Puerto Varas is a small, quiet town on the shore of Lake Llanquihue in Chile's Lake District. It has many wooden shingled houses, some painted in bright colours (bizarre German influence again) and there was a big new hotel/casino in the middle of town that looked quite out of place among them! I walked around the lakefront and stopped in a little cafe for hot chocolate. Back at the hotel, I had a girly afternoon with Jeanne-Marie and Karien, watching 27 Dresse...

In the winter Pucón is a ski resort and when I was there, during the summer, it offered all sorts of adventure activities. It is in the Chilean Lake District which was once a German colony and you could be forgiven for thinking you've been transported to an Alpine ski resort with all the curiously old European style of wooden buildings. I noticed a lot of German tourists and a number of activities were offered with German-speaking guides. We arrived in Pucón a...

I crossed the border from Argentina into Chile and arrived in Santiago in the early afternoon. Santiago is the capital of Chile - a huge city, very international and developed compared to everywhere else I've been in South America so far. We went for lunch at a good restaurant named Liguria in the Providencia district where we were staying. Then we took the metro to the main square (the first metro system I've encountered in South America). Around the main squar...

Mendoza is the wine-making hub of Argentina. I had a very relaxed time there, generally treating myself. We went for lunch in town when we arrived and saw some preparations for a festival that was taking place that weekend, including the finalists in a pagaent-type contest, each representing a local town. I spent the afternoon at the spa at the Hyatt Hotel where I had a massage and used the jacuzzi, sauna and steam room In the evening we went to a specialty b...

Salta was my first stop in Argentina - a very pretty city in the north of the country. I was shocked by the sudden changes when I crossed over the border - Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia had a lot in common with one another but as soon as I crossed into Argentina the people looked and sounded very different, the roads, cars and buildings were generally more modern and in better condition - it was a different world. We arrived in the evening and the first item on the...