Lo,

Vic's hungry, so this will be a quick one. We're in Valparaíso de Chile after a few days in Mendoza, Argentina and Xmas in Santiago.

First thing, arrived in Mendoza and within a few minutes got robbed. Standing on a street corner looking for a bus, someone distracted Vic while someone else took a bag and ran off (I was off hunting taxis). Fortunately, a man ran after said thief and got the bag back. He also ran off before we could offer him some kind of reward. Nice man.

We went on an okay wine tour, the wine itself was nice enough. That's more or less it for Mendoza, aside from a couple of very mediocre modern art museums (both free though). Also, it was bloody hot. Regularly over 35ºC, and one night I woke up at 4am to find it was still 33ºC.

Next was onto Santiago. When we arrived the hostel told us there was some big party happening at some random's house for Xmas Eve, and then seemed surprised when we were a bit hesitant. We didn't go, but everyone else did, so we had the place to ourselves to make some curry. Xmas Day we got up late and went for a stroll, only to find EVERYTHING open and everyone out for the day. We went up Cerro San Cristóbal on the funícular for some nice views of the city, and then over to a park on the teleférico.

After lunch we had a nap, and unfortunately woke up too late to go and see childs singing at us in a church (a guilt-tripping venture by the hostel). Shame. I'm fairly sure we were subsequently shunned by all the staff and other guests. It was okay though, as it meant we had the place to ourselves again, this time to make sushi. It went surprisingly well, and neither of us were ill afterwards. We also decided to make this a new tradition - sushi every Xmas.

Boxing Day we went box hunting. We needed to post our 10kgs of Xmas tat home. In the end we found some very shoddy looking boxes abandoned on a street corner. Posting cost 45 quid, and I'm not convinced the box will make it out of Chile. In the afternoon we went to another fairly mediocre modern art museum.

Today we hopped on a bus to Valparaíso. We're staying here for a few days before moving onto Viña del Mar, our base for NYE (we're actually coming back here for the night, but it'll cost $100+ to stay here), so we're more or less just sussing out the place for now.

We'd better be off, need to get some more sushi supplies. Hope everyone's having a good Xmas/New Year period. And we hope that the substitute NYE party isn't too much of a disappointment.

Love,
Nick and Vic