Woods go South, Christmas Falkland Island Style

Chapter 2 (20-22nd December – Chile) So as I start to type it’s actually Christmas Eve and I really thought I would have had plenty of time to keep my log up to date. I hadn’t reckoned on everyone making sure I haven’t been bored to date! Anyhow I’ll catch up; after all Christmas Day is ahead. So we walked into Chile on Wednesday night after a long flight. Immigration consisted of filling in a short customs form and then handing it over with passports after a short 5 min queue. Unless you’re Australian. Australians have a special desk where they part with around $100 to enter – this is known as a reciprocal entry fee – in other words – “you shaft us so we’ll shaft you”. This my friends  is the shape of things to come post Brexit. Our 90 day entry was free and painless. The hotel was next to the terminal (IHG points this time) and the comfortable beds very welcome. Thursday morning was gloriously sunny forecast to be around 30C in Santiago. That would have been poor preparatio...

Tuesday 18th December - to Madrid In the last five years there seems to have been plenty of travel stresses on our Christmas holidays. Air traffic control failing in whole UK, fog delays and lost baggage (all of it). So it was no surprise to learn that the A55 - the road of all of North Wales uses to get anywhere ended up closed. This was due to a “device” being found on Colwyn Bay beach. This is ironic given we thought the mines were to be avoided in The Falklands not North Wales. Anyway I would imagine it was a WWII mine being washed ashore and the military dealt with it eventually. Given our past experiences we did leave ridiculously early and avoided this closure by about 30min. Finally some luck. Even the flights to London and onward to Madrid were only an hour or so late! We found our baggage (all of it) all be it on the wrong carousel. We got a six hours sleep in the hotel and parted with 30 euros for a bloody pizza from room service - but not much choice at midnight. Fun fac...