8/7/9 La Serena to Santiago Having spent the first couple of hours cleaning yet again we left La Serena heading straight for santiago. We drove through Chile passing snow capped Andean peaks and stopped for lunch overlooking a spectactular beach. Some tents were hung up to dry and we must have looked like an impromptu camping shop as we were right on the side of the main road!!! We pulled into Santiago in the late afternoon and checked into the Casa Roja hostel ...

6/7/9 San Pedro to bushcamp We spent the day on the truck travelling towards La Serena where we will be having our last camp in a site near the beach tomorrow night. Tonight we have our last bush camp but it is nearly at sea level after weeks at cold, high altitude so it should be a warm nights sleep. The route was through the Chilean desert and we took a turn off the main road to see La Mano del Desierto as in the picture. It is a huge sculpture of a hand and l...

3/7/9 Salta to bushcamp Phil spent all night depositing his steak into the toilet so we were pretty tired in the morning but had been told check out wasn't until 11 so we were having a lie in . The irate cleaner hammered on the door at about 10 and we sent her away saying we had another hour but it turned out to be 11 after all as we hadn't changed to Argentinean time yet!!! Whoops bloody tourists. Once we had finally checked out we were taken to the pharmacy by...

2/7/09 Tarija to SaltaWe travelled to the Argentine border and all of our stuff had to be removed for xray checks. The border guards were really thorough with searching the truck and even xrayed the gerry cans, they even pulled the head lights to pieces looking for drugs. We were all eventually allowed back onto the truck to continue our journey towards Salta and pulled up at the campsite for the night. We decided we didn't want to camp and headed into town to fi...

29/6/09 Uyuni to bushcamp Both our cook groups had a really early start to visit the local markets in Uyuni to collect food for the next couple of days but the markets didn't open until 8 so we had a quick breakfast first. We shopped in the markets which was quite a challenge with our limited Spanish and the locals no English. We headed back to the hotel with our shopping and loaded up the truck before setting off out of Uyuni. We are heading for the town of Tar...