Hola, Bienos Noches, we are now in South America. The flight (on an A340 - LanChile) was memorable for a couple of things, namely the uncomfortableness of the seats (total lack of pitch) and the temperature in the cabin...Nelly would have had a field day, there´d have been naked people everywhere...

The drive from the airport to Santiago City was unremarkable, the first thing that was a little different from our preconception was the number of huge and nice looking homes, there was also what looked like a Barrett Estate - surely the bottom hasn´t fallen out of the UK housing market and they´ve felt the need to come out here? There was also shedloads of graffiti, it´s safe to say while it doesn´t feel as rough as perhaps we´d have thought, Santiago is not the most salubrious of places. We arrived at the International Youth Hostel only to find all 120 beds were full, the (stupidly un)helpful chap at the desk informed us next time we should phone ahead...yeah thankkkkkkkksssssssssssssss So we pushed on, feeling absolutely knackered, until we found the Hotel Tokyo which is good enough for a night or two. We couldn´t manage to stay up late so crashed out for a few hours before heading out into town for a bite to eat and a drink. It´s already apparent that they don´t realise you are foreign and are obviously retarted when it comes to Spanish linguistics, so they babble on at you for about 5 minutes before you have to shrug, smile and say por favour or the like. Our Spanish will imrove´- we hope, if not, it´s gonna be a long 3 months. Also their bloody keyboards have things in weird places (the ´( ´and ´)´signs are one key to the left, the @ is only available through alt 64, the place where you normally do an apostrophe comes out as a ´{´ . When you´ve already experienced over 35 hours on October 1st (we will in the end have about a 40-hour day - just like being back at Michael Page really) it messes with your head...

No real plans from here - we might hang around for a day or we might get the hell out, I guess it really depends how we feel in the morning. It is worth noting that the woman who runs the hotel is certifiably mad, if incredibly nice at the same time, think Hannibal Lechter crossed with Basil Fawlty and Carol Smilie and you´re not far off.