Santiago.

Another shot of the Andes when we were coming over on the bus.

Kat really enjoying the Chilean fast food, completos. Basically a hot dog with mashed avocado, tomatoes and mayo as a topping.

Impressive synchronised sleeping by some local hobos.

The view of the city from the hill of St Cristobal, you can just make out the Andes in the background.

Kat glad to be back looking over her old stomping ground.

The view from one of the kid's room's balcony in the new house. Nice!

Now that we've settled in I've a bit more time on my hands so here's a bit more about Santiago and some more photos.

Compared to Buenos Aires we're finding Santiago to be very clean and less frantic, but the main difference is that here everything just works. The underground system for example is great and puts London's effort to shame too.

The city is surrounded by the Andes and you can see them wherever you are in the city, depending on how bad the smog is. Today as we were walking down the hill you could see a thick layer of smog sitting on top of the skyscrapers blocking any sight of the mountains beyond. I think that as the city is surrounded by the Andes there is nowhere for all the pollution created to disperse so it just sits there. I wonder if it's going to keep getting worse as more and more people buy cars, yes probably.

Since being here we've been wandering around Kat's old haunts from when she lived here. It's been really nice for me to be able to put a sight to a story and to see where she worked and lived. She's noticed a big change, much for the better, in the city over the 3 years that she's been away.

We've had a nice walk up (actually most of it was via funicular) to visit St Cristobal up on a hill overlooking the city, visits to some markets including a great antiques one and also an arts and crafts one today where I bought a nice leather satchel. Over the next few days we're planning on hitting the museums, visiting a seaside town of Valparaiso and maybe a little warm up trek in the surrounding mountains.

We're flying down to Punta Arenas early on Saturday morning to start our Patagonian adventure and so we had a bit of a shopping spree today for trekking equipment. Trousers, waterproof trousers and some water bottles. Im getting really excited about it now. We've heard from everyone how breathtaking the scenery is down there and there might be an opportunity to see some orcas too. The change in weather might be a bit of a shock though bit it'll be good to finally be able to use the fleeces, rain jackets and other warm clothes that up till now have been absolutely no use at all.