Every stop I make, I make a new friend

This is our last blog from South America (boo). We are currently slumming it in Santiago airport with five hours to kill before a 13 hour flight to Auckland, contemplating one last cheese and bread meal, with the ham surgically removed for C. The sun is now over the yard arm, so the perfect complement for that toastie might just be a farewell pisco sour.

Ryders on Tour were last sighted in Valparaiso, a cartographer’s nightmare of a city made up of 42 hills, vertiginous streets and winched cable cars ferrying people too lazy to walk (i.e. Ryders on Tour) up the hills. The city is also an arts hotspot so, encouraged by the local authorities, murals and street art abound making the city the most colourful in Chile. A visit to the home of Pablo Neruda, Chile’s most famous poet and political activist, provided a welcome dose of culture. A man of eclectic tastes and influences (not unlike our esteemed blogger you might say), he built an incredible house high above the city, beautifully preserved and offering dizzying views over the jumble of houses.

In our last blog, C reported the torture of missing the ending of a particularly schmaltzy film starring Richard Gere film and a Japanese husky. This is obviously the only film the biggest bus company in Chile keep in their vaults, as the short hop between Valparaiso and Santiago, with said bus company, allowed us to finally achieve closure. FYI, both the dog and the man die – don’t watch if you are of a delicate disposition, it’s a heartbreaker.

Our expectations of Santiago were not sky high, given what we had been told by previous explorers of these parts. However, we were pleasantly surprised – good food, lively bars, excellent museums, and a mountain in the middle of the city giving stunning views of the smog where the Andes should be. The museum of pre-colombino art was summed up thus by the Ryder two-some (you decide who said what), ‘brilliant, a riveting journey of the history of Latin America through the medium of art’ and ‘it was good, but just a load of old pots really.’

Our final stop in Chile, and South America, was San Pedro, a tiny town in the Atacama desert in the high plateau of the Andes. Everything about the place confounds expectations and common sense; a desert 3,000 metres above sea level, some of the few settlements having had no recorded rainfall for years or even decades, and an abundance of natural wonders (including some incredible rock formations and spouting geysers) within a stone’s throw of the picture-perfect adobe village. San Pedro is situated on a huge salt flat, the third largest in the world, and home to three species of flamingo (Andean, James and Chilean). Shaggy alpacas and llamas, along with their more delicate cousin, the vicuna, are also abundant throughout the area.

San Pedro was also noticeable for the continuing saga of our tangled relationship with our new Chicagoan buddies. It is a question for the lawyers to decide who is stalking who, but we have now met with two splendid American ladies in three separate towns in the last fortnight. Obama and Cameron take note – excellent Anglo-American relations are not difficult to build, and can be lubricated with a well-timed pisco or three. A great last night with them in San Pedro rounded off our journey through Latin America in style.

Highlight: The natural light that floods San Pedro means the sunrises and sunsets here are particularly beautiful and a photographer’s dream; even we, armed with our box brownie, managed some half decent shots of the moon rising over the Andes.

Lowlight: Right here, right now, sitting in Santiago airport feeling our life forces ebb away with every passing minute.

Pisco sour count: The final count is 32, notwithstanding any last minute additions before Auckland. Even this paltry figure was achieved at huge personal cost to C, who took it upon herself to go for broke and down five in one night. The consequences of her selfless actions meant the following day in Valparaiso was rather subdued and it took all her strength not to lie down on Pablo Neruda’s historic, and very tempting, bed for a little cry.

Our reflections and observations from South America: Brazilians need to wear bigger pants. Salvador needs a jolly good bath. We are too old to master the art of horsemanship or tango. It is possible to make one pair of pants last a week. Whales do not stick to human timetables. Buenos Aires is a proper Latin American capital. Even 3-foot caiman are scary close up. We will never take the perfect photo of a humming bird in flight. Great people, amazing landscapes, and wildlife that takes your breath away. In short, top bombing.