A bit of a nightmare journey from Mancora to Santiago. 10hrs overnight bus only to turn up at Lima airport at 2am for LAN to tell us that they had no record of our online reservation. Luckily we managed to get a flight with another airline for half the price so it all worked out well in the end.

So, our first impression of Santiago? An expensive polluted city that could be anywhere in the western world, and they speak funny here as well (Its Chileano, not Spanish!). We took the funicular up to the top of Cerro San Cristobal for views over the endlessly sprawling city below and wandered round Bellavista, the bohemian heart of Santiago (well, we saw a few street hawkers selling bits of carved wood on the street corners!).

We were expecting huge parties for Chile's Independance day celebrations, but it soon became apparent that everyone took the opportunity to get out of the city for this 3 day fiesta. We followed suit and after having visited Valparaiso for the night, we took to the slopes for Independance day itself.

Wandering around downtown with all its KFC and Burger Kings we skulked back to our lovely (but expensive!) hostel and decided enough was enough and hot footed it out of the city.