Macabre thoughts

Over 30 hours of traveling and we have arrived in Punta Arenas in Chile, I have flown in 3 planes to get here, all of which have had their hair raising moments, not least of which was seeing our luggage on a carousel in Santiago when we were told it was 'through booked' to Punta Arenas, we were lucky to arrive here with all our bags intact.

The approach into Punta Arenas with the strong southerly winds over the Magellan Straights was particularly scary, at one point I thought the wing tip out of my window was going to touch down before the wheels did.

The flight into Santiago, was stunning. The Iberian plane was fitted with a "tail cam" which displayed a live feed of the plane flying on our LCD screens. I could see the rolling foothills of Uruguay and the high Andes in the distance along with the curvature of the earth. I was reminded of the famous story of the crash of Flight 571 where a Uruguayan Rugby team crashed in the Andes on their way to a game in Santiago, Chile in 1972. They were stranded for 72 days in the mountains and ended up having to eat the dead to survive. As we hit some heavy turbulence I looked around the plan to see who I would eat if we were in the same situation, unfortunately the flight was full of scrawny Italians so I don't think I would have fared well.