Santiago, Chile

NZ Postscript

Had a day climbing on the roadside sea cliffs of Golden Bay, which are a bit scrappy but worth a look. Dice amd I were now a well-tuned partnership, warming up on 17´s and taking it forth from there. We each led an 18 and 19, and fell off a pair of rubbishy 21´s that we were only doing to push our grade a bit. Then Dice pulled a block off the top while trying to retrieve the last difficult quickdraw. He came hurtling off the top of the cliff, taking a short but harsh (factor 2) fall onto a 2-bolt belay anchor when his handhold pulled. His Prussik knot stopped his fall (always use Prussiks when abseiling, kids). He was out of action for a few days afterwards with a painful kneecap and a limp that prompted questions around the campsite. He´s OK now. But as I has made the same abseil only minutes before and fretted somewhat about the rusty anchor, it was all very unsettling. I don´t trust fixed gear by the sea, especially after hearing horror-stories of bolt failure in Thailand.

Apart from that it was a great day out...

Incidentally Dice´s actual name is Thijs, pronounced Tice, not Thighs...anybody old enough to remember Focus´s Thijs van Leer´s yodelling in Sylvia is assured that his name was not made up.

Next day was rainy in Takada, but looked OK on the coast. I headed up to Farewell Spit, a 12 km sandbar that rounds off Golden Bay. Whales often get beached here. There were tons of black swans and oystercatchers mooching in the shallows as the tide went out. Amazing fact for the day, courtesy of the visitor centre: the bar-tailed godwit migrates from Alaska direct to New Zealand in 7 days. More here: http://www.gi.alaska.edu/ScienceForum/ASF17/1742.html and here: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18524925.700.html

Then drove to Nelson, caught some live music, dropped in on the amazing Castle Hill boulders on the way back to Christchurch, got a parking ticket for parking (get this) the wrong way round on a city street...(somehow I neglected to pay up, but I have planned my defence: your Honour, I admit that I was a fool...I knew the risks of renting a compact, and I should have listened to the spotty youth who threatened me with "Hey Mister, give us a dollar or I´ll let the wardens turn your car round". Interpol are probably on my tail as I write, but I reckon I´ll be OK down here with Butch and Sundance)...and had a frantic night out with a mad dentist from Bristol and one of her patients who she had just bumped into randomly, involving contagious jigging in an Irish pub. I´ll sleep next day on the plane, I thought.

No chance: the 11-hour LANair flight was cramped and cram-packed.

Santiago

Determined to stay up til midnight (check out the town...disappiontingly like any of the scruffier and more industrialised Spanish cities), only now do I realise what a sleep-debt I had tallied up. Yesterday I slept for 18 hours solid. So much for the day I gained crossing the dateline. Only now am I waking up enough to decide what to do around here...

Immediate options include a foray to Mendoza in Argentina, perhaps with a quick look up the valley towards Aconcagua, highest peak in the Americas, en route. Then north to the Atacama Desert, and Bolivia. Maybe a quick nap first...