Time for a day off to recuperate our energies and sleep off the cold I felt coming. We visited the ‘Cerro de siete colores’ (The hill of seven colours). Naturally we timed our visit for midday when the colours were at their most washed out.

By the second evening most of the guests had left for Chile as the pass had opened and we spent a pleasant evening with a couple from Buenos Aires, a Swiss lady and the manager of the hostel. The conversation mostly in English thank goodness. We have been finding our Italian knowledge useful for understanding written Spanish but the pronunciation of the spoken word is so different it is taking time to pick up. In moments of stress I still revert to the Italian.
One of the sad things very evident in all the places we had visited during our short stay, even in the posh bits of Santiago, was the number of large stray dogs roaming around. The manager of the hostel said that people feed them. However they were unnaturally submissive, many with nasty injuries. Thankfully none of them have so far found it necessary to chase our bikes unlike their Marchigiani cousins. The odd thing is that we have yet to see a cat…