We just got an email from the guy who bought our Carlitos:
Dear Trill I think that you l ook better than that here in Santiago.How are both you and your italian husband. You were visiting Mexico? or came back to Austalia yet?Carlos had very well development on the rode to Valdivia.I`m very glad with it.
I’m not really sure what the first bit is about but it sounds like he is happy!
We got a reasonably priced flight from Santiago to Arequipa in Peru and were instructed to arrive at the airport at 5.30 am, three hours before our flight. Rudy from Blend Hostel was very kind and drove us to the airport.
When we arrived, we waited for an hour before the good people at Sky Airlines turned up for work. I’m pretty sure they were the only counter that wasn’t open and it was fairly insulting to watch them slowly get ready to start serving customers. Urgh.
The flight was fine, even if we did stop at Antofagasta to let passengers off and then again in Arica to clear Chile’s customs.
We finally got to Santiago after three days of driving and were really happy to catch up with Rudy, Marie Isobel and Julietta at Blend Hostel. It was almost like being at home. We were also pretty excited to go into Original Green Roasters and see Chamo and Claudio. The food and coffee were amazing still and so were the hugs.
Over the week in Santiago, we were able to sell our sleeping bags to two nice young guys heading to Torres del Paine but I suspect they’ll get too hot.
We also had the good luck of selling Carlos the Suzuki to a nice vet from the Los Lagos area who drove all the way up to check him out. He didn’t want to barter and didn’t even really ask any questions and I suspect he’d already bought the car in his mind before he got there.
The process of changing it over was a bit of a nightmare and notorias as swiftly becoming my least favourite Chilenos as it seems near impossible to tempt them into doing work. We eventually turned up at the Civil Registration office which was much easier and slightly cheaper (although they do not accept cash, so Jaime had to go into a bank the next day). The day was punctuated by conversations with Jaime about God, the Mayans, atom blasts 10,000 years ago so you can probably guess it was eye opening if nothing else. He did say grace before eating an empanada so I think he’s pretty serious about this business.
He rang us two days later to tell us that Carlos had made it back to Los Lagos without any problems. I hope he loves Carlos as much as we do. Poor bugger put up with us for 35,000kms without too much of a fight. Not bad for less than two grand.
The north of Chile is really expensive, I suspect because of the mining boom. Trying to find accomodation on the weekend was a bit tough, let alone accomodation we could afford. This charming little number was literally on the side of the highway. Labelled “cabanas” we were surprised to learn that they did not have a kitchen, tv, breakfast or wifi, especially with the $50 a night price tag. We had a look anyway and found it to be a shipping container with a dodgy palm leaf roof.
The owner keep telling us “lindo, lindo!” (beautiful) but I’m not sure we could see it.
Out in the distance is La Campanas observatory, home to the Giant Magellan Telescope project (due to be finished in 2020). We wanted to go look but no one returned out email. There are many other observatories in the Atacama Desert who will accept visitors.
Other sights along the drive from San Pedro de Atacama to Santiago.
The next day we went and checked out Valle de la Luna. It was a lot smaller than expected and involves a short cave walk (this requires a torch) and some looking and not much else. It was pretty though and we felt that we should try to see some of the surroundings before driving on.
I don’t think Atacama is the kind of place that you just stop over for a night. It was pretty expensive even for a campsite that was basically a yard with a shed of showers. Probably the highlight of my night was my new friend who only seemed to want to be friends when I had food.
The campsite was next door to a live music venue that was playing until 5 am. Two hours sleep…yay!
There’s not much to see between Arica and San Pedro de Atacama…apart from guys searching our car for drugs and checking out the repossessed cars.
