12/1 Rain rain go away ...

Thursday 12 January        Rain!

A very dreary day during which the sun did not appear at all and it drizzled constantly and occasionally poured. I knew I shouldn’t have done the laundry last night! We didn’t shift from the hostel and reflected several times how lucky we were not to be in a tent on a day like that.  It is also in our thoughts that the later part of the trip is going to be at high altitude and Very cold (sub-zero at least), Very wet and VERY windy. It is going to be challenging to manage to return to a not too large tent and have to take off layers of soaking wet clothing and stop it from dripping over sleeping bags and other clothes. Apparently the wind is quite extraordinarily fierce. Yay.

Some of the youngsters hired bikes and went to the local swimming hole. Some tried the drifting down the river outing ($150) and said it was very beautiful. It would have to be. Peter apparently is not a huge swimmer and got swept into sharp rocks and finished up with his hand bandaged and sundry other contusions. You are a bit of a Jonah mate J Im not sure I want to be in your boat whenever we take to the ocean off Cape Horn.

The river is crystal clear and full of very large fish and the snorkel  trip takes approx. 2.5 hours.

Our day started badly with an email from Air Asia advising that they are withdrawing from their routes to Europe and India. Yay yay. So there goes our return trip from Paris. They have offered various remedies including refund (not much use to us) or transfer to another carrier at no cost.

Given that Air Asia are a very successful operation, one has to wonder how the other airlines are going to cope with the combination of rising fuel costs and economic decline? AA might just be the first of many?

In other news to hand, Lachlan apparently took his first steps the previous evening, a few days short of his first birthday. In view of his unsteady start in life, this is amazing and a source of immense joy.