Adios Chile

Spending our last weekend in Chile in the Vibrant, colourful city of Valparaiso. Our b and b is perched on one of the many hills of the city with an amazing view of the city and the harbour. There are 8 naval ships anchored just below us and many of the houses are brightly coloured in blues and yellows and reds. There seem to be hundreds of buses which career around the streets and make crossing the road very interesting. the city is kind of like Wellington on Speed!

Talking of buses. We have had some hilarious adventures on the local buses elsewhere in Chile. Like the time we hopped on the local bus instead of the express and ended up taking 3 hours and stopping at every little bus stop and house and tree and dog and telephone pole on the way to where we were going. The same journey by car was an hour. This was also the time when Graham decided to adopt some cost cutting tactics by only buying 2 seats, which meant the boys had to sit on our knees when the bus was full. No problem until the last 30 minutes. Lachie and Sam have both put on weight!!!

We also got on a local bus to get out to the Speights. It had about 30 seats so when it got to 45 passengers on board, the sales people started to arrive and push their way down the bus. Vegetables, fruit, biscuits, ice creams, newspapers, you name it. We had grocery shopping and the boys on our knees again and I may have mentioned that the Chilean people tend to be short, so legroom on the bus was minimal. It also meant our faces were at butt height. Just when we thought it was time to go, a busker walked on and proceeded to serenade us all with guitar and vocals. Just as well he was awful as we couldn´t have got to our pockets if we had tried. This was the one rainy day we have had in Chile. The bus steamed up something wicked. And could we see our stop? No way. We accidently got off about 1 km early which was a worry because there were no verges to walk on. We had to fight our way through the blackberry on the side of the road in between waiting for a break in the traffic to sprint down the highway. And having to look both ways in case their was some maniac overtaking behind us. ALl part of the experience!!!