The bus journey to San Pedro De Atacama was our first experience of Chiles night buses and overall we were really satisfied with our experience (no sick incidents like in Asia!). We had gone for the ´Salon Cama´ seats which meant we had more leg room and the seat reclined a bit further and so for the extra cost, it was worth it. We got the two front seats right on the top deck and so as we were leaving La Serena, we could watch the sunset out of the front windo...

We had a great nights sleep at the hostel in La Serena and enjoyed a feast of a breakfast the following morning. After only booking 2 nights at Aje Verde Hostel and needing 3 due to no availability on the buses, our first job was to find some accomodation. This was to prove harder than we thought when Aje Verde was fully booked, as were all the others in town. Our saviour came in the form of Pablo, a great guy who worked at the hostel who said we could pay the sa...

WOW Santiago definately gave us the culture we had been craving with repsect to the language. Hardly anyone spoke English and I was soon realising that I was going to have to learn some Spanish. Fast! After a cramped 11 hour flight from Auckland we were able to re-live all of those hours sat on the plane due to the time difference. We actually arrived in Santiago (11am on 10th Feb) earlier than we left Auckland (4pm on the 10th Feb). After collecting our luggage ...