Chile - Day 1

Yesterday evening L the dog sitter arrived with a new toy for Xena plus some peanut butter flavoured doggy bubbles for her to have fun with! Xena was very excited to see her as she knows her well, and when we left she was happily playing with her new pink piggy toy. We have had texts and whatsapp's throughout today from L with photos of Xena having fun, which we would pick up every time we landed at an airport..

Last night had something light to eat in the lounge at the airport as we thought we would have supper on the plane, but as our flight was a 10pm flight I should have realised that supper would not be served until around midnight so I got too tired to wait for supper to be served and decided to rather go to sleep and skip supper. It was the longest flight we have ever done at14.5 hours but it does mean you can get a decent night’s sleep.

When we arrived at Santiago airport it was extremely busy - the queues to get through passport control were very long and the arrival hall was packed with people, not the place you want be if someone has the Coronavirus. I read that wearing face masks is a waste of time and one should rather wash their hands frequently which is what I have been doing at every opportunity. After that long queue we had to go through to the domestic departures section and another long queue to check in there. On exiting international arrivals there were sniffer dogs checking travellers baggage and if you have brought in plant or foodstuffs you had to declare it and get your bags scanned yet again. The whole procedure took about 2 hours so it was fortunate that we had the time there with a nearly 5 hour wait for our domestic flight to Punta Arenas. There was no lounge we could use in domestic departures so we sat around feeling weary and grimy all day - lunch was the Hobson's choice of MacDonalds or Starbucks, but I managed to find a salad at Starbucks.

There was nothing to photograph all day but when we were on the final leg of our flight down to Punta Arenas and we flew over the Andes the views were gobsmacking. I took some photos with my iPhone but then managed to get my camera out and got one to two shots before we passed this impressive area with the glaciers and towering peaks - I am guessing this is the Torres del Paine where we are heading to tomorrow morning. Crazy that we have to fly south past it and then travel 5 hours by car back north to get there.

We have finally arrived at our hotel in Punta Arenas 27 hours after leaving home last night! It has been an exhausting day and I am so excited about having a hot shower and a decent meal.

We are being collected at 8am tomorrow morning for our journey to Torres del Paine.