Day 4 Santiago Chile and on to Guayaquil, Ecuador 20 March 2015

Sleeping is still a little patchy, but we are getting there.

This is our last day in Santiago, we fly out this afternoon to Guayaquil, Ecuador. This is our stepping point on the way to The Galapagos Islands (Guayaquil is pronounced Why-ya-kill).

From what we have read Guayaquil maybe the most lawless city we have visited to date (anywhere). The general warning is to stay well away from the Ecuadorian borders, don’t carry anything of worth visibly on you and only use taxis organised by the Hotel. Other than that it’s a breeze. 😛

We have checked the weather forecast for the next week and it looks like we may be in for a bit of rain. We are hoping it will all be at night, or at least in brief showers. But what will be, will be, and we will make the most of it; work around the things you can’t control.

You will all be glad to know, no more worms. LOL Deb showed the manager a picture of the worm and he asked if it came from us!!!  We laughed, and said, NO. Lol

It was great to see that Australia beat Pakistan in the Cricket World Cup Qtr Final, India is next in the semi-final.  Should be a tougher match.

We are planning an easy day today, go out for a walk around another part of Santiago and maybe do a Geocache along the way.  We have organised a late check-out of 1pm and are being picked up at 2pm to go to the airport for our 5:30pm flight.

We took a walk east along the river. We crossed over at a high arched pedestrian bridge that has been made into one of those Love Lock Bridges. (You know the thing, couples inscribe there love for each other on a lock, clamp the lock shut onto the bridge and then throw the key into the waters below.) There were hundreds of locks on the bridge!

We walked down to the Plaza a la Aviacion, where there is a pretty fancy monument and fountain dedicated to the Chilean Airforce.  While we were there we hunted down and found a Geocache by the same name. An easy find ( www.geocaching.com  GC 56TJM ). If you haven’t tried Geocaching you should, its lots of fun and a way to go to places you might not go to otherwise. We are trying to do at least one in every country we visit.

We sat and watched the world go by for a while. We both commented on how relaxed the Chilean people are and very patient. We have not had anyone dismiss us because we can’t speak Spanish, and the little we try to speak is probably more like butchering the language!! But at least we are trying.

We walked back along the river in the park, doing a lot of people watching and taking in the architecture as we walked. The city shows signs of having a time of great prosperity, but those times are past and it is looking a little tired. Like the people, the pace of life here seems to be fairly gentle as well, I’d place it about the same difference as Adelaide is from Sydney. It seems not to have any urgency to getting things done, but they do get done. We saw the homeless guy in the garbage bags again, he’s a real quirky character. Speaking of homeless, there are a lot of very visible homeless people in Santiago, they don’t appear to be alcoholics or drug users, just homeless – and to be homeless here would put you very low in the social order, but they seem to be left alone to go about their daily lives.

After we packed all our stuff up, we waited in the hotel for our airport transfer to arrive.   It was good to sit back and relax a little before the flights ahead of us.

Our driver arrived at about 1:50pm and had us at the airport by 2:10. It didn’t take long to get through all the formalities and we were at our gate by 2:40pm. While we were waiting we had a bite to eat and Deb grabbed a few minutes shut-eye.

Our flight for Guayaquil is via Quito (pronounced Keto) (the Capital of Ecuador), this means we have to double back a bit, Quito is inland in the north, while Guayaquil is centrally located on the western coast of Ecuador. We left Santiago at about 5:30pm (Chile time) and get into Guayaquil at around 11pm (Ecuadorian time) With the  hour time difference that makes our travel time of about 7 1/2hrs Airport to airport.

It was a bit of a shamble when we arrived in Quito, first we were told we would be staying on the plane for the transit, and then told we were swapping planes. So after a quick walk through more security, we queued up again to board our “new” plane. The flight to Guayaquil was a bit under an hour and we were through customs and immigration by 11:30pm. We found our driver and were at the hotel, checked in and in our room before midnight. We worked out that our total travel time for the day was 12hours hotel to hotel and we flew around 4500kms.

On a side note, last time we were in Chile we took a bus ride over the Andes, and we were both expecting to be on one of those quintessential buses you see on the movies, laden with chickens and people on the roof, that just didn’t even come close! But this time  🙂 ,  OK it wasn’t chickens, but we had 2 cats ride in the cabin with a family and there was a dog in the luggage hold. It’s the first time I have ever seen an animal in the cabin of an aircraft!

We eventually wound down by 1:30am and called it a very long day.

Thanks for the comments Mandy and Mum,  it’s always great to get some comments so we know what we put in the blogs is interesting to others.

Yes Mandy you know us too well, always horsing around, but I’m glad you never went there,  LOL.

And Mum, the worm looked very healthy, so the food can’t be all that bad!! 🙂