The journey into the centre was uneventful and we were deposited outside the main train station where we bought our tickets to Rancagua and retired to McDonalds to wait for the train , have a snack and to read our precious news. The train was pretty busy but we managed to get a couple of seats for the 1 and a quarter hour journey south through the various barrios of Santiago (some very poor) and towns. Our guard / ticket inspector was very helpful and let us know when Rancagua would be coming up. At Rancagua we alighted with minimum fuss, but outside we ran into our first problem: how do we get to our host's house?

Answer: Taxi, where from? A helpful man suggested the taxi rank outside the train station. We waited for ten minutes - no taxis, so we walked up the road to a spot where lots of black and yellow cars where stopping. Taxis? Nope. They're "collectivos" - shared taxis which only go to designated areas, unfortunately the collectivos at this point didn't go to our host's barrio (neighborhood) and the manager suggested that we should walk in to town to find our collectivo. So we walked in to town with our packs on our backs the sun shining and the sweat pouring, with a good deal of interest from the locals. We couldn't find the collectivo to our host's district and decided to head for the tourist info office - another trek across town. The TI office is closed on Saturdays - bugger and we can't find a taxi - bugger. Time to resort to our final plan: phone our hosts and hope they have a car to rescue us.

Bingo - the Domenech family car was at home and waiting for our arrival, they would be with us in 30 minutes. Whilst waiting for our hosts to send the cavalry we saw a couple of backpackers heading up the road to the closed TI office, Claire headed them off at the pass: Rachel and her friend were in Rancagua for the weekend to have a break from studying in Santiago. They had a look at our info on Rancagua - not much and then Nancy Domenech, her youngest son: Gaston and her neice arrived together with Alicia and Nate (two american exchange studants) to whisk us away. We said goodbye to Rachel and her friend (got a contact in Santiago) and left for our host's house and where we were introduced to Senor Carlos Domenech and his middle son: Christobal. Unfortunately their eldest son: Carlos (junior) couldn't get away from his work, as a doctor in Concepcion. Alicia and Nate acted as interpreters for us as they've been in Rancagua for several months and can speak fluent Chilean spanish with slang, Gaston and Christobal speak good english and usually one of them is around to help out if we hit a snag when talking with Carlos and Nancy.

Later in the evening Alicia arrived to take us out to a Supermarket together with her "surrogate" father to buy booze (beer and pisco) and meat for the barbecue. Pisco is the national drink, kind of like white rum, and is drunk mixed with Cola, Lemonade or Lemon and Bitters (v. nice). Alicia's father drove us back to their house where we helped Alicia set up for the party. Her friends arrived and we proceeded to get drunk and eat salad and the barbecued meat whilst chatting to folks in a mixture of English (mostly) and Spanish (fleetingly) assited by our interpreters / new amigos: Alicia and Nate, before returning to the Domenech's house at 2 am to collapse in to bed.