16:34

We’re resting again after spending the morning out in the suburb of Los Dominicos, checking out the artisan community and market there. We rose late and showered before breakfast at the hotel buffet, then left to catch a metro train from Santa Luciá station, right in front of the hotel, to Los Dominicos at the eastern end of the line, some 13 stops away. The tickets cost 560 pesos each, just over one Australia dollar. The trains run frequently and quickly, and the one we caught was standing room only. It terminated two stops before Los Dominicos, and everyone got off, but another train appeared a minute later to take us the rest of the way.

18:52

The station exited on to the edge of a large grassy park with trees in autumn foliage colouring it shades of green and yellow. To the east lay the Dominican monastery after which the area was presumably named – a Spanish colonial edifice with two symmetrical square bell towers, topped by small domes. We walked towards it and next to it found the artisan community market that the lady at our hotel reception told us about yesterday. This was an enclosed area containing hacienda-style buildings of adobe with tile rooves, divided into about 150 small workshops and shops, plus a couple of small cafes. There were leatherworkers, woodworkers, copper and silversmiths, sculptors, painters in both oils and watercolours, weavers, knitters, basketworkers, glassblowers, jewellers, and lapidarists, potters and more.
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Monday, 2 May, 2011. 17:21

We are relaxing some more in our room after an easy day wandering around central Santiago. We got up late, a bit after 09:00, and went to the breakfast buffet. We had cereal, bread rolls, and M. had a freshly cooked fried egg to order and a pancake with jam.

A bit later, we went for a walk, heading north into central Santiago and the Plaza des Armas. On the way to the plaza, we saw a CD shop where I stopped to see if they had any CDs of the Latin American covers of U2 songs that I’d been hearing everywhere in Peru. The old lady in the shop spoke no English but I managed to get her to pull out half a dozen real U2 albums. But when I tried to indicate that I was looking for their songs by other groups—Latin American groups—she was boggled. She called a guy who came from somewhere a minute later and who spoke a bit of English. I think I got my request across, but when he explained it to the lady, they both looked at me seriously and said no such thing existed, at least not in Chile, as if they were denying any association with scandalous bootleg cover versions. Disappointed, we left to continue onto the Plaza des Armas.

This square was smaller than I expected, smaller than the one in Lima, and more cluttered with objects: trees, benches, statues, etc, that blocked sightlines across the square. There was also a line of marquees set up along one side and a bit around the corner in front of the cathedral. It appeared to be a book publisher exposition or something, as all the stalls were full of new books.

We went in the Metropolitan Cathedral to look around. A sign outside seemed to say restoration work was planned and sadly it looked like it on the inside. It could have been beautiful, but the paintings on the ceiling vaults and walls looked dusty and dull, and some small parts of the ceiling were patchy and broken. We walked around inside, including going down into the crypt, where there was a large space with a crucifix sculpture protected by bars. One of the chapels around the sides of the cathedral contained an altar dripping with silver. Part of the right side of the main aisle was cordoned off and there was scaffolding there, so maybe they’d started working on it already.
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Sunday, 1 May, 2011. LAN flight from Lima to Santiago, 15:12

It’s a travel day, as we go from Cusco to Santiago, via Lima. We rose at 06:15, after a reasonable night’s sleep. I took another Imodium just before bed to ensure I didn’t repeat any of the problems of the previous night. Thankfully it seemed to work.

We had breakfast about 06:30, then returned to our room to brush teeth, seal up our bags, and head out. I had to use the loo urgently, but it was a fairly normal event. It did however hold us up a few minutes while our taxi was waiting outside the hotel. We checked out and were on our way by 07:10.

At Cusco airport, we had to check in, for which there was only a single counter open, with a queue of a dozen or so people. Nearby were self-check-in terminals, but no matter what I tried, frequent flyer number, booking confirmation code, passport number, nothing worked to access our booking. So we waited in the queue as it slowly trickled forwards. The two men in front of us got to the counter and took ages there. M. said they were changing their flights. Finally, they left and we checked in. We tried to go through security, but they wouldn’t let us until closer to our flight time. So M. got a cappuccino at a cafe while we waited. Then we went through and were on our way on another flight.

The flight to Lima was an eventless one and a half hours. The good thing was arriving and feeling the sea level air pressure and the soothing effect it had on our breathing and heart rates. At Lima, we emerged from the domestic arrivals area into the main terminal, and then went upstairs to the departures area to go to international departures. The first thing was a security check, which was pretty quick, then we had to clear immigration, which took significantly longer. There was a single queuing corral, but at the end it split up into four lines, supermarket checkout style. We chose the wrong line, because someone in front of us apparently had a problem and our line didn’t move at all for about ten minutes. Meanwhile, people who had been fifty people behind us in the original queue were passing through before us in one of the other sub-queues. Eventually we made it through, then browsed some shops on the far side. I tried asking in one shop that had CDs for Latin American covers of European pop songs. A guy told me he knew exactly what I meant, such things were very well known, but they didn’t have any!
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Saturday, 30 April, 2011. Mama Sara Hotel, no time recorded

We rose late and had breakfast and dropped off a load of laundry at the nearest lavanderia, before the final tour group meeting. Ale was there in the hotel lounge early, writing out cards with our tour number for us to fill out online feedback when we got home. Kim and Laura were there, and Pan and Jian, and Zaina and Zeeshan, and Olivia, and us. Andrew was apparently still sleeping after a late night out, and I don’t know where Lynne and Garry were, though we had seen Garry earlier while eating breakfast.

Ale collected our e-mail addresses in her diary, while I handed out my photo cards so the others could check out my photos from the trip. Then farewells were said and we handed over an envelope with collected tips – we were a little generous with ours as we thought Ale had done a great job and we’d enjoyed everything on the tour. Hugs were shared and officially we were no longer a tour group any more.
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