We took a day bus to Santiago so we could appreciate the views of the Andes but spent of most of our time at border control having our apples confiscated and rucksacks ransacked by customs. We laughed at Sarah panicking that the sniffer dogs would find her fruit stash, but were put in our place when they actually found us out! On top of this it was snowing - it really is chilly in Chile..

On arriving in Santiago we directed our taxi driver to La Chimba hostel, a rasta refuge with the cutest puppy in the world.

We went out for steak dinner and lots of Pisco Sours in Bellavista then bought bottles of wine to take back to the hostel. Arthur found a guitar and Albert got out his harmonica (as you do) and we had a drunken jam session into the night.

Next morning we did a half-hearted self led walking tour before leaving King Arthur and Prince Albert to catch our flight to San Pedro de Atacama. Hasta luego chicos!

We caught our flight fine (despite booking with a non-existent airline and the plane stopping for a while in the middle of nowhere) and made our way to the so-called oasis in the desert, which turned into absolute calamity.

Our luck so far had gone to our heads and we turned up in the dark with no reservation - would've been fine if it wasn't a Chilean national holiday. Realised we weren't as fit as we thought as we lugged our bags around the freezing sandy streets trying to find a bed for the night. Being 4000m above sea level didn't help, nor did Sarah's explosion of Caesar salad dressing over her entire rucksack. After finding every hostel full for the weekend we were forced to splash out on the only room left in a hotel (what a shame).

Just as we thought it was like the nativity but worse because we didn't have donkeys to carry our bags, a group of astronomer documentary makers came to our rescue. We were only too keen to spend the next night in their campervan in the car park of Tierra Atacama, the lushest hotel in San Pedro. We recovered from our stressful search by an open fire with amazing food and Chilean wine.

Kept to our backpacker/British roots and made the most of the hotel, eating our body weight at the breakfast buffet and stashing tea bags and buns for later. Spent the day exploring the desert streets which naturally turned into shopping for unnecessary hippy goods and sitting in a juice bar. Alpaca jumpers, crazy backpacks and owl hats are definitely essentials for dealing with altitude.

We rocked up to the resort in muddy walking boots and ridiculous llama clothes, not realising we were about to be treated to dinner and cocktails. The receptionist couldn't help but laugh as she told the astronomers they had guests. We spent the night in Adobe, a desert restaurant with the best roquefort steak, fig quinoa and caiprinhas. Thanks guys! We were even joined by some Chilean astronomers talking about NASA - they were definitely in their element.

After a cosy night sleep in the campervan, we were raring to head off to the salt flats and on to Bolivia. Only to find out the border was closed because of snow and we'd have to spend another night in the desert. After a day of false hope we settled for leaving the next day and set off in our jeep across the desert..