The Cactus Trip Diaries

The last days of a trip are not the most interesting pages of any blog – some folks leave them out, but that leaves the reader hanging in mid-air. So, here we go, for the sake of completeness.

We left the Hosteria Scala De Milán at 9 a.m. on the dot. SatNav put us on the right way again, predicting arrival at the Airport at 10:14, despite Brian suggesting that it would take us via Arica. Wishful thinking.

The Cuesta de Dormida is a beautiful route through fantastic scenery, much more enjoyable than the alternative of R5, the Pan American Highway, close to Santiago, that is busy and industrialised. Only downside this time of day and this time of year is that the low sun is straight in your face as you negotiate the zig-zags.

We found fuel to be able to return our rental car back at the required level and had an ice cream to make up for the fact that we had left without breakfast.

We were still on time for an early arrival until we got close to the airport and SatNav suggested that we’d take the back road that took us all the way around the airport. It helped to avoid tolls, but used up the spare time, so that we rolled up at the agreed bay in the car park at 10:40-ish, as promised. Next time I’ll pay the tolls and stick to the main road.

We had arranged to meet Pablo Weisser around this time, but were keen to lose our check-in luggage, so sent Brian to the coffee bar on the ground floor, near Exit 4. Check-in again was without any hitches.

At around 11:00 we joined Brian – who of course had never met Pablo – so no wonder that he had not made contact.
Time for breakfast, so I treated myself to a nice omelette, toast and coffee. No sign of Pablo, but time ticked on regardless, so we said our goodbyes to Brian, who was going to catch a bus back to Taltal – lucky so and so!

Nothing else left to report – hope to be back in Chile in 2017!

POST SCRIPT

On arrival in the UK I received a brief email from Pablo to say that he had more computer problems and had not received my email announcing our visit to Olmue until after we had left again. He had stayed in a different ‘hut’ which is why we had missed him there. He had also been unable to let us know that he would not be at the airport.

Never mind – we look forward to meeting you again, sometime, somewhere.