After a night's stop over in Antofagasta as we made our way south (crap hotel with NO towels, disgrace) we took an overnight bus down to Valparaiso.

The city was really hilly and full of life and absolutely covered in art work and murals by the locals which really adds to the atmosphere. Amazingly it was sunny all week as well which made it a nice end to our trip.

As our budget was ticking down as we neared the end of the trip we spent our days wandering round the streets to get a better look at all of the work and the sheer volume of it and its quality was pretty amazing. Clearly very relaxed rules over here as pretty much no surface is spared. The city's full of small side streets so it was pretty easy to get lost, but we checked out the boisterous local food market and tucked into some awesome fish and chips Chilean style.

We also piled down to the fish market early one morning to see the fisherman coming in off the sea and selling their catch straight off the boat to the locals who were lapping it up.

The beach was carnage as there were loads of gulls and pelicans fighting over the scraps and loads of sealions lurking in the water for their share. Add to this loads of parents and schoolkids who turned up to see the show and it was pretty noisy. One local dog also ambushed the pelicans and got one by the throat, but it managed to escape.

We also checked out an 'amazing' house once owned by Pablo Neruda, a famous Chilean poet and to be fair it was pretty cool. We squeezed in a day trip to the neighbouring Vina del Mar which was pretty quaint as well.

Next stop was Santiago for a few nights before we headed home. We didn't really get to see much of the city, but managed to fit in a bit of shopping and a few nice meals.

Once the Icelandic volcano erupted again and threatened our flight home we decided to move our flight forward by a couple of days - didn't fancy not being able to get home for another week or so. Chile is great, but it's probably the most expensive country in South America and we were SKINT!