Hola! Its been a while since ive updated our travel antics so ive a lot to catch up on seeing as we´re now in Chile, having almost reached Bolivia!

I think on my last catch up, I only made it up to Queenstown which seems absolutely ages ago now. We had a brilliant three days there, its a really nice (but cold!) town, loads of activities to do, the most extreme of which I did was luging (a sort of go'karting) downa moutainside and a go on a high speed jet boat where 360 degree spins were done at random (very fun, but again COLD!), so no bungees or sky dives for me, fAR too much of a wimp! From Queenstown we made our way up the East Coast stoppiong off for nights here and there in a number of places - a very picturesque Lake Tekapo (where we decided to climb to the summit of a mountain as it was getting dark which obviouusy meant coming back down in the even more dark!), Dunedin (where all the Scots have settled in New Zealand, and given the grey weather that day, it definitely had a very Scottish feel about it!), ChristChurch (the most English of all the towns even having punting on the River Avon!) and Kaikora (where Laura and I braved the FREEZING pacific ocean to swim with wild dusky dolphins which was well worth baring the cold and looking like idiots in our head to toe wet suit gear, hundreds of dolphins were around us and so playful!). From there we made it up to the North island again where we met Gemma in Wellington for a few days. We made the most of it cramming in quite a lot, Te Papa museum, Cuba Street shopping, the cable car and cable car musuem (!) and sampling the night life of course! We then had a day in Auckland before getting our flight top Santiago, Chile!

Having come from New Zealand and Australia, its been a bit of a culture shock landing in Chile as it feels so much more foreign, in large part due to none of us speaking very good Spainsh (yet!) and almost no-one here speaking English! We spent our first 6 days in Santiago as we had a few days in lieu before meeting the rest of our tour group that we would be with for the furation of our south america tour. They are all very nice and theres quite a mix of ages and nationalities which is good! Im sure at the end of our 40 days together we shall know each other very well!

Santiago is a nice city, unfortunately we didnt have the best of weather whilst we were there ( a slight understatement!) and its in an amazing location nestled next to the Andes (we got some good views from climbing some of the hills in a town park just next to our hotel, its amazing how much the city sprawls out, right to the foot of the mountains). we spent much of our time in Santiago wandering around the sights (beautiful and grand cathedral, alively town square, interesting latin quarter and lots of parks) and also getting supplies for the cold nights ahead of us (thick socks!). After that our first stop was La Serena for two nights. It was a nice little town famous for the surrounding landscape of the Elqui valley and for its observatories as it has one of the clearest skies in the world. Despite this, would you believe it...it was overcast and drizzling one of the days! We visited one of the observatories open to tourists and learned lots about the planets and stars (got an amazing sight of Saturn through one of the powerful telescopes, I was fascinated! Maybe I should become an astronomer!). we spent the rest of our stay in La Serena looking around lots of little market stalls and opting to get out of the drizzle to see the new Indiana Jones film (which I wouldn´t really recommend as its soooo far-fetched (it features aliens!) apart from the fact it also features the Nazca Lines in Peru that we will be visiting later on in the tour!

We left La Serena on a night bus and arrived in San Pedro this afternoon after 16 hours on the bus having travelled through spectacular scnery of salt flats and desert (I think I must be getting used to these long bus journeys now as I actually managed to sleep for some of the journey whihc is a first!). We are all heading out to eat soon and then for a tour of the moon valley and maybe some horse riding tomorrow.

I promise I shall try harder to make more regular updates. And there is so much more I want to write about everything we´ve done as I´m sure Im not giving any of it justice as to how amazing it all is! I shall endevaour to meet up with anyone who is actually reading this (if anyone is!) and tell them EVERYTHING in much better detail in person!

Love to everyone xxx