A new journey begins

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WELL IT'S 4:00 AM on the 28th of February and as you can see I'm all packed up ready to go and I'm just about to leave, heading off to Brisbane Airport with a big adventure across the Pacific Ocean, so it's going to be a very very long day. I'll catch you a bit further along.

Hi guys, I'm in the Brisbane International terminal, now checked in with my boarding passes for the first two legs. It is a little while before I board my first flight over to Auckland, New Zealand, so I'll see you in Auckland.

Hi guys, I've made it into Auckland Airport, the first leg of 2198 kilometres done. It's now about 3:00 in the afternoon and just a couple of hours before my next plane to Santiago comes in, and then I'll be on my way again.

Well it's about 2:00 PM, still the 28th of February. I've arrived in Santiago and staying in this hotel just for tonight before I do my next leg of this trip across into Argentina and down towards the bottom of the continent. This is very handy with the airport just out the window here. There are mountains out there but it is quite hazy here as it was last time I was here.

I left Auckland about 6:15 tonight and it's 2:00 PM, so thanks to the International Date Line I have arrived here before I left Auckland. That isn't quite true because I spent a good twelve hours flying across the South Pacific as you saw before going above some of the most remote sea in the world.

I left Brisbane at about 5:00 this morning and it is 2:00 now, with ten hours time difference, it would be midnight at home. It hasn't been too bad having done 19 hours travel across the South Pacific. I have got two more flights to catch tomorrow so as you can imagine I'll be spending the rest of the day resting up and getting some good sleep to overcome this jetlag. Though with the windows in the dreamliner I'd be interested to see how well they worked. I'm actually feeling pretty good. I'm normally tired when sitting around on airplanes for hours and hours.

It was interesting coming through immigration through the same place I came through on my last trip here in 2010 on the way to doing the Inca Trail. Then I landed just after 12:00 at the same time of day as I had done today. I was then supposed to catch another flight up to Lima but for some reason that flight got cancelled so a bunch of us including two couples I was going to do the Inca Trail with were stuck here. It was quite an adventure getting out of the airport but we got some special clearance to clear customs to stay in the city for the night. We didn't get to the hotel until after midnight, so I was very tired by then.

It was interesting getting through immigration again, this time smoothly. Chile is pretty strict with its quarantine like Australia and New Zealand which are isolated islands. Chile has the Pacific Ocean to the west, the Andes (4000 - 7000 metre high impenetrables mountains) to the east, and the very dry Atacama Desert to the north. To the south the continent peters out to the Strait of Magellan and Antarctica. Getting through quarantine was easy as I obviously wan't carrying any plant or animal products and got through the x-ray with no problems.

Where I'm heading tomorrow is in the same time zone so if I can get used to this time zone I should be okay. I have two flights to catch leaving here at 7:00 tomorrow morning, so on that note I'll close off.