South America 2017

Adelaide to Santiago

Packing for a ninety-day voyage that will take you from Adelaide's dry summer heat on a trip that ranges from cold climate at Cape Horn (56° South) to the balmy Florida days (29° North) via the Andean mountains (4,320 metres about sea level) and the Amazon basin (75% chance of rain per day) can be tricky.

This can be a bit complicated because on a trip involving many international and domestic flights means that care must be taken not to exceed the lower limit of all the flights when packing at home. If not, then you can expect to pay hefty fee for excess baggage somewhere on your trip.

Once the bags have been packed and the house-sitter arranged, it is time to start this mammoth journey. Fortunately, Mark and Alexa got a lift from friends to the Adelaide Airport for the first leg of their journey to South America.

Luckily, all the frequent flyer points that Mark and Alexa had been hoarding came in handy for an upgrade from economy to business class on the trip from Adelaide to Sydney. This meant that while they waited for their flight, they could relax in the Business Class lounge and have a leisurely breakfast and read the morning papers.

Even luckier was the fact that they also had enough points to upgrade their flight from Sydney to Santiago in Chile given that the voyage from their home to Santiago would take over 17 hours. Again, that gave them the luxury of waiting for their flight in the Business Class lounge at the International airport. This would be the first holiday trip that Mark and Alexa had taken Business Class flights.

it would be a loooong day!! Mark and Alexa would arrive at the hotel in Santiago at about 2pm, but by 7.15am the following morning, they would be going back to the airport to board a fiver and half hour flight back across the Pacific to Easter Island.

Quite bizarrely, it was both cheaper and quicker to get to Easter Island by flying to Santiago and then back to Easter Island, rather than to fly to Easter Island without going backwards across the Pacific.