well well,mahoosive apologies for not keeping this blog up to date. happy christmas and happy ne year!!!

all is going pretty well. me and dave are now back off a really good holiday in chiloe that we spent with his sister jo and are back to work tomorrow minus all the other guys who have now left pucon and gone travelling. hopefully that means more work for us.

anyhoooo. chiloe was cool. we did 3 days of bike riding with some pretty big hills and then we explored a little of the national park.

we set off for chiloe on new years eve and arrived in puerto montt at about 11pm. we cruised up to our hostel where they were having a big meal. there were a few kiwis there who we kept bumping into for the rest of the week. i think they were stalking us. what other explanation is there!!!???we were all exhausted from our mammoth 6 hour bus journey that we only lasted until about 12;30 when we went to bed. i think jo has some priceless photos of me looking really depressed at the idea of celebrating anything. haha. the next morning we got the ferry over to chiloe itself and found our hostel in ancud. the hotel was really nice, i wasnt all that impressed by the town because there was so much litter around. but since it was new years day the place was like a ghost town, perhap we didnt get the best impression of it.

the next day we took a bus to castro and spent half the day sorting uot bikes etc. we finally settled on 3, and took off with full rucksacks for camping for a three day trip!! i would just like to say one thing. OWWWWWWWWWWWW im sure they make bike saddles unecessarily uncomfortable on purpose. 20km later and all walking like we had a stick up our bums we got the 2 min ferry ride to the little isle of quinchao. because of the huge hill that awaited us we knocked on one of the first doors we came to and asked a lady if we could camp on her field. and thank the lord he said yes. we camped there that night and left our suff there the next morning so that we could cycle without packs.

we cycled all the way down quinchao to a town called achao and back which was about 26km one way so in total we think we did about 50 km that day. and it was super cool and good fun. boy we were sweaty though. so when we got back we went down to the channel that the ferry crosses over, went for a swim in some very dirty water then promptly washed ourselves down with botlles of tap water. we ate well that night. and played loads of cards!!!

the next day we biked back to castro and got the bus to the national park which was absolutely stunningly beautiful. we camped there that night and went fo a walk the next day. it really had the feeling of being on the edge of the world. it was fantastic.

bused it back to castro, sorted ourselves out in a hostel run by a very strange old lady who wandered around like a robot looking permanently confused.

the next day we wandered around castro and got a really nice salad lunch at a cool cafe.then got the bus back to puerto montt.

dave and i had missed the bus to pucon so we left an hour after saying goodbye to jo. and bussed it to temuco. we arrived at 4am where we waited then caught the 6am bus to pucon. we were going to have a really nice chill out day off but ruben from the shop turned up and asked if we could work because there were 4 people for a full day kayak lesson, allan hadnt turned up and adam had a hang over. so we did work. and that was two days ago. we have since had our chill out day and went on a hike to day. so its been pretty darn cool,

we will write again soon.

hugs