The R&R Big Adventure

Santa-Meh

We weren’t expecting much, and Santa Cruz was indeed uninspiring – lots of low rise dusty buildings next to unfinished pavements, punctuated by fairly modern apartment blocks and shopping centres. It is telling I only took two photos there – one of which I thought was a very well designed and illuminated apartment block, but which turned out to be the A&E wing of a new hospital. Whilst out for a run, R stumbled across an upmarket centre not far from the hotel, so we went there hoping to find a semi-decent restaurant for dinner. By coincidence, the restaurant we thought looked nicest, and got a table at, was top of the recommended restaurant list in Santa Cruz; and was in the ‘Top 50 Restaurants in South America’ list (as signs in there later told us). The food was indeed delicious – I had a lovely ceviche, followed by a very tender steak in oyster sauce, with noodles. It was still very brightly lit though 🙄. Unfortunately I woke in the night with a stomach upset, but I think that the more likely culprit was the cheap burrito I had had at lunchtime.

Yesterday was a ‘meh’ travel day. We cleared security at Santa Cruz airport, turned a corner in a closed corridor, only to go through yet another security scanner (?). On which note, there is no rhyme or reason to airport security checks in South America: some airports want everything out the bag, others insist you keep everything in; some don’t care if you carry bottles of water in your hand luggage, others do… no wonder passengers are confused. There was also lots of form filling to do before leaving Bolivia – no I’m not carrying more than $10,000 – and buying something in duty free, I practically had to give my Mum’s bra size, the amount of personal information they required at the till.

We arrived late afternoon in Santiago and suddenly it felt like we were on a very different trip. SCL is a very large modern airport – like Heathrow, with long queues for immigration (the first we had encountered in South America) and noticeably more expensive than our previous three countries. Staying – by necessity, due to a 4am start this morning – in a very anonymous airport hotel, on a grey, cool afternoon, didn’t help the feeling of meh-ness. We had a very forgettable pizza in the hotel restaurant for dinner (I don’t know how business travellers who have to regularly stay in hotels like this do it, they suck the life out of you) and had an early night.

I felt much better this morning as we checked out to get our 6.32am flight to Calamar (SCL airport was heaving at 5am – more like a UK train terminus at rush hour). For the first hour or so of the flight I had a beautiful view over the snow-dusted Andes that stretched as far as the eye can see; it puts the 20mins or so view one sees when flying over the Alps into perspective. For the last hour it was mostly flat desert with occasional hills and mountains. Low lying mist (it is still 6 deg out there) gives a very eery feel to the landscape. Atacama here we come.