Hi! Wel, I'm in San Pedro de Atacama! Its in the middleof the desert, and near the Bolivian border. It feels like we're on the set of star wars - all the houses are made of mud brick adobe and often painted white. The town square is paved but the rest of the streets are dirt/sand. But amazingly, thereare some really nice places to eat, compared to other, bigger places we've been to. Tonight we're going to a restaurant that looks cool - all painte...

Ahhh... have to run. About to go for dinner... just spent ages uploading photos so have a look at those. Going to San Pedro tomorrow - basically desert then 4wd excursion over salt lakes into Bolivia. We're in La Serena, a beach town on the coast of Chile. Yesterday went to the Elqui Valley where they make loads of pisco and grow papaya and custard apple. Really amazing as all the mountains are dry and desert like with cactus and then the valley is really lu...

Well this has to be really quick as I'm about to ruch out and buy a fleece and rainjacket for the next leg of the trip.. I'll do a more detailed entry but in brief.. climbed a volcano, correction Ma, not climbing to see a volcano, but actually climbing to the top, ie. crater of a volcano... 1000m hike, in snow. Possibly the hardest and scariest thing I've ever done.. until childbirth possibly. But I did it and it was worth it. Now I'm in Santiago and tomorro...

We are now in Pucon! Capital of Chile's adventure activities - apparently. Yesterday I went white water rafting! Only class 3 but I was a little scared at first just because I've never done it, but I had an amazing time and really loved it. Today we were supposed to hike up the villaricca volcano. We had to get up at 6, go to the pick up place where we got breakfast... so proceeded to eat bread and jam, boiled eggs and soldiers, cheese, salami, yoghur...

Hi! I'm in Puerto Varas - it's wednesday today and we got here Monday afternoon and are leaving lunchtime today to go to Pucon. Puerto Varas is 20km away from Puerto Montt which is one of Chile's important Ports. It's also very close to Chiloe Island where we went yesterday to see the Penguins! We got a bus there and a ferry to the island. It was a really strange mix - rolling hills and meadows with lots of grazing cows and sheep, an amazing coa...