Day 8 - Arriving in Santiago

On Tuesday, we took a one hour minibus ride to Balmaceda. Coyhaique doesn't have an airport because there are too many mountains in that area. The closest town with an airport was Balmaceda, which is very close to the border with Argentina. It is a small town with not many people, but the airport is quite busy because everyone from Coyhaique goes there to fly places.

The plane took two and a half hours to get to Santiago (the capital city of Chile). We flew over lots of mountain and fjords, some of the mountains were volcanoes. Once we were flying over the city of Santiago, I looked out the window at the little houses and almost all of them had pools (it was rare to see a house without a pool).

At the airport we were picked up by another minibus and taken to our apartment (it seems like everyone uses minibuses in Chile). We are on the fifth floor and we can look out and see a great view (of the hotel next to us). We are very close to a shopping centre called the Costanera Centre that has the tallest tower in South America. We can see it from our apartment balcony - we can also see the New Zealand embassy building which has a helipad on top of the building.