Colonia to Easter Island

(sorry, web-connection here too slow to upload pics...)

After 2 weeks of sunshine we were surprised to get a muggy, rainy day in Colonia del Sacramento on our last day in Uruguay. We sheltered in our nice airco'd hotel room and checked the Facebook posts, describing a different surprise of the imminent White Christmas back home in Holland and England.

One last day in Argentina took us to San Telmo once more, our favourite part when we in Buenos Aires before, and I went to find the writer of the little book “Tango – The Truth” which I had bought a week ago. Since then, inspired by seeing somebody's ambition turning into reality in such a concrete way, I have been writing most days and feel much clearer about how my dream of having a book published may come true. I've got a plan and a subject which is much less unwieldy than my first idea and I can see to the end of the project now.

Sally Roddy, the writer, is Irish and it was an odd thing to stand there in a Buenos Aires street, an Irish woman and an English guy, talking about books written or to be written about Argentina and Amsterdam. Now “all” I have to do is get on and get the pieces written. For the first time, I truly know I can do it.

We went on to Santiago after a 4am wake up call – not great after a few buckets of white wine the night before. We loved Buenos Aires and celebrated that a little too much, and I got carried away with the street drum band's beat, ending up dancing along with the procession as well as having a few bangs on the bongos (which they kindly let me do when they had a rest...)

As we arrived in Chile, the Lonely Planet South America book told us that it was the first South American country to be considered “1st World”. It's economy and infrastructure is more developed than all others, it said and we could see as we arrived. Nice-looking housing estates, well-kept roads and a city centre that was bustling with people in endless shops made it clear that this is a different level of living standard than Peru (where a significant percentage of population are still living on just a few dollars a day), Argentina and Uruguay.

The shopping culture is incredible – it was a Monday afternoon and the places were heaving. Perfume counters were fortified with an army of presenters, ready to squirt any fragrance at will. Other staff manned microphones and yelled out promotions to the masses – shopping in Santiago is clearly an interactive process. Equally, it was odd to buy anything. You decide what you want, go to the end of the shop, pay for it, then go back to the counter and pick it up. It seems this is part of a drive which I've seen in Uruguay too, to force traders to present customers with a clearly itemised receipt, something we take for granted in the west.

We felt quite drained after the shopping experience and looked at the map for interesting places to go. Seeing a river on the map gave us the idea to head there – most capital cities have rivers and do something nice with them, so we thought it may be a relaxing place to have a drink and a rest. We were wrong. The river was brown and slushy, flowing through a channel carving through the city, untended and lined with rubbish. It was probably the most ugly river either of us had ever seen!

An early night followed a fruitless attempt to get Facebook to upload pictures (why do things work perfectly with computers and then suddenly just not?!?) and we started up at 6am again. We are on the way to Easter Island and are intrigued to find out what lies ahead for us. It's an incredible piece of luck to be able to do this trip and feels almost surreal that we are now on this leg of the trip after 3 weeks in USA and 5 weeks in South America.