After the longest flight of my life, 4 hours to New Zealand, an hour in transit then 12 hours to Chile, we finally arrived in Santiago. (This is ofcourse after we ran for, and queued for, a flight to LA, only realising that it was for LA and not Santiago after handing over our passports and being turned away). Once we’d arrived, after getting off the plane there was a huge queue at passport control (a real one this time… Or so we thought), with a big sign showing different nationalities and prices, England wasn’t on there but we got in the queue anyway as we figured it was because we’d flown here from Australia, which was on the sign. About an hour later when we were finally at the front of the queue, the man took a look at my passport before shaking his head and saying Stephanie… No. I was so confused as he pushed my passport back along the desk towards me, until it happened to Juliet as well and the English guys behind us, long story short, basically we’d been in the immigration queue for those having to pay to enter the country, when actually because we’re from England, we could just walk past it.
Then we got to baggage control, and waited for or bags, and waited, and waited until there were no bags left. So we freaked out and I went on a search to see if they’d been taken off the conveyer belt somewhere. They hadn’t they were still going round the conveyor belt just the next one along, as we’d been waiting at the WRONG belt.
Getting the airport transfer was so easy as our bus had been booked already for us so we just paid and picked up our tickets and got on the bus to where we were staying.
Luckily I have a contact in Chile and so we have a place to stay here and don’t have to worry about finding a hostel. After dumping our stuff we set off to explore the area and ended up in a beautiful park in the sunshine and a shopping centre to buy very needed handbags (can’t be walking about in South America carrying our purses). That evening the guys flats who we are staying with took us out to meet their friends and for a drink in a local bar. We tried a Chilean speciality called “Terremoto” which is an alcoholic drink with grenadine and ice cream, it was so nice! (But also extremely, extremely strong)
We went back to the apartment and literally collapsed in bed, so tired after our sixteen hour flight from the night before. We needed to stay up and go out to avoid jet lag (and crashing) but now it was bed time we were so happy!
Turns out we really needed the sleep as we woke up at 12pm today!