Monday 28 September:

As this is the first day of the formal trip I start off with a quote from the Itinerary: "Day 3 in Santiago and transfer to Lima. Accommodation in comfortable hotel immediately adjacent to airport."
On looking through the material we had acquired from Lonely Planet an interesting exhibit appeared to be the Parc des Escultures. This was about 3km from the Vegas and looked to be an interesting stroll along the banks of the Rio Mapoche. This was in fact delivered.

As it was now a Monday the traffic was somewhat busier than it had been over the weekend and the streets were full of punters heading off to their various jobs. We strolled on enjoyuing the sights: one of these was the official church of the Carabinieri (who seem to be the national, paramilitary, police as distinct from the traffic cops etc. A result of the reduced traffic presence over the weekend was that Frances was able to spot the snow covered Andes as we walked along: what a magnificent sight. We heard somewhere aong the way that there are ski-resorts within 40km of the centre of Santiago.

On arrival at the Sculptire Park we found it very good. Some images of representative sculptures are in the vicinity of this comment. There was also an 'arboretum-style' collection of trees from all over the world. I obtained some birding entertainment by the activities of a pair of Andean Plovers swooping a lady who was sweeping a path beside the river. Looking down into the river bed it was apparent that the cause of the birds concern was a nest with three eggs in it: since the nest was about 1m from the edge of the water I'd suggest the birds should be more worried about a rise in the level of the rushing torrent than a lady 5m up the bank!

It was pleasing that many Chileans appeared to be enjoying the Park. A number of them were school groups, but all of them were rather short, causing us to recollect how Ingrid, at 14, towered over the masses of Yucatan!

I added a further 2 species of birds to my life list during this stroll.

We decided that it would be nice to get a view of the snows from the top of the funicular, but on getting there it turned out to be closed and we didn't feel like ascending a 250m high hill by the alternate, foot powered route. So we headed off to the lower hill of Cerro Santa Lucia. It is still a hill. By the time we got to the top the increasing warmth of the day, and the volume of traffic had largely blotted out the mountains, but we had at least seen them.

At the foot of the hill we found a cafe offering lunch and enjoyed a pleasant lunch. I can't remember what it was, but the place was clearly aimed at office workers rather than the working class cafes we had eaten at on the first two days (or the expensive place from Sunday).

As we wandered back towards the Vegas we took in a display of photographs of grass roots soccer at the National Archives which was very interesting. Somewhat less exciting were exhibitions of Japanese calligraphy and "Dawin in Chile" at the National Library.

Our final stop was at the Colonial Culture Museum alongside the Church of St Francis. This is right near the Hotel Vegas and the Museum used to be a Franciscan Monastery which owned the entire Barrio Paris-Londres. (The word 'barrio' is interesting as I had heard gringos translate it as meaning 'latino ghetto', but in Santiago at least it is much closer to 'suburb'.)

The display was quite large and rather interesting, although quite heavily focussed on religious topics rather than political or social - of course in Chile the Church is pretty much woven into politics and society! The building was a splendid monastic edifice, with a great cloister full of shady trees. It used to have an orchard on the site where the Vegas (in Spanish "fertile plain') now stands. As a further aside I noticed than the doormat of the Vegas used to have 'Las' in front of 'Vegas' but that had been attempted to be scrubbed out!

Our cab to the airport appeared dead on time and whisked us away. We were surprised to find that it took about 1/3rd the time to get out there that it had to get in. There was a brief moment of panic when the cab pulled in to some dingy office building rather than the terminal, but it appeared to be something to do with picking up his instructions for the next job. Whatever. Within an hour of leaving the Vegas we were through all formalities and meeting with the rest of the group who were pleased to be approaching the end of their 8 hour holdover between flights.

The flight up to Lima was a little bumpy but the biggest problem was the arrogant nerk in front of me who slammed his seat right back as soon as the wheels left the ground. Presumably he was a macho dinosaur: there were no other examples of rudeness from anyone we encountered on the trip.

Arrival at Lima was without hassle for most of us. However our Australian leader, Ian, and his partner Lou found that QANTAS had lost their bags (and for some reason were going to take 3 days to get them on to the group: watch this blog for developments).

The itinerary was delivered as promised , although initial impressions of the hotel we were staying at - a Ramada - was not really good. It had the advantage of being very close to the airport (ie walk across a narrow service lane and you're there) but suffered from the noisiest lifts ever. The sound was rather like metal on metal every time the lift moved, which not only kept us awake but was also a matter of some concern about the maintenance of the elevators. After a visit from myself in dressing gown and a bad temper we were shifted at about 2am to a room where we couldn't hear the noise. I suspect we were unlucky - certainly their ticket price for rooms suggested that luxury should be the name of the game.