SANTIAGO and home to NZ
Into Santiago for Christmas.
What a contrast from the day I arrived when the city was teeming with people and traffic. Christmas day everything was closed, not a sole to be seen anywhere and absolutely no traffic, buses or taxis to be seen.
The down side was all the restaurants were closed, so in the evening there were groups of tourists milling around looking for eateries. Most had to suffice with McDonalds, the one outlet to be seen open.
Santiago made up for it during the following days as I dodged the seething masses and taxi’s while explored the city, historic buildings and parks. I am not a “CITY PERSON” by nature and usually bail out after 2 days or so, however I really enjoyed Santiago.
It was great to be off the bike for a few days.
Just the City setting is amazing with the Andes making a superb backdrop.
However it was time to look at heading back to NZ.
Time to contact the shipping agents, clean the bike, and make arrangements to pack the bike back into its crate at Valparaiso.
Well it sounded simple. The shipping agent office was 20 km away. The GPS showed a route that went off in the wrong direction for a start and produced a circuitous route to destination. Checking with the hotel staff they marked a more direct route so off I went only to find they had marked an impossible connection onto a motorway. Back to GPS which got me to the approximate location. Street numbers were mixed and another ¾ hour was spent being misdirected before the office was located.
The shipping staff at Dacsher could not have been more helpful and everything was arranged in no time flat. I was to take the bike to Valparaiso when contacted the following day.
The contact was duly made but only left 1 ½ hours to get to a rendezvous point just short of Valparaiso, about 120 km away. The GPS doesn’t recognise one-way streets resulting in me going around in circles. Flagging down a taxi driver resulted in the driver calling over one of his colleagues. After a brief argument the concensus was north onto a ring road and out to the west. Finally took 2 ½ hours to destination arriving with less than 15 km left in the tank. PHEW!
Packing was straight forward, then it was onto a bus back to Santiago in time to grab my bags and run for the airport.
New Zealand … here I come.
The flight home left time to review the trip.
It has been an amazing adventure. The scenery and sites have been outstanding. The routes we have taken have been extremely hard work in sections and a simple cruise in others but we wouldn’t hesitate to do it all over again.
But above all else it is the people we have met along the way that have assisted us, or just took time to work through the language barriers to chat and offer advice, that have really made this a memorable adventure.
