Auckland to Santiago

Well here we are and HOT! We had some tearful goodbyes in Auckland before an 11hr 50min flight to Bueno Aires which felt a lot longer due to the lack of mini screens on each seat, and the flickering big ones meant watching anything was imposible, not to mention the lack of working headphone jacks on our seats!. For Mike the flight was also hard due to the lack of space, we did however manage to get seats in front of the emergency exit so had lots of leg room, but the seats were still rather small and cramped. I managed to sleep for a few hours on the flight but still felt ready for bed when we finally got to Chile. It was awesome seeing the Andes from the plane and the landscape of South America spread beneath us. As soon as we landed in Buenos Aires is started to rain and within minutes it was hailing like I have never seen before and the wind was whipping it around, pretty amazing especially as it was 34C outside! After a 2hour flight which was rather delayed, we arrived in Chile at 11.30pm local time (around 4.30pm NZ time - 21 hours after our flight left NZ!). We got a taxi to our hostel which is an eco place quite close to the middle of Santiago in a area full of street art and people dinning on the roads, pretty cool. Although exausted, I was still awake at 3.30am local time and resorted to ear plugs as there were people talking outside, Mike however was sleeping like a baby right through to 10.45am when our alarm went off. At breakfast we met a German girl and have the spent the day walking the city with her. Santiago is a cool city, though rather smoggy. The view from the mountain next to our hostel is amazing, you can see most of the city spread flat beneath you with the vague outlines of the Andes on the horizon. We're probably going to head to Valparaiso tomorrow, which is a bohemian seaside town and will be visiting Santiago again on our return journey back to Argentina.