Hola Amigos!.... We are now in San Pedro de Atacama. Its a 24 hr bus ride from Santiago. We can't even begin to describe what its like here. Its just amazing! Its like an old western film. San Pedro is in the middle of the driest desert in the world - so its very warm and dry. We went sand boarding yesterday. Its like snow boarding but on sand dunes...huge sand dunes. We nearly died walking to the top of a very steep sand hill!!!! And then we had to throw our selves off and attempt to ride the sand!!! It was great fun. The guy, Francesco, at the hostel organised it for us. We went with 5 other people from the hostel, inculding the guys from Stoke that we met in NZ, our two new buddies Matt and Dan from NZ and Mariella - a fearless Chilean. After that it was a game of football with the locals and the girls played!!!! They kicked the boys asses and to top it of one of them got a hat trick!! It was just fantastic to mix with the locals and get a real taste of Chile. The people at the hostel are just so nice and even organised a BBQ for us of steak, sausage and salad. The best steak we've ever tasted. Only problem was there was plenty of chilean red wine on offer and so we are feeling a little worst for wear this morning. Sig had a little incident in the night and was a little sick in his bed and so this morning has been spent cleaning up!!! Nice! just what you want when you've got a hangover! So from here the plan is to take a bus to Arica, on the boarder of Chile and Peru. We will spend a few days here and then go on to Lake Titicaca. After that we will make our way up to Cuzco for the Inca Trail. Really looking forward to it. But after yesterdays sand boarding we have realised just how unfit we are so might have to do some more walking before then. Lots of love V & S xx xx xx xx x xx