Santiago, Chile. Friday November 24th 2006.

This morning I head out in a taxi driving through the rush hour traffic (and this city certainly has traffic) to the bus station at Pajaritos. From here I will take the intercity Tur Bus in the direction of Viña del Mar to make my appointment at Colegio Caernarfon near Casablanca.

When I do my own arranging things prove to be so much better and I am lucky to be once again staying in a very good hotel with its own fleet of cars and drivers. The Atton Santiago is a very nice place to stay if you are ever in town.

Francisco, my driver this morning took me across the road at the bus station to make sure I was going the right way. He was a very nice man who spoke almost no English, but I did learn that his two brothers, his mother and grandmother were all teachers.

The boy at the bus station also proved to be very helpful and even came out of his office to see me on to the bus; and talk about luxury travel, this bus has airline style service right down to the pillows and blankets.

You have hardly left Santiago and you are in the Andes, it is such a brilliant contrast. And so I find myself out in wine country as we enter the Casablanca Valley.

Now it might seem strange for someone that was so violently attacked at the beginning of this project, but I am once again in one of those situations that could be described as slightly nutty.

I get the joy of standing upfront with the driver and the conductor for the last section of my journey, as we look for the underpass where I am to be dropped off to wait for John Eason, the Headmaster of Caernarfon College.

Here I am. The bus has departed and I stand on the hard shoulder of a motorway waiting for someone I don't know to collect me and take me to their school. I have no telephone, I am standing on a motorway and I have no means of returning to the city if this all goes wrong. I start to think how this must seem with me thousands of miles from home on a magical mystery tour.

Well this is a real adventure and the day proves to be magical.
John arrives, driving along the hard shoulder in the opposite direction to the oncoming traffic. This is a common sight that I have seen repeated time and again as I stand here at the road side.

Caernarfon proves to be a really lovely school with a genuine committment to education and not one of those exam factories that are becoming so common in education worldwide. As a result it achieves real progress in its students whom I find to be a welcoming, confident and inquiring group of young men and women.

The school has exceptionally small class sizes and the small nature of the school size gives the whole complex the atmosphere of a family setting.

I spend the morning talking to the students about the Building Blocks project and find them to be genuinely interested. The presentation is so successful that lunch has to be postponed until the later sitting.

In the early afternoon John takes me to visit the vineyard next door.

Viña Mar is a beautiful place with a very modern factory, all stainless steel vats, located on site producing some 2,400,000 litres of wine per year.

I learn that it takes 1kg of grape to produce 1 bottle of wine and that 1 hectare will generate between 8,000 and 10,000 kg of grapes.

Between March and April the white wine grapes are harvested by hand and in the early morning to preserve the aroma.

Between April and May the red wine grapes are harvested, again by hand. The key difference in white and red wine production is that with the reds all the grape, skin etc is used.

The wines here ferment in oak casks made only from French or American oak. The casks are used only for four years and then sold on to whisky producers.

After our tour John and I explore the main house and enjoy a wonderful glass of Sauvingnon Blanc Special Reserve 2006.

Back to school and its sports lesson time. I finish my day both in pedagogical discussion with John and in meeting with the kids, and the school present me with a lovely bottle of Viña Mar Sauvingnon Blanc Special Reserve 2006 as a gift.

www.caernarfon.cl

Then its a dash back to Santiago where Friday night awaits and cocktails on the terrace of the Club Principe de Gales.

On my way back into town I decide that I better not try the subte in case I get it wrong. Instead I take what looks like a taxi and I am shocked when 3 other people also get in. Without saying anything I just move across the seat and we head off, but not in the direction I want to go.

I later learn that I am in a colectivo, basically a bus in disguise.

No-one speaks English, but I learn that this bus is not going my way. The group all find this very funny and kindly take me back to where I began, at the bus station, and I head off for the tube.

I start again on what proves to be a very easy to negotiate subway.

Its that time of year when expats across the globe celebrate St Andrew's Day with a vigour unknown in Scotland. I arrive at the Prince of Wales Country Club in Las Arañas for the Junior Caledonian Ball.

It feels so much like home as I sit here on the terrace enjoying cocktails and canapes with the Headmistress and Deputy Headmistress of Bradford School, the Head of the Junior School at St Gabriel's and the Deputy Headmistress of The Grange.

Before the dancing gets under way the official welcomes are made. I am surprised to be included in the group and I am welcomed as William Glover of Glasgow.

The dance displays are very good and I even have the joy of partnering Jocelyn in the Gay Gordons.

I have had another fascinating day and again I am getting to see all sides of life here in South America.