Friday 13th August - Santiago - Valparaiso
Rather than grab a taxi to the bus station we availed of the bus leaving from next door to our apartment . Soon we were on the bus to Valpariso cutting through twisty mountain roads. Derek was feeling not great as we´d woken up early again as our body clocks were still adjusting to South American time. We left our bags in the local bus station depot and headed towards the town centre. Valparaiso is a coastal city/port surrounded on 3 sides by high mountainous backdrops. At various points dotted around the city are furnicular type lifts that take the locals quickly up the equivalent of 200/300 steep steps - in one case it´s actually vertical and is essentially an underground tunnel and then a lift. We couldn´t decide where to eat until a local bar owner spotted us and persuaded us to dine with his local friends. Bad decision as we were served up some pretty average fare. We climbed a couple of ´furniculars´ and admired the great views around the city. Sat outside a cafe witih a ´view to kill for´ until it got too cold to stay any longer - we wished we´d had lunch there. At this stage of the afternoon the sight seeing faded out and shopping came into view as Derek decided he needed a belt and some new sunglasses . We soon gave up and checked our email. We´d been making enquiries about booking an Inca Trail trip in Peru and finally had a promising response. They told us the only way to pay was via the Western Union - no credit cards accepted. We got the address for the nearest one and headed straight there. Having never used a Western Union before (or heard of in Sue´s case) we had no idea how it all worked so when we saw ´bank´at the given address we thought we had what we needed. But no, we were told we need to go upstairs to the department store to do it. Up we headed and marched around looking on each floor in turn with no luck. Finally we get help off a helpful young store clerk who spoke some English. After much discussion back and forth with us, the clerk and the girl behind the counter, we were told we could only transfer pesos in cash but not to dollars, to local Peruvian currency only! This sounded like a pile of crap to us so we left pretty cheesed off that we couldn´t pay for our trip in a straight-bloody´-forward way!! Convenient money movement they call it but not for us this time .

Our overnight bus was imminent so we ate in a nearby ´greasy spoon´ cafe. Sue´s steak would´ve been good for shoe repairs whilst the waiter who had some broken English tried to explain to us about a film actor called ´Burt´ who´d made a film in Ireland. Could it be ´Reynolds´ or ´Lancaster´ even, we asked him? No, it turned out he was trying to say ´Mel Gibson´!!
We paid our bill and got to the bus station. Derek went to look for the bus whilst Sue stayed with the bags. A local approached Sue and started rambling about accomodation - ´I don´t speak Spanish´ she told him. He smiled and as Sue turned back she realised our 2 small backpacks had gone with everything in them! His mate had floated round the back, lifted our bags and legged it, all in the space of a few seconds whilst she was distracted. Derek ran out the back with another local but they were gone into the shadow of darkness. We made a scene without knowing it as we freaked out knowing our passports, credit cards, money and flight tickets had been stolen. Most locals stood around bemused, but one, Cesar was his name, came forward as he spoke good English and wanted to help. Our heads were spinning and rational thought disappeared as we tried to comprehend what was happening. The police arrived, were briefed by Cesar, and before we knew it we were all in the back of the police car racing around the local rough areas desperately seeking sight of our bags. Somehow we ended up searching the railway tracks with the police. No luck there - next thing we´re back in the van in the middle of a high-speed chase through red lights, etc. We heard a gunshot and weren´t sure whether to duck or not. Unfortunately the man who they nabbed was not either of the guys who robbed us. Off to the police station we drove with the cops and Cesar who had been a brilliant help to us liaising with the cops and us. We gave them a brief description of what´d happened with instructions to return tomorrow with a full decription of what´d been stolen. The camera and video recorder had been in the bags too! Not to mention our American Visa and the trouble we had getting that! Cesar said we could crash at his place for the night and we gratefully accepted the offer as we didn´t have a lot of alternatives at 1am. We talked a while with Cesar over tea and crashed on his absent brother´s mattress. Our sleep was light and not helped by the man upstairs with the loud radio. We had finally got past Friday the 13th and for us it had been a long day.

Saturday 14th August - Valparaiso - Santiago
We woke up and realised it hadn´t been a nightmare. Cesar jumped on the local bus with us to the city centre where we went back to the police station, this time to give a full detailed report of what had been stolen. We had a desperate hope that overnight the bags would´ve been found but alas, no. The whole episode at the station was very depressing and dis-spiriting. We left Cesar as he went to work and we went into an internet cafe/telephone place to try and sort out the mess. After failing to try and book some accomodation we got to speak to someone at the British Embassy - he offered to come and pick us up and bring us back to Santiago. That was great - only problem was our large rucksacks were still at Cesar´s work place! So Derek made a dash in a taxi accross the city to Cesar´s workplace. He hoped there wouldn´t be a crash on the way to top it all as the seatbelt in the taxi was more like a lasso that hadn´t been thrown yet. The hills of Valparaiso looked great for skiing with more appropriate weather. Derek finally made it back after meeting Cesar and thanking him for all his invaluable help. Meanwhile Sue had been dealing with the stroppy cow in the internet cafe who wouldn´t let her make any calls to cancel our credit cards because we had no money - even though we had some borrowed! Finally, Ian from the UK embassy arrived to rescue us. He gave us some emergency cash and whisked us back to Santiago on a 2-hour journey. At the embassy, getting in was not easy, not surprisingly but we were finally able to cancel our cards and phone home to get some emergency cash winging it´s way to us from home. We were dropped off at a central hostel and were surprised to find that the price was only slightly less, for a room for 2 compared with the relative palace we stayed in on Thursday night. We finally discovered after nearly six months that we´re not keen on hostels really. Especially when this one had a leaky roof which wet the bedclothes. But then we moved downstairs to somewhere even worse where the noise levels were a joke - not possible to sleep here we thought. So we went back to the room we had originally once the owners had gotten out the hairdryer to dry the bloody sheets !!