Alright Folks, Just a quick prenote. I have come down with a cold and my brain is not functioning at 100% so you will have to forgive any spelling mistakes or any lack of fluidity in the text. Since New Years we have not been up to anything much, mostly visiting cities and boring little towns. Neither myself nor Sharlene are much into churchs and museums and so have not really had anything to put up on the site for Chile. Upon entering Chile the tour has changed its emphasis from ruins to natural surrounding beauty and some western cities. As we were Inca'd out we are happy for the change and asked aabout tours of a different sort - wine tours. When we got to Santiago we went on a tour of Concha y Toro vineyard and got to sample some very nice wines, one of which is not available to the public as it is being aged for up to40 years and costs $200. Needless to say our small tour group polished off a bottle and a half. When we left Santiago we also said goodbye to two close friends, Amy and Jeff, as their travels are taking them to Easter Island and than onto New Zealand. Good luck to both of you and we hope to see you again in the near future. From Santiago we headed for Pucon not far from the Argentian border. It is a resort town with two high season, winter for skiing and summer for the sun and lakes. We only had two free days there but planned to make the most of the assortment of activities on offer. For the first day we booked a trek up an active volcano, I would love to tell you the name but it escapes me at the moment. The trek would take us from 1,800m to the crater at 2,845m. Luckily the altitude would be no problems for us at this stage. For the second day we booked a Canopy trip for the morning and Cayoning for the afternoon. The Volcano trek was packed with fun and fear. Trekking up took us 4 and a bit hours and was challenging at times. The snow made it difficult to find your feet on the slopes and made it difficult to balance to take photos or throw snow balls. On the way up we were due two breaks but when we stopped for the second a load of snow and ice fell down from the top and rolled right down the centre. As we zig-zagged our way up this was a major problem and we had to rush to get out of the way and thus had no second break as we have to change route. The reroute was far steeper as you can see from the pics and after the falling snow we were all a bit unnerved. The guides really pushed us hard so that we would be out of danger by reaching the summit sooner. By doing so combined with the lack of a second break meant that we were knackered. When we reached the summit we took a break before taking pictures of the crater, lava, and surrounding views. It was cool to see the lava bubbling away but the sulphur gases were quite toxic and my eyes were watering most of the time and made both of us cough a lot. The views of the other volcano's and surrounding valleys were beautiful and much like parts of NZ (so I was reliable informed). In fact my reliable source has informed my that much of the beautiful views we have experienced are to be experienced in NZ as well. If so NZ must be truly beautiful. Although it took us over four hours to ascend the volcano it only took us a little over an hour to descend it. Reason being we slide down most of it on our bums. It was great fun! After the first 5 minutes you lost all feeling below the hips. We had ice axes to slow us down as we picked up some speed coming down. It was difficult to stay in the channels that other people had created and at times we found ourselves sliding upside down and way off to the side. At the end we had a big snow ball fight - we obviously weren't wet enough. At this point we realized that the clothes they provided were not water proof and we were soaked right through. Now for the sad part. As we were trekking up the volcano Sharlene began to feel ill and when we got back to camp she went straight to bed. She still felt bad the next day and so stayed in bed and wasn't able to do the Canopy tour of the Cayoning. Don't worry folks she is feeling much better now and we think it was just a bug. I am trying not to give her my cold although she will probably get that too. It is usually me that gets it off her. On day two I went with a few others to do the Canopy Tour. It was not what I expected but was fun nonetheless. I expected a tour to comprises of how most the forest life lives in the canopy and to see different things that you would never see on the ground. When in fact it was just a bunch of zip lines though the canopy. Other than a couple of branches that hit me as I zoomed past I experienced nothing of canopy life. Thankfully, Sharlene didn't miss much. In the afternoon myself and Andrew (another Kiwi) went off to do Cayoning. For those that have no idea what canyoning is let me enlighten you (truth be told we had no idea either up to a couple of months ago). It is a combination of trekking trough a river at the bottom of a canyon and abseiling. We did it a couple of months ago in Banos in Ecuador. Sorry, I still haven't had the film developed (I used an underwater disposable camera and haven't used the last few shots). When we did it we did two abseils, three waterfall jumps, the highest being 8m, and one flying fox. This time was different. The waterfalls were too high too jump or the water below was too shallow and so we only had three abseils. However, one of them was in fact 85m! It was both scary and a total adrenaline rush. The views from the falls were excellent. Part of the descend involved a 40m free abseil (no wall to walk down), this allowed you to turn around and see the views. At one stage I was descending backwards as I could not turn around again. You can see from the pics how big it was. Sorry for the order they appear. At the end of it we were taken to a sauna and given as much Pisco Sours as we could drink. The next day I came down with a cold, I think there might be a link to abseiling though freezing water... From Pucon we left for Argentina and decided to spend a day doing nothing and try and get better. Needless to say we got bored and left our tent, as difficult as that was, in search of a laundry and internet café. So here I am using up the worlds supply of tissue paper felling dreadful writing the worlds longest postcard. With that I bid you ague. P.S. Thanks very much to Aimee and Mark for sending out our stuff. We loved the Christmas card. Tell Mark that I will try and send him some postcards as soon as I get better. Say hi to the fish for us. Until next time, Em & S.