Blogfans!!! A special little Brad-Birthday-Eve entry for you to digest and enjoy!!

Firsty, thanks in advance for all the birthday cards and presents that im expecting to be at our next hostel in the middle of the Bolivian Salt Flats, how you guys managed to get all those hundreds of gifts out there ill never know, but I cannot wait to unwrap them all!!

We write from a little Chilian town of San Pedro De Atacama, our gateway to the Bolivian Salt Flats, well we hope it is, if two more people actually sign up to do it that is!! Otherwise we will be stranded in this place handing out flyers in the hope of recruiting people who are up for climbing to above 4000 feet and staying in concrete buildings with no heating and temperatures of minus 20!

So last night we got all Patrick Moore and went into the middle of the desert to stargaze, we now feel up close and personal with the moon, jupiter and the orion formation! A crazy french guy talked us around the skies and it was a magical halloween extravaganza!

Today we are sandboarding down huge sand dunes (in death valley!!) which take 20 seconds to get down and about 15 minutes to walk back up before collapsing in a sweaty heap to watch the special sunsets over moon valley, what a Sunday!!

Before I go on, I must confess to our first drama on our travels.....the day after the infamous Mr Hugos wine tour and with an extreme hangover, Brad actually managed to lose his wallet! Cue much panicking before our 7:30am bus journey to Santiago! It turns out I lost it in a hammock (!?!) in Mendoza, (I think it was the dog who climbed into our hammocks who stole it)!! Anyway, luck is with us as the wallet was brought across the border by our Australian friends, so all is not lost! (We just need a certain magic man to send us the new credit cards when requested!!)

We have been bombing around seeing as many destinations as possible this week, we have fully seen everything Chile has to offer having seen the strange wooden lifts that take you up the hillsides in Valparaiso to the amazing view over Santiago where you can fully appreciate the panoramic view of city, smog, smog, dirty brown smog, then crisp white mountain tops! The verdict is out on Santiago, Jen was a big fan, Brad was not so sure!

After Santiago we had a mammoth 22 hour bus journey, with a cheeky extra hour thrown in to take it to 23 for fun with frustrating quality movies shown in Spanish with Spanish subtitles!

So we come full circle to our current destination, and we head with a heavy heart out of the developed world and into Bolivia and Peru. Armed with one toilet roll and a bottle of handwash, I think we are 100% ready for this!!

Communication lines may well be broken for a while, but we will do our best to update you all when we can!

Till next time.......xxxxxxxx