving difficult to get to where we want to go by land as the tourist season hasnt really kicked in yet and many of the ferries and roads are not open. But we got a quick 17 point plan together:
1) Buy large hat from specialist hat shop
2) Go and eat fish in mad food market
3) Go to tourist information and get very limited information
4) Go to the other tourist information place and get slightly less information
5) Go to travel agents and get the same limited information but with different dates and times
6) Book a ferry from Puerto Montt to Puerto Chacabuko (look it up if your interested)
7) Rent a 4x4 from Hertz at huge expense from a nice English girl called Emma, who took pitty on us cos we were English and gave us 15% off.
8) Get the funicular up to large statue of Virgin Mary and look at the view
9) Come down, sit in a bar, get very drunk on Pisco Sours and eat Sushi
10) Wake up, collect car, while Naomi was ill (Not form drink she was good, but from the 8 tonnes of raw fish she ate.)
11) Get lost driving in streets of Santiago while chronically hungover
12) Find Naomi and drive to Valpairoso 100K from Santiago
13) Look around amazing town and take loads of pictures (which I cant upload yet) and ride more funiculars
15) Get a voicemail from Julie Gardener (the exec producer of Doctor Who) as my phone seems to be working
16) Call a surprised James Goss to deal with call and generally say hi. (Hi James, sorry I didnt make any sense I was hungover.)
17) Write it all down.
We head South now on a coastal road hoping to find a surf paradise with hopefully no interventions from any Time Lords
Thats it for now, see you later and thanks for all the emails and comments
