Sayonara Santiago

If South America is famous for its seafood it bloody well shouldn´t be. Throughout Brazil, Uruguay and Argentina any order of pescado was met with a plateful of suspicious stodge, usually with a piece of unwashed iceberg thrown on top in an attempt to disguise how completely unpalatable it looks. If it was once fish, any resemblance had been absolutely obliterated by a seventeen hour boiling session. With the faint hope that the Chilean attitude to cooking fish might be a tad more delicate, we ventured to Santiago´s Mercado Central, a fish market that was built in Birmingham and is apparently an exact replica of the old Spitalfield´s meat market in London. ¨Thank God!¨ we exclaimed with relief as we virtually inhaled our first piece of properly cooked fish for approx. two months. Look how happy Matty looks at the fish market! Behold how he beams! After lunch we went to look at this peculiar statue in the main square, a landmark that went apparently unscathed during the earthquake. Frankly, I dread to think what the other less fortunate ornaments ended up looking like. And so it was that we waved goodbye to Santiago. The only thing left to report is that my darling sister Chloe (or Clo, as the Tidman´s call her, partly because we can´t spell for toffee but mainly because the effort of those two extra letters would be too much to comprehend), has had a brand of cartoned wine named after her. Clo, you´ll be pleased to know that despite the inferior quality that the packaging represents, your wine is surprisingly drinkable and extremely reasonably priced (not to say cheap) to boot.