We arrived in Valdivia at around 8am, after a 12 hour bus journey. Though we managed to get about 5 hours sleep, we were relieved that we could check in to our room immediately as we wanted to get back in bed for a few hours. We woke up again about midday, then spent the afternoon pottering around the town, and catching up on the internet. The town is pretty small, and there isn´t a great deal to see in the centre, but we had heard that it´s a uni town s...

Valpariaso is only about an hour away from Santiago by bus, on the coast. This was our first taste of buses in South America and we were amazed at how comfortable it was. When we arrived it was only a short walk to our hostel, where we stayed for the next 3 nights. It was a cool hostel in a quiet residential street, run by a young couple. It had a good atmosphere, I think they must have been art students of something as there was a lot of quirky artwork around. T...

As we crossed the date line during our flight, we arrived in Santiago at around 1pm on 30th September - 5 hours before we left New Zealand. The flight was our longest yet at around 12 hours, but it was relatively easy as we spent most of the time watching films before getting a few hours sleep. We were a little tired when we arrived as it was 6am New Zealand time, but we had planned ahead and booked a transfer to the hostel. Our room wasn´t quite ready wh...