We flew from Santiago to Calama and then got a taxi to San Pedro de Atacama on Monday 9th November. The road from Calama to San Pedro was through desert landscapes, there was just sand and shingle as far as you could see until San Pedro popped up in the middle of a valley, a small oasis of trees and buildings with the Andes in the background and desert and salt flats in every other direction. The Atacama desert is the driest desert in the world and San Pedro is ...

On Saturday 7th November we arrived in Santiago by bus. We are staying in the Bellavista area for 2 nights which is central (although I took us the wrong way on the metro to start with so took twice as long to get there!). Ben doesn't like the hostel, it's too young and cool for him now he's over 30. We are both gagging for sushi so found this place near us and had the BEST sushi ever! Omg, it was so good. I'm a sushi amateur and didn't know that when you order a...

Our crossing into Chile was on an overnight bus which involved getting off in the middle of the freezing Andes at 2am, being stamped out of Argentina, into Chile and then searched by sniffer dogs before getting back on the bus (not fun!). We arrived in Valparaiso at 6am and thank god our lovely hotel (Puerta Escondida) allowed us to check in early and go straight to bed as we got no sleep on the bus! Valparaiso is a port town built across several hills. The port...

Bad start to our stay in Mendoza. The 17 hour bus journey was actually pretty comfortable (although the food was practically inedible - bread and more bread!) but about an hour after getting to our hostel Ben realised he'd left his iPad on the bus...and it's been pouring with rain all day so not a great day. Spent half of it trying to get the iPad back (no chance) and then things took a turn for the better over dinner as we found Cordillera Vinos y Fuego. An amaz...

We arrived in Bariloche to clear skies and sunshine on Friday 30th Oct and the weather stayed perfect all weekend. As we've been staying in hostels for over 2 weeks we decided to treat ourselves by staying somewhere nice for the weekend so we have booked a junior suite as the Design Studios which includes lake views and a hot tub in our room - it's awesome! Saturday was the rugby World Cup final between NZ and Australia which we were going to try and watch in to...