AlternateRoute

We about to fly off to Lima, having spent only eight hours at the hotel. The hotel which was supposed to be 10 minutes from the airport was 30 minutes away. In our shared taxi at peak hour after dropping off four other passengers, we were there in 90 minutes. The airport is new and undergoing further repairs.
On arrival in Chile we had to pay a reciprocity tax of $US56. I think this means that Australia charges Chileans a silly amount of money to enter Australia and so they are returning the favour. The tax applies to Australia, Canada, USA and Mexico.
The road from the airport was modern, but it went through some very dilapidated suburbs. The river running near the city has paved sides like a stormwater channel and the land on either side looks like rubbish infill with much of the rubbish falling into the river. The air appeared heavily polluted and there was a large rubbish fire burning just outside of the city.
Since the taxi to and from the airport was payable in US dollars and the hotel was prepaid, we didn’t need to change any money into Chilean Pesos. On the way back we don’t leave the airport but will still need Pesos for Easter Island.
It is hard to make a judgement on a town after such a short visit, but the guide books seemed to indicate there was not much to do or see in Santiago. At least in the part of the town we went through, we passed no great museums, churches or stunning architecture of any kind.
At various sets of traffic lights we had someone wanting to wash our windscreen and a blind beggar tapping his cane from car to car. However the best example of getting money from people at traffic lights was 2 young boys putting on a fire-juggling and acrobatics exhibition in front of the stopped cars. At one point, one boy was twirling fiery batons while his mate was standing on his shoulders juggling fire-sticks.
The hotel included a welcome drink, so we ordered a beer only to find it was Bolivian. We skipped dinner and went to bed soon after 2100 with the alarm set for 0400.
We got to the airport in plenty of time, and spent 45 minutes lining up for the wrong airline. Luckily the queue at the right airline moved considerably faster and we got our tickets one minute before boarding was meant to commence.
Most of the other people on the plane looked rugged up for winter, so I suspect it may be cold in Lima. We shall soon see.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 3rd, 2007 at 0559 and is filed under South America 2007. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.