CHILE -28th - 30th Oct and 6th - 12th Nov

Santiago, Chile was my first stop in South America and I spent two days here marvelling at the architecture, tramps and stray dogs, oh and the punks... Tarton, pink and studs seemed to be the only dress amoungst teenagers! I walked to the top of an old walkway in Santa Maria and was amazed by the veiws of the city, which from below you cant tell is surrounded by desert mountains. I then walked around the main square, saw the parliment building and art museum before eating something covered in cheese (a South American speciality!)

After two days here I headed to Buenos Aires for a few days and returned on November 6th heading to La Serena where I visited an archeological museum and some markets. It was a sweet little town on the beach but there wasnt much else to do so I headed on the next day on an overnight bus to Antofagasta. Here I saw a 'replica of Big Ben' which didn't really resemble it at all but had an English flag at the bottom so... and then there wasn't really much else here I was iterested in so i headed on North to San Pedro De Atacama which isdefinitely my favorite place in Chile. A lovely old deserty town with a little square and church surrounded by desert mountains and volcanos which you could see for miles on the drive down. I stepped off the bus greeted by blistering hot sun shine and had to walk through the cobbled dusty streets so a hostel lugging my bag wih sweat pouring off me (sorry). I was also 2600 metres up so was greatful then to be directed to a hostel that had space and found a girl from Brighton who had also just arrived. She had booked on to one of the many tours to the desert at 4pm and so invited me along. The pools and cretors and salt flats were amazing. The water all different shades of green and blue and although it was icy cold we ventured in for the sake of the pics and got out covered in a lyer of white salt! The next day we went sandboarding down the dunes through Death Valley which was hard work but a lot of fun. We came back with sand everywhere, layers of it in our scalp, ears,nose and mouth (falling head-first was not a good idea) and handfulls in our pockets! We got back at 8pm but due to the fact that there is a water shortage in the desert the hostel shuts off the water at 7pm so we had to stay sandy. We were off to the star observatory a few hours later though so had to layer up as it is freezing at night in the desert. We got a nice mug of hot chocolate to warm us though (and the blankets we had stollen from the Hostel...) and the veiws of the stars were amazing, we even got to see Mars rising.

The next day we headed on an over night bus to Arica at the topof Chile but instead of staying decided to head straight on to La Paz in Bolivia to get used to the even higher altitude at 3800 meters above sea level! Which turned out to be very lucky as the day we would have been here there was a huge 7.7 earthquake in Calama just below, and Tsunami warnings for the whole of the Northen Coast!

So the middle and Northen sections of Chile that I saw were lovely but I knew it wasn't the best South America had to offer. The Lonely Planet says that Chile and Argentina are very Europey compared to Bolivia and Peru so im looking foward to that!