Hi all, sorry it's been a while but we have been running around like headless chickens for the past while to make up for lost time. I think the last blog was from Arequipa so i'll fill you in on whats been occuring since then.

We headed down to San Pedro de Atacama desert passing through a town called Arica (biggest dump ever, the place was totally stuck in the 70's!) anyway San Pedro was an awesome place, really dusty small town, population 350. We had a great hostel for 4 quid a night complete with hammocks in the courtyard etc. We only had one day there so crammed in a tour which included sandboarding and watching the sunset with Pisco cocktails overlooking the lunar valley. For those of you who haven't heard of sandboarding, you basically launch yourself down a MASSIVE steep sandune on a snowboard.........excellent fun, we cannot wait to do it again.

After San Pedro we got a 24 hour bus to Santiago and planned to get off for lunch but we needed to get to Mendoza in Argentina that night and the last bus left in 6 mins. So, basically, we did 29.5 hours straight on busses, phew pretty boring, especially given that out of the 7 films shown, 2 were repeated and only 2 were in English (Sister Act and Beverly Hills Cop.....!! Wow)

We stayed in Mendoza for 5 days in a really pants hostel but the people were wicked. On the Firday we had an AMAZING day, we got a local bus out to a guys house called Mr Hugo, he rented us bikes for 4 quid (there were 9 of us) and we cycled around to various vineyards tasting some of the most amazing wine, bubbly that we've ever tried. Then you go back to Mr Hugo's after the vineyards all close and he gives you copious amounts of free wine until late that night. We ended up getting a police escort on our way back to Mr Hugo's which was rather amusing, I think we must have looked a bit wobbly!!!!! Or it may be the fact that I (Liz) managed to perform a spectacular stunt of getting my foot stuck in the spokes of my front wheel, immediately stopping my bike which went up on the front wheel and hovered in the air for a while before I fell off.......like I said, spectacular! One mangled foot later we wobbled back down the road to pick up our five-o escort!!

On Saturday we got a bus back to Santiago and stayed in another crap hostel, went out for a pretty sweet curry and wandered around the fabulous city. The most amazing architecture!! We walked up to a viewpoint that overlooked the footprint of the whole city, visited a few museums and then packed up our bags ready for NEW ZEALAND...........

to be continued..................

xxxx