the Vickery has landed!

Well I made it in one piece to Santiago, Chile! The flights were pretty uneventful and the one from New York was delayed by a couple of hours so didn´t board until after midnight (US time) and then just as you got to sleep they brought round hot food - the smell of which made me feel slightly ill so that was nice!!

Had an interesting journey from the airport - had only been in the country for 10 mins and managed to get completely ripped off for a taxi! First of all I thought the taxi driver was taking me to his home as we ended up going through loads of reasonably posh housing estates (Chile is not at all representative of the rest of South America!) and then stopped for some petrol. Once he found out I could speak a bit of Spanish he got me to sit in the front of the taxi (as the air con was better but I´m sure it was more so he could have a bit of a perve!) and then proceeded to question me about my life and whether I had a boyfriend (a bit personal seeing as I didn´t even know his name but that is normally the first question out of a guy´s mouth over here!)... Then he starts going on about how he could be my friend and we could send each other cards and things... Fortunately I have a good excuse at the moment - no fixed address and no telephone number is going to come in handy over here I think!! But I have his number in case I ever get the urge to call him so that´s nice!! And at least I got to practice my Spanish a bit and could make myself understood so that was quite reassuring! So really being ripped off paid off in the end!

I have got myself a bit of a posh hotel room for the night - camping is going to be a bit of a shock after this! Although everyone else was moaning that the hotel wasn't very nice, clearly I just have very low standards!!!

Met the rest of my group in the evening - there´s 17 of us and about 10 of them have been doing this overland tour since Quito in Ecuador which is pretty hard core, don´t think I could cope with these trucks for that long! 5 of us went out in the evening for a few drinks and some food and then crashed out as was pretty knackered! But am very happy to be here and as usual, everything has worked itself out!