TUESDAY - THE LAST POST

Well, this is it – the last post for our fantastic adventure. It's just as well that it's the last post because I seem to have managed to leave the charger for my laptop in La Paz so, when the battery's dead, that will be that.

When we looked at our program for Santiago, they had us doing a city tour yesterday and today. I assumed that there were two different city tours but there aren't. It was a mysterious mistake so, instead of a second city tour, we did a group coach tour to Val Paraiso today, a coastal town about an hour and a half drive west of Santiago.

 

The water temperature in summer is 16 to 18 degrees and the sea lions like it. There is a swimming beach complete with lifeguards but there were only two people in the water. They were obviously very keen to have a swim There is nothing attractive about the beach or the water. The sand is very coarse. The town is also the port for Santiago with cargo ships in abundance.

 

The attraction of Val Paraiso is that it is Chile's second biggest city after Santiago and one half of the country's population live between Santiago and Val Paraiso. Part of it is also World heritage listed by Unesco because of its unique construction. The town is built on 42 hills with many of the very old houses being built on impossibly steep slopes. It is another town where you would have to be really fit to navigate the sets of steps which pass for streets in the town.

 

Tomorrow we get aboard our favourite accommodation/restaurant, a QF business class cabin and head for home. It's our favourite accommodation because, being in it means that we are heading away or heading home. We are delighted to be travelling either way.