Friday 10th February, 2017
Today, Day 1, is a long day, so long that we have a night in the middle of it, and arrive in Santiago before we have left Sydney! It’s all because we cross the international date line, and the date is turned back one day. But the actual time difference between Sydney and Santiago is 14 hours.
It’s also a long day of travelling; nearly 30 hours from when we got up in the morning to when we get to Punta Arenas in southern Chile, our destination – and still on the same date.
Waiting at Sydney Airport
We are waiting in Sydney international terminal having managed to innocently set off various security alerts coming through border patrol: the automatic system refused to take my photo, then my handkerchief set off an alert and I had to be patted down! At least I wasn’t strip searched for explosives – Yes, I once was, in Perth, and my CSIRO Chief had to wait patiently worrying just what kind of employee he had in his charge!
It’s a hive of activity with most people sitting also waiting. Where are they going? Anywhere exciting? And what is exciting for them? For one couple it is a daughter’s wedding in Ireland. But what about the group of Asians on my left, or the fellow wrinklies on my right?
Sydney airport - the glamour of a major international airport
Are we excited? Yes, of course! But we are not looking forward to many hours in the confined spaces of airplanes. Time to take a walk and stretch the legs when I can!
Our flight to Santiago is delayed. But does it matter? By the time we get to Punta Arenas tonight it will be about 28 hours since the alarm went off this morning. Sitting and waiting, it doesn’t really matter where we do it!
In the departure lounge there are clearly a lot of South Americans returning home. Opposite me is a beautifully brown teenage girl with no knees in her jeans plugged into her device. Her much younger sister with new white sneakers, a long plait and pink round spectacles has just unwrapped a skipping rope and is clearly keen to try it out. Her mother is tall and slim with long skinny fingers and a mass of bracelets and friendship bands on a graceful slender wrist. I wonder what they have been doing in Australia? And the family with active young kids climbing all over the seats?
Our big white bird of the flying kangaroo
Crossing the Pacific
It was 12+ hours crossing the Pacific Ocean. There was not much to see: a superb view of Sydney CBD and the Harbour, the northern parts of South Island New Zealand, and lots of cloud. And half of it was night, with daylight coming well before the time we would have been going to bed back in Hobart..
I watched “Ice Age Collision Course”, which was funny but rather American. We had our evening meal, then I watched another movie, “Philomena”, starring Judy Dench, and this was good. A long period of trying to sleep ended with a third movie: Avatar. This was an extraordinary epic battle between good and evil, and of deep interconnections within an ecosystem, and between the ecosystem and its inhabitants, set on a planet supporting an amazingly imaginative range of life forms. A few games of solitaire also helped pass the time.
The west coast of Chile looked very dry and hazy, but fringed with what must have been a wild surf gleaming in the early morning sun. Well back from the coast were high snow clad mountains, the Andes, and cloud.
Queueing in Santiago
We had around three hours in transit in Santiago, and spent it all queuing. We queued to pay our entry fee, then a massive queue to get through immigration. There was a queue to go through customs, then to check our luggage on to Punta Arenas, another queue at security, and finally yet another to board our flight to Punta Arenas. There was just enough time to have a pee!
Santiago is in a broad flat valley. From the air we could see the city in the distance, largely shrouded in a heavy haze. The surrounds are very dry, with dry braided river beds emerging from the mountains and spreading across the plains. However, there must be some water as there were some irrigated areas.
South to Punta Arenas
As we flew south over desolate mountains there were in the distance high, snow-covered peaks, and quite a few decidedly conical snow-covered mountains. Ancient volcanoes? The bare landscape had subtle variations in its earthy colours, and a lot of the snow fields were decidedly dirty!
Around Puerto Montt the landscape is dramatically different, with large lakes and much fertile land. It could have been northern Tasmania, or south coast NSW. It was beautifully verdant and productive!
The rest of the flight to Punta Arenas was largely above low cloud, with glimpses of dry hills and water, snow-clad peaks, large glaciers and glacial lakes. And then, after around 26 hours travel, we were in Punta Arenas, a coastal city of around 120,000.
Later, when paying for our evening meal at a restaurant in Punta Arenas, I discovered I’d lost my Visa card, probably in the ATM in Punta Arenas airport! But at that time there was no going back to see … Surprisingly, Krista neither murdered nor divorced me (then) and I was sufficiently tired to sleep rather than worry!
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