What a good night sleep compared to the night before! Short but sweet you could say. Today was departure day so we had set our alarms for 05:00 in order to get a taxi for 06:00 to the airport. The plane was scheduled for departure at 08:25 so we gave ourselves 30 mins to get to the airport. The taxi arrived early so we managed to leave for 05:45 which was good. Our driver was efficient to say the least. Normally it would take about 45 mins to get there, he managed it in 25!
When we got to the airport we both had a feeling of relief. After all the commotion and the events of the last days, we nearly couldn’t believe that we made it! As we were reasonably early, we checked in before the tour buses arrived with no queues in sight :) We paid the airport tax and proceeded to the security gate. As the rucksack passed through the scanner one of the security guards ask to open the bag. She pulled out the Chuck Norris clipper lighter that Marlon kindly gave us as a present before we left and without a wink of an eye, she threw it straight in the bin! Bollocks.
We got on the plane direction Panama City flying in a fairly new Boeing 737-800. Here we would have to wait approximately 1h 40min for a connecting flight to Santiago. From Havana to Panama it took 2h 30min and for the rest of the journey to Santiago 6h 30min.
After a comfortable journey with Copa Airlines we touched down in Santiago at 20:15 just as the sun was setting over the Andes. Its a shame our camera ran out of steam on the way as the view was incredible. Our bags were conveniently waiting for us on the belt after passing through immigration. We got into the reception hall where we had a glimpse of hope that Nelson (TZM Chile Coordinator) was waiting for us there as we did contact him 2 weeks before in Cuba. He wasn’t there unfortunately as we later found out at an internet kiosk in the airport that we should have confirmed his previous email. We did plan to use the internet during the last couple of days in Havana, however as mentioned in previous posts, we had serious money issues to worry about.
While at the kiosk we saved Nelson’s mobile number that we received in the email into our phone and bought a Chilian SIM card to make local calls. We contacted him and he was happy yet surprised to hear me as he later mentioned that he forgot about our arrival given the lack of updates on our behalf. We weren’t sure if it was still ok to stay with them, but Nelson generously told us to come straight over to his house. He gave us directions so we set off on our journey across Santiago using a combination of bus, metro and taxi. He lived in the southern end of Santiago in a district called La Florida. We got off the metro at Trinidad and took a 3min bus journey from there directly to his house. If it was during the day we could have easily walked, but Nelson insisted we take a Taxi at night as it could be risky given the crime associated with that area. It did seem bad to us, but I suppose you could be unlucky.
We arrived at Nelson’s house where he and his girlfriend Valeria greeted us with warmth into their home. We were so glad to arrive at our final destination as we were on the move all day since the early morning. We stayed up talking with them at his awesome minibar and had a few well deserved beers with a tasty completo italiano (basically a hotdog with guackamole, finely chopped tomato, mayo, ketchup and mustard).
