Warm and cool, running water.

Two final things to note of Santiago. We used the city's efficient metro, and the Brother was delighted to see the large rubber wheels of the trains; we had to stop and stare at them every time we went onto the platform. The other was that on our way back from the vegetarian restaurant where we enjoyed a huge plate of stir fried veggies, we strolled through one of the many gardens in the middle of the city's busy wide roads. There we stumbled across a large fountain with a mesmerising display of powerful jets and vapour puffers, giving an apparently random performance in the slowly cooling evening. The height of the jets must have been around 30 feet, and there were about 25 of them down the middle, which would come on in sequence, turning off abruptly to leave an arc of water suspended in the air. With an international flight at 7.30, we needed to leave the hotel at 5am. I was up, dressed, packed and gingerly picking my way over the creaking floorboards, trying not to disturb anyone (although some guests had laughed and shouted on their departure half an hour before) by 4.50. The night porter told me that the taxi was already waiting, so I went to let the Brother know, and chatted with the driver in Santiago's pre-dawn warmth, while cars whizzed past and, further down the pavement, a home bound clubber slumped slowly to her knees at the bus stop. Several minutes later, no sign of the Brother, so I went and knocked again, only to be met with a grumpy retort about the accuracy of the taxi's timepiece. This, when translated into Spanish for the night porter and taxi driver, caused some mirth. We did eventually arrive at the airport, which was very busy, and found some more delicious fruit juice (chirimoya being the new one on me) while we waited. A flight over the Andes with the now more awake Brother happily snapping pics of enticing valleys and winding mountain roads brought us to Buenos Aires, and the uber trendy district of Palermo, where our hotel is a restored Art Nouveau facade, with all mod cons inside. Apart from the dead calf on the floor, it is sleek, fresh and marvellous. On a tree-lined street, with a maximum of three rooms per floor, modern design and state of the art bathrooms, it has just stepped out of the pages of an interiors feature. My bathroom has a mini-terrace with a jacuzzi open to the sky, and level with the canopy of the plane trees, and I made full use of it. The Brother, given his rather measly room in Santiago, deserved the better room, which has a large terrace with tables, chairs, orange beanbag and a jacuzzi. He'd saved my Benjamin of cava from Ushuaia, and said he'd drink it in the jacuzzi, but didn't use the facility. He's under instruction to have one before we leave today. We had a long ramble through some of the city's less well-known sights, ending up with a stroll through the shishi designer shopping area of downtown Palermo. Our route just happened to rotate around a couple of railway lines, and we even had to cross a level crossing, the Brother having the immense good fortune to capture a suburban train on camera as it sped past. Our last evening was spent dining al fresco at a restaurant which Lonely Planet described as a carnivore's paradise, but it did a pretty good sweet corn and squash stew too. The temperature just right for sitting outside, and the fashionable streets heaving with cool young things.