We got up early on Saturday morning ready to cross the border from Arica to Peru. Although we´d had a great time in Chile, and met some fantastic people, we were both really excited about heading into a 'real' South American country! After catching a collectivo to the taxi station we managed to easily get a car to take us across, and all seemed pretty straight forward to us. Our only issue was with our driver when he tried to cram both Ash and I in the front sea...

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 ...

Our last day in Auckland was spent at the museum, a definate must do for those visiting in the future, we just wish we had more time to see it all. The museum tells the story of New Zealand people, the flora and the fauna and landforms of the islands. We only had time to see the Pacific People and Natural History galleries which gave us a really interesting insight into the Mairo culture as well as the environment, from mountain tops, volcanoes to the bottom of t...