From Valparaiso, we took the bus to Santiago and, to be honest, we weren't looking forward to it that much since lots of people said there wasn't much to do. However, we got to our hostel, which was amazing (and had a pool!) then we went on a walking tour of the city, which proved these people wrong! The tour took us around the areas of the city which are not often visited by tourists and we discovered that Santiago is a beautiful city with lots of culture. Dur...

Another night bus dropped us in Valparaiso at 6am. Of course, at this time everything is shut. This meant that we had to wait outside our hostel until it opened at 8. It wasn't too bad as we made friends with one of the many stray dogs and fed him cookies. After dumping our bags at the hostel, we went on a walking tour of the city. It was really interesting and we learnt how Valparaiso has gone from a really important port town to a forgotten city which is pret...

The next day we went to pisco elqui which is where they make pisco. Its a very picturesque village in the valley. When we arrived we went looking for our apartment we rented, we looked for ages in this very small village and couldnt find it anywhere and the people we asked didnt really know either and just gave us vague directions, in the end we found it and it was a great place. In the evening we went to a local observatory and saw the stars. We saw galaxies, ...

La Serena appears to have a lot more going on. After checking into our hostel, we booked a tour 2 damas island. We heard that you can see penguins, sea lions and whales so we were really excited. The tour delivered all those things and more. We saw the Humboldt penguin and lots of baby chicks. A family of sea lions and a huge alpha male which was so big. We even saw whales which was really rare, they were fin whales or shark whales because of their Shark fin. Th...

The journey was terrible they played a stupid comedy show 3 times in a row and the guy had such an annoying voice. The seats were uncomfortable and when we arrived in caldera at 5 in the morning they dropped us off at the side of the highway next to Caldera so we had to walk into the centre of caldera to find our hostel. When we found our hostel we slept and then went to a very nice beach called Bahia inglesia, there we had a fish dinner and then bought some win...