not quite the right name for this leg of our tour but we're slightly limited by having to pinpoint everything on the map. fully recovered after our terrible cocktail/altitude hangovers, we departed in a mini bus the next morning to the bolivian border. there we transfered to the jeep in which we'd spend the next 3 days. we were travelling with jess, lisa and two sisters from ireland, gillian and tara. this tour was by far one of the best bits of our trip so far ...

Well we didn´t exactly find warmth. We arrive arrived in little San Pedro de Atacama in the middle of the FREEZING cold night. We´d booked the only place we could get hola of with a view to finding somewhere cheaper in the morning. We had a gorgeous dinner in a little restaurant called Todo Natural and then as per usual after one of our long bus rides we went back to the hostel and conked out. Morning came and we moved into Florida backpackers. It had a sunny ...

So much for sunshine. Well, it was dark by the time we got to Valpo but it was also s***ting it down. We were soaked in minutes. It took us about half an tour of walking aroung in the rain to find a micro (small bus) that could supposedly take us to near our hostel. We asked the driver tol et us know when to get off but he clearly forgot and le t us off way past our stop, up a different hill. Valpo is mostly hills. The city centre is fairly flat but all the nice ...

We arrived in Santiago (late of course) and immediately could tell we weren´t in Argentina anymore. The bus station (of which theres about 4 just to confuse you) was full of people hassling you to get on their bus. We eventually found an ATM and went about trying to decide how many thousands of chilean pesos we might need. It was all a bit too different and disorientating. Eventually we manager to get to our hostel, La Casa Roja, in the bohemian neighbourhood ...

So here we are, stranded indefinately in Uspallata, one of the most uninteresting tiny towns i´ve ever encountered. Its only vaguely interesting point is that it's where they filmed 7 years in Tibet. I´d rather be in Tibet. Its Wednesday, our 3 day of sitting twiddling our thumbs waiting for the Los Libertadores pass, which goes through the Andes to Chile, to open. The town is full of truck cabs waiting for the same thing. Everything (apart from this internet c...