outward journey

The Iberia plane I was supposed to get from London Heathrow to Madrid was cancelled and replaced with a British Airways plane, which was probably a better service anyway. Upon my arrival in Madrid things just took a turn for the worse, I had no boarding pass for my connecting flight and when I asked the information desk they said to ask at the Iberia information booth. I asked there and they said I'd have to go out of the terminal, from terminal 4 to 4s and then go to the LAN check in desk to get my boarding pass. Unfortunately this meant going through the passport control to leave the terminal, then on returning going through passport control again, quite an inconvenience. I did this and I only had an hour to get my connecting flight, I was just in time but then there was a further complication, the Iberia flight had once again been cancelled and was replaced by a 4 hour delayed LAN flight to Santiago Chile, apparently LAN is a very good airline. Due to the unforeseen delays, Madrid airport had given a free 3 course lunch to everybody on my flight, this was good as I was starving and got a free lunch out of it.
The LAN flight was amazing, the seats were very large and quite comfortable, a good overall long haul flight, because of the delay in meant that I was going from a 00.05 arrival to a 04.30 arrival. The long flight meant that I could watch a few films and generally get some sleep and read and that sort of thing.
When we were getting off the plane at Santiago, there were 2 queues for the passport control, one for internationals and one for Chilean nationals. I went into the queue for Chilean nationals then realised I was wrong and went to the back of the other queue, only to be moved back into the first queue due to it being a lot shorter and quicker. When I got to the desk it was a different story, because my passport is a good few years old, it means that my appearance has changed quite a lot. This was a bit of bother as the customs officer didn't believe that it was my passport, she told me to take off my glasses, which I did to no affect. Then another person was called over, same again, then the supervisor came over and she told me to pull my hair back off my forehead, move my moustache away form my lips and take off my glasses, I gave them my driving licence but that probably just added to the confusion as it also looks completely different, especially to me right now. After about 5 minutes of deliberation they let me go through and stamped my passport.
I had to go through more controls as the Chilean ministry of agriculture had strict rules on what you could bring into the country. This was after collecting my baggage, it had to be scanned again and I had to go through more metal detectors to exit the airport.
After more than 24 hours of travelling, I was still sitting at the Tur-bus terminal in Santiago waiting for a bus to take me to Villarrica, the place I was meant to be meeting my old Chilean school friend Sam. The bus ticket to Villarrica had cost me $37100 pesos which converts to roughly £50, this was a considerable hit to my budget and I knew that next time I'd have to be much more careful how I spend my money especially on travel. What annoyed me most about this was the fact that apparently Pullman another bus operator was doing the same route for about £20, I would definitely have to be much more careful in future.

Luckily for me although costly, was the fact that I was in a Semi-cama bus, this meant that the seat was very large and reclined very far. It was actually better than business class on most planes. I slept for most of the journey, after all I had been constantly travelling for over 24 hours and was on a 9 hour bus journey to a small town 900km south of Santiago called Villarrica, its named Villarrica because of the early settlers and prospectors believed they would find gold so stayed and searched in vein for gold that never existed, the name means 'rich town'.
Villarrica is a small town on a lake aptly named lake Villarrica and near a volcano also named Villarrica. It is a small town on the south western corner of the lake. Across the other side of the lake to the South Eastern side is another town called Pucon. I was planning to go and visit Pucon sometime whilst I was here and possibly trek up or near to Volcano Villarrica supposedly the most active volcano in Chile according to the tourist information. All this time, 2 days I have completely unable to contact Sam, I think the number he has given me is wrong, I have sent him some emails and messages on facebook letting him know where I am and what I am doing.
Unfortunately my Spanish is very bad and I haven't been able to communicate with anybody, just managing to get by in supermarkets and restaurants. I decided to try again calling Sam but nothing, it doesn't seem to be working at all.

I found a hostel in the lonely planet travel guide and its sounded quite reasonable so I went there so I'd at least have a place to stay for the first night. The Hostel is La Terra Suiza, it is owned by a Swiss couple as the name might suggest. The couple seem very nice and friendly, the bloke looks typically German or thereabouts with a mullet and a moustache. The only English speaking people are the hostel owners and a few French people staying here, they are rarely around but in our brief chats, they have recommended to go to Pucon and if I like hiking then to go and check out the Volcano, you can climb it in a tour for about £45/50, it looks very interesting but I don't think I'm interested enough in it to pay that to climb it.