To Santiago de Chile

4th March
Today was a big, lazy, get your breath back day. Tristan and I caught up on a lot of maths that we haven't done for a while, we wandered around the town looking at information about how to get to Santiago (buses, planes etc) and spent some time writing the blog. We washed shoes and sorted through our luggage to get rid of some weight. It didn't matter when we had the car but from now on....

Friday 5th March
Up early, I left Celso and Tris sleeping and drove the car North to cross the border back into Peru. The border crossing wasn't as bad as when we had come in the other direction, for a start there were many fewer people so the queues were much shorter, secondly an elderly Brazilian couple were making the same crossing with their foreign vehicle and so we managed to follow each other around learning from each others mistakes and accomplishments!
I ended up with a document with my Nationality as British Indian Island Protecorate (where ever/ what ever that is) and the make of my car not exactly as it should be because 'he couldn't find it on the system'; but he wrote corrections by hand on the bottom and put several different official seals on it and so I went on my way. Since Peru is two hours behind Chile I found myself with rather a lot of time to spare in Tacna (the first town in Peru), and went in search of the transport police to find out what was necessary for a person, other than myself, to drive the car. Several police discussed my situation..... I arrived wearing Celso's knee brace with the impressive metal bars up the sides, and with a small limp... regarding how I had fallen off a horse and twisted my knee and now someone else was going to drive the car back to Ecuador for me whilst I flew back to get an operation! They said that I needed to get a document legalised that stated that the 'other person' had my full permission to be in possession of the car. This 'other person' is called Rodrigo and he was arriving in Tacna that afternoon on a flight from Ecuador, he is the husband of a colleague of Fabi (Celso's sister; who is going to have the car when it gets back to Ecuador), and he had agreed to drive the car with all expenses paid because he wanted to see a bit of Peru for himself and it is a cheap option for him to be able to do so!
Anyway... off I limped to find a Notaria, a kind of solicitors office where all documents get stamped and verified to say that they are legal. In the first office the Notary (the guy who does the signing) decided he didn't want to sign because he didn't like the look of the Ecuadorian Matricula (vehicle ownership document), but in the second one I went to, they charged me a lot more but, agreed to do the paperwork for me. Multiple photocopies, fingerprints and signatures later, I left clutching the documentation that will allow the car to be driven back to Ecuador. I drove to the airport and sat eating a sandwhich looking out of an open door onto the tarmac of the runway (not much security there then!).
I had made a little sign with Rodrigo's name on so that when his plane arrived we could meet without too much of a problem (I've never met him before) and then I handed over the keys to our little car, told him about all her querks, explained the route back and about the severe lack of petrol garages in some areas, told him about some of the best places to visit on the way, (Arequipa, Pisco, Nazca, Trujillo) and then had to say my goodbyes.
My journey back to Arica was by public transport, the bus left 5 mins after I arrived at the bus station, the buses were ushered through the frontier with very little fuss and then I caught a collectivo taxi (a shared taxi that goes round and round on a specific route picking up as many people as it can squash in) back to the hotel. Easy.... but tiring.
Meanwhile Celso had managed to find a pay for 3 plane tickets to Santiago that left the next morning at 8:30am, meaning that we could avoid the 29 hour bus journey that I had thought awaited us!
Sat 6th
The plane journey was easy. We had barely taken off when we landed again in Iquique, then 30 minutes later we were back in the air again for a 2 hour stint to Santiago. Desert.. desert.. desert. I don't think we missed too much not going by bus (going by car would have been a different matter, which is what we originally intended to do before the earthquake damaged many roads, we would have taken lots of detours to see the sights (e.g. the Atacama giant, a huge giant drawn in the desert some time around the time of Christ)). When we landed in Santiago we were taken to meet our luggage out on the tarmac! It soon became clear to us why internal flights had been so disrupted... none of the terminal buildings at the airport are being used due to damage from the earthquake, tents have been set up to act as departure lounges, customs and security checking areas, whilst arriving passengers get off the plane, get their luggage on the tarmac and then leave without setting foot in a building.
We took a bus to the centre of town and then a taxi to the hostel that I had booked. It turns out that the 2nd floor of the hostel cannot be used at the moment due to earthquake damage but, fortunately for us, there are hardly any tourists around since the tremors and so we have ended up in a 6 bed dorm all on our own. Apparently they will not be able to put anybody in with us anyway.. even if they do turn up.. because in Chile the law states that non family adults may not share a room with a minor, and since we booked online and there is no way of communicating the ages of the guests they have to honour our booking by giving us a room to ourselves... great!
We went out to take a walk around the centre of town and found some very proactive money collecting for the earthquake victims, street performers, stickers etc; much more than anything we saw in the north. We sat in a park under some trees to escape the intense dry heat and eventually Celso and Tris both fell asleep! We returned to the hostel via a supermarket where we bought some food to cook in the communal kitchen, a fine chicken stew - so great to be able to cook for ourselves.
Sun 7th
We slept in until after 10am in our spacious dorm room! The beds are really comfy and we are feeling rather pleased with our hostel ($7.80 each a night). Breakfast is included in the price so we had toast and tea and fruit. Then we set out to go to the metropolitan park, set on a hill in the middle of the city. First we took the metro and then wandered up a street lined with cafes and street vendors (including a guy who did exquisite carvings out of matchsticks) to the bottom of the hill (it is not quite a mountain as it is only 320m high!). We took the funicular railway (which proudly displayed signs stating that it had carried the Pope to the top when he visited Chile in 1987 and made an adress from the angel at the top) up to the zoo (about half way up the hill) and wend our way between the exhibits back down the hill to the bottom. The camel, hippo, emus, flamingos and aviary were the highlights for me but some of the big cat cages were far too small and the animals were pacing; really sad; however they are in the process of making new enclosures so hopefully things will improve.
After a snack at the bottom of the hill we got onto the funicular railway again, this time to the top and the views out over smoggy Santiago with mountains in the distance rising abruptly from the edge of the built up area. Then with a particularly useless map in hand we started the walk over the top of the hill and down the other side (usually you can do this part by cable car but it wasn't running after the quake!). The first part was down a road and we were getting a bit disapointed by the whole experience (having been told that this was one of the most beautiful places in the city), until we found a small path that lead off steeply to one side and soon we were away from the hustle and bustle and under the trees. The path was very damaged in places and trees had fallen, blocking the way (I assume from the quake), but we eventually managed to make our way down to the bottom and then walked a few blocks to get back to the metro and back to the hostel. It was a tiring 5 hour round trip but worth it!