La Paz to Santiago

Picked up at  9.30am for the 2000 km trip to Santiago and the end of our holiday. Our itinerary said a six hour trip but we thought they must have made a mistake. Boy! were we wrong. We found out when booking in that there were two stops and after waiting for 2 hours found out the flight was delayed for another hour and a half.  Thirty minutes into the flight we landed at Arika, a town in northern Chile. As we had now left Bolivia we were now in Chile. We had to disembark, go through Immigration and then collect our luggage and go through customs. The luggage was then immediately placed back on the carousel and loaded back on the plane.  This all took almost an hour.  We then boarded the plane again and another 30 mins later we landed at  Equique, another town in the middle of the Atacama Desert. This time we got to stay on the plane while they re-fuelled, seat belts undone ( just in case) for thirty minutes to off load and board passengers. Finally we took off again for the 2 hour flight to Santiago where lunch was served at 4.00pm. Arrived about 7.45pm after leaving our hotel room in La Paz at 9.30am.....cont.