Leaving argentina via chile

Was a trip on its own!

 Flying out from Resistencia, into Buenos Aires, taxiing back to the Babel suites hotel in San telmo where we had been two weeks before. It sure helps to go back to places the kids know, and for us, it was nice and easy as well, and the presence of David and Val (in their very particular way)/was a plus as well! We spent the evening in a cerveceria downtown before wearing our sleeping kids "home", re- pack our bags a bit more seriously and more in honour of my Mertens-genes, and then have a short night of sleep. Taxis out at 5:45 on Monday and flying out to Chile around 8. We were warmly welcomed by ground floor customer care people, which I thought was great and incredibly good from qansas, until I understood the special treatment was due to our flight to Sydney being reprogrammed 24h later. 

So poor us, we were forced to sleep in the hotel across the street, for the first time in two communicating rooms, forced to have all meals taken car of and so we forced ourselves to go to downtown Santiago for a 2-3hours express trip.

 On the good advice of our verrrry friendly van driver, we where dropped off at the funicular after having driven around a little (kids fell asleep immediately and I have to admit I had a hard time not to... ) funiculars and high cityviews did the perfect job for a great afternoon, finishing in a student bar just a few streets away, where Nice Van Driver picked us back up. 

Dinner. Bedtime (thank you deryan tents to provide for those secure recognasible 'own spot' sleeping places for the boys - no matter how bulky you are, I m sure it has saved us already numerous nervous breakdowns in the evening with kids getting overexcited with the (to us) well-known "new place - new nightly party" sindrom!). Wake up. Pack (Pascale) have breakfast with the kids (Pierre) then cross the streets and now for real, lets get boarded for that 14hours of daytime flight to Sydney!!

We got to see the cockpit from our 747, but Pierre and I where more excited about it than our kids who decided to play "lets see who can be the most shy" and definitely ended up sharing the highest step of the podium on that game... 

Seated in our seats, all our friends of the plane from Buenos Aires  whom we had shared the last 24hours with as well, where glad to see - and not to shy to mention - that Matthias was seated at the window... That would avoid the nervous breakdown that lasted for 40minutes on the bue-chile flight. 

(It is William on the pic) Talking about nervous breakdowns (after all they are still in the terrible twos ... The two of them) and the 14h flight, I did take the bottle of antihistamine sirop out of my 5kg pharmacy into my hand luggage this time. The pharmacist had told me " quidado, da sueno" so I figured that might be just a perfect escape plan this time. But don't tell our paediatrician, nor the doctors among our friends !

The 14 hours flight went fine, oh, well, went OK. Once in sydney we had to wait an hour or two before flying backwards to Christchurch. We got into a lounge with a creditcard membership. It is a very efectif way to have the launch for yourself, to get in with three kids... Oeps.. 

Although seriously they where OK. Amélie sleepy in a couch, mat and bill enjoying the luxury of the prams and playing control tower at the window.
We arrived at midnight at Christchurch. Cold and rainy. There was some suspense to know if they would get asleep... After all, they slept in the planes and it was 8 o clock in the morning for their biological clock... At around 2 they 'magically' fell asleep..... ;-) no comment.

Next day Pierre picked up the campervan, we went to the supermarket, bought some rain boots as well and Pierre an extra sweater. It was after all, really really colder than expected!
Off to 3 weeks of new Zealand adventures! Starting off with the southern island!