Monday 20 February 2012    La Pas (Bolivia) - Santiago (Chile)

At 0900 our Ukrainian tour guide Larissa collected us from the hotel Presidente for an escorted tour through the city and La Pas surrounds.  Firstly we went to the cathedral and presidential palace and being a public holiday today the streets were empty.  The whole place looks and feels shabby, tired and poor.  We walked down the oldest street in the city and onto the the market place before going by car to visit Moon Valley.  Larissa explained how the poor live on the hills and the rich in the valleys, this is exactly opposite to Australia where the rich live on the hills with the good views.  We returned to the city to wander through the Witches Market and view the old cobbled streets in the Indian quarter.  Being a feast day today the city centre was closed for the festivities and it was chaos with cars and small buses in gridlock and jamming all intersections with traffic brought to a standstill or slow crawl.  To be sensible and safe it was decided to make our way to the airport early.  Having said our goodbye's to Larissa at the airport terminal Malcolm and I filled in the two hour wait with a hamburger and coffee before boarding our LAN Chile flight to Santiago at 16:00, stopping at Iquique in the desert to complete Chilean immigration papers.  In La Pas the plane sat on the runway for almost an hour due to "heavy traffic" although during that time only two or three palnes landed and two departed, it's all a bit "manyana time" here.  Whilst waiting in the La Pas terminal a very upset American told me how he put his personal effects into a tray to be scanned at security and when it came out the other end his mobile phone had been stolen, probably by one of the security guards. At Iquique  we met again and he told me that airport security and checked their security cameras and caught the thief with the happy outcome that the stolen mobile phone was returned. On arrival in Santiago there were some problems with bringing in the carved gourds from Peru because they had seeds inside but after explaining that we were transiting Customs cleared us through.  Our driver provided by LAN Chile Airways was waiting at the door and took us to the Four Point Sheraton, arriving at 23:00.  Santiago looks like a lovely, very clean and modern city.  I would like more time here to explore.