Our plans for our final week were to hire a car and head North to San Pedro De Atacama taking in a few other sites along the way. Unfortunately after flying into Santiago we found out there'd been huge floods wiping out roads and villages halfway between Santiago and where we wanted to get to. It was all over the news here and it had been declared a state of emergency so we decided to play it safe and not go North and to head for the Chilean Lake District instead.

Our first night in Santiago was curry night, I'd been waiting for this since our last curry in Arequipa back in January. I'd found an Indian restaurant on line and it turned out we were only staying a 20 minute walk away. After a serious lack of spice for months it was a tatse sensation (albeit they don't make their curries that spicy here). The only thing that let it down was that we couldn't have a beer as they didn't serve alcohol.

The next day we sorted out the hire car for the following morning and then decided to go for an afternoon beverage at about 4pm. We realised the next day that this wasn't one of our best ideas of the trip as we rolled in after midnight and this is what happened next:

Day 1:

We were supposed to be up and out the next day by 8.30 but it was more like 9.30 as Casson was on a massive go slow. Once in the car and on the road we realised we had the crappest sat nav ever. It kept losing signal and trying to send us the wrong way down one way roads which were really busy! We finally managed to get on the motorway at which point Casson announced he had a massive headache and was feeling rough so he proceeded to sleep for 2 hours whilst I drove. FYI I matched him drink for drink the night before. He must have been bad as he completely forgot about one of the bars we'd gone in and was adamant I was wrong and that we'd only gone in 3 not 4 bars. He had me convinced until we looked at the pictures later on that day and we realised I was right after all!

As we got on the motorway we saw the golden arches but we'd only just had breakfast so we didn't stop, we thought there would be another one later (due to our late night we hadn't brought any food or drink with us for the trip) BIG MISTAKE, there was no sign of the Golden Arches or any other kind of fast food joint for the rest of the journey and everyone knows you need fast food/stodge to cure a hangover. I spent the entire journey listing food I would eat if I was at home. After his nap Casson felt loads better and drove the 2nd half of the way there. It took us 8 hours to get to Temuco so by then we were knackered and the last thing we felt like doing was driving round in circles looking for our hostel, the sat nav was almost through the window! When we eventually found it we realised I'd booked the oddest place ever, it was completely empty and looked like the motel out of Psycho. We slept with one eye open that night!

Day 2:

The next day we carried on to Pucon which is in the Chilean Lake District. Our hostel this time was a hippie Eco place, they practiced energy conservation which basically meant the place was freezing and pitch black as they didn't use the heating or lights!

It was early afternoon so we decided to head to a National Park to walk around the 3 lakes. Everything was fine, we were heading in the right direction on a lovely well made road until bam .. right turn onto a gravel road, it just kept going and going and climbing higher and higher and gradually became a really tight, steep, windy one car width road and we were almost convinced we were heading in the wrong direction. At one point I was dodging sheep in the road and I stupidly said "well at least they're not cows" and then we went round a really steep bend on a hill and there they were, 4 cows lazing in the road. Some of you will know I've already killed bambi in France and wrote my car of years ago so any form of animal life in the road gives me palpitations!

We finally made it to the park entrance to find to our horror that the nice leisurely walk we'd been expecting was actual a 6 hour hike, neither of us were expecting that so we agreed just to walk as far as we could till we'd had enough and then turn round. We set of and neither of us were enjoying ourselves, we just weren't feeling it at all, we think we were still sweating the beer out and it was all uphil. Casson's quote of the day 20 minutes in "this is dog s***". We perservered though and managed to walk to all 3 lakes. That night we decided we were taking a break from big walks until New Zealand.

Day 3:

We stayed in Pucon and went to look at some waterfalls and Lake Carburga. There's an active volcano here called Villarica that you can normally walk up and look into the crater but it was erupting a few weeks back so it was closed. It was puffing black smoke out the whole time we were in Pucon and one evening we could see the Volcano glowing red from our hostels garden.

Day 4&5:

We headed back towards the North to a beach resort called Pichilemu. To get there we drove through the santa cruz wine region which is beautiful. We had a couple of nights here and just chilled out. There's a surf spot called punta lobos that's on the great waves circuit so we spent a morning on the cliff watching the surfers. Casson drove us there and I navigated, I have a really bad habit of just listening to sat nav and not looking at the map so we ended up off roading again and a 10 minute journey took us 25 minutes, we could have just used the coast road :-)

Day 6&7:

For our last few days we headed to Valparaiso. Everyone had raved about it but to be honest we found it a bit dirty, smelly and noisy. It was nice to chill out and do nothing for a couple of days but we wouldn't rush back.

When we got there the roads were mega busy and sat nav was sending us on a wild goose chase. At one point we ended up being directed up a massive hill, the conversation went like this:

Casson: Sat nav is saying to go up that hill but I think it's a dead end

Me: I think we can get out at the top

Casson: Ok then

His fundamental error was right there, why the hell did he listen to me? I started to go up the hill and it was so steep we didn't think the car would make it, Casson's chirping in my ear "I really don't think you can get out at the top" I get to the top and guess who was bloody right? It was a dead end. I'm convinced I can do a 45 point turn, Casson's convinced we can't and wants me to reverse back down the hill. I refuse as I think we'll die so he had to get us down, we're both belly laughing at my stupid sense of direction and I'm having palpitations as Casson reverses as I think we're going to plumet to our death! 5 minutes later we're at the hostel.

On our first afternoon we went for a few beers and they must have been really strong as a) we bought far too much food in the supermarket including bacon and sausage for breakfast which we never have out here and 2) we were talking about how much of a lightweight Casson is with his hangovers and we were wondering if I could actually drink more than him so I challenged him to see who got more drunk by drinking a bottle of red each. Thank god he's a Larry lightweight as he didn't accept the challenge!

On the way back to Santiago we had enough money for the tolls and for the metro and bus to the airport. Unfortunately we chose to go to the only petrol station that didn't accept international cards so we had to use all our cash. At the first toll we realised why everyone pays cash, they have to call someone to bring out the machine and if looks could kill we would be dead, the toll booth lady was not impressed, also the queue of cars behind us were backing up and beeping like hell at us. At the 2nd toll they made us drive through and pull up with cars whizzing past us whilst Casson got out and ran back to pay once they had found the machine!

THEN when we dropped the car off there was no cash left in any of the ATM's nearby. We managed to scrape together enough money for the metro and thn Casson had to walk miles to find an ATM that worked and had money in. We had visisons of having to walk to the airport. You can imagine how we felt when we were sat in the airport and he found money in his pocket that he'd had all along but had forgot about!

That's all out entires from South America so we'll leave you with some final general points about our 3 months here:

1) South America is vast so we've only scratched the surface and would love to come back

2) There's a drink in Argentina called Matte. It's basically tea but people are addicted to it, we could be in a hostel looking for the kettle to make a brew and some tea smackhead would be hogging it so they could constantly top themselves up to get their fix. They even carry huge thermos's around with them when it's 36 degrees outside. We have a code word for these junkies which is Brodie (we've watched back to back homeland so if you've seen that you'll know what we're referencing) so we can let each other know when there's a brodie in the house!

3) We've been in a few places were you can get a litre of beer for a £1 but they are few and far between so the quest continues

4) We both wished I'd learnt a bit more Spanish before we came out but we've got by

5) Casson is a human GPS

6) The Chileans like to wave people off at the airport, for one girl there were 17 people to see her leave and about 7 of those were sobbing. When we left there were 3 people, you all need to have a word with yourselves, where were you all? ;-)

7) Next stop New Zealand!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!