Our flight from Auckland, to Quito had to go via Santiago, the hub in the region, and the only destination available from Australasia. This was going to be a sign of things to come. While in Asia and Australasia air travel is usually available from the point you are at direct to the point you need to go. In South America we had many flights which were going to be long and indirect. And many of them were through Santiago.
The rout from Auckland to Santiago brushes the Antarctic, and as the map showed us, we were tantalisingly close to yet another continent. Maybe on another trip. We had spoken to someone on our travels who had done a holiday to Antarctica, and raved on about it. I wonder if there is a Lonely Planet on Antarctica!!!
Approaching Santiago we were greeted by the mighty Andes Mountain Range, which surrounds the city. This mountain range optimises the continent as much as the Amazon forest. They spectacularly run almost the full length of the continent on the Western side of the continent. And many of our planned trips would be in amongst the mountain range. We landed into Santiago airport and had a few hours to kill before connecting to our next flight to Quito via Guayule. We caught up on some last minute shopping at the duty free, inc a Spanish Translation book, which is really needed here, not a lot of people speak English! More thumbnails ...
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