This is our second blog of the day so in case you haven´t read the salt flats one, go and read that first!

San Pedro de Atacama was the town we arrived into after our tour. It was a nice little village but we only spent a few hours there as we had a schedule to keep so took an overnight bus to La Serena, a lovely beach town on the coast of Chile. We found a nice hostel and chilled out for a few days, visited the beach and did some shopping. We were pretty tired after the tour.

On then to Santiago where we have spent the last two days. Chile is very different in comparison to the other countries we have visited on the west of the continent. There is a lot more money about and seemingly much less poverty. This means of course that prices are almost on a par with Ireland and the UK. Santiago has a real European feel to it with lots of fancy cafes and upmarket shops so it has been nice to stroll around and window-shop!

We are flying to New Zealand tonight so we have spent the past few days reminising about our time in South America. We wish we had more time here as there is still tonnes of things we could see but that´s for another trip! (Sorry mothers!). South America is a continent of huge contrasts....huge wealth but some of the worst poverty in the world alongside it, extremely friendly people and those that would steal the shirt off your back, mountains, deserts, jungle, waterfalls, extreme heat and extreme cold. In the past 3 months we have experienced pretty much all of these things. We´ve had an incredible time!

We´ve tried to pick out one major highlight but it has been almost impossible because we´ve seen and done so many fantastic things. Having started off completely rubbish at Spanish, believe it or not we´ve grown to love the language so we´re going to miss the bit of stumbling banter with the locals! I think we´ll both definitely miss eating out every night for half nothing! Huge Argentinian steaks, gorgeous fish and the best fresh fruit juices ever! This is beginning to sound like a menu, oops! We certainly won´t miss lunatic taxi drivers that think they´re in F1, ridiculous amounts of air pollution and not being allowed to flush toilet paper down the toilet, crazy!

We´re both really excited about New Zealand (it´ll be like a whole new world!) and we will fill you in with our new adventures as soon as we can.

Missing you all loads,

Love Linda and Ger xxx