Santiago Chile

I´d better comment before tomorrows events overtake us - the trip to Santiago went well: we flew backwards against the clock and had an extended friday. The pacific night flight was a bit gruelling in cramped seats, but all forgotten at day break crossing onto the South American coastline. The coastal strip is surprisimngly dry, with visible irrigation (crop circles and such like) at intervals, but otherwise brown and sparsely vegetated. Further inland hills of a particular green (southern beech?) lift up to the Andes. We couldnt take our eyes of them line after line of icy ridges, not unlike their southern alps but deeper, and extending to the horizon north and south - they border the whole western edge of the continent. It was in some ways familiar but not in its extent, and we thought about the south american indian villages, lamas in the foothills and maybe a condor or two soaring the ridges. So a big thrill to step out and to realise where we were.
Santiago is under a dirty dishwasher coloured cloud of smog, but through it you see the outline of high ridges and also some snow covered foothills in what is obviously a spectacular location. Maybe its built on a reclaimed dump - exposed edges along the river and elsewhere seem mostly made of landfill and urban waste. Not a soul speaks basic let alone fluent english so we did well to find dinner, a bottle of wine and to get back to the hotel. Shanti tried to commit kamakazi walking to the edge of the traffic to wave down a taxi. We found certain things crawled at snail pace like waiting almost an hour for bags to make it off the plane, but the traffic makes up for it with a insanity of speed, unsignaled and violent lane changes and a belief in the importance of the horn. Back to the language situation - even at the tourist information bureau it was a virtual waste of time trying to communicate. There were four of them, between them unable to string a sentence in english together. We left wondering what average Chilean tourist speaks? Anyway we had an awesome diner of local beef and a smashing wine and are now out of gas and off to bed for a 5 am start that will finish in Havana, by tomorrows end.