Having passed the date line and gone back 12 hours we arrived in Santiago Chile. OK lets go for it – we left New Zealand at 1735 hours and arrived in Chile at 1230 hours the same day April 27! Our bodies took a few days to adjust.
On arrival in Santiago it was grey, cloudy and raining – for the first time in 6 months. The positive side effect though was that the rain cleared the pollution which is a major problem here, (mainly in the winter months). Santiago is surrounded by mountains. Frequently, it was confirmed, the pollution gets so heavy that schools are closed.
Santiago – and the whole of Chile – is situated on or around the Cordilleras’, the Andes mountain range and is “regularly” subject to earthquakes. Due to the last major earthquake in 1985 a lot of the ancient 17/18th century buildings were destroyed and replaced with not-so-nice blocks, giving a seriously disharmonious impression.
A few facts that we learned: Chile is 4300 km long, a little over 200 km wide at its widest point, has approx 15 million inhabitants of which 6 live in Santiago. Population still growing ... Climate is fairly extreme with the Atacama Desert in the north, Antarctica in the south.
We were delighted to cross the path of Amélie Perrot – one of the kids’ cousins – for “tea”. She is on a student exchange program for 5 months and we were pleased to learn about her experiences of living in Santiago/Chile and of her travel plans in South America. 5Like us she now craves about Buenos Aires especially against lack luster Santiago).
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