We left Santiago to hit the coast, specifically a city called Valparaiso, or Valpo if you're a local. Although a city, many tourists don't venture far away from the port area. Its a place well known for it's hills and steep staircases. One of the cities oldest feature are it's ascensores, some built over a hundred years ago, which are a type of elavator that sits on rails and moves on a pulley system. It's a naval city too, with plenty of gunships populating the ...

A highly recommended thing to do in Santiago is a free walking tour - this is what led the three of us to really liking Santiago. Our guide was Franco and he took us to a few places we had been to on our own walking tour, but also a few new ones. Importantly, he added plenty of chat and history to the experience making it entirely worthwhile. We started in Plaza de Armas, getting a few facts about Chilean history and the two statues in the plaza. The first is wh...

Crossing into Chile brought us into my eighth and final country in South America. It was tiresome too - the customs checks are nearly of Australian proportions. It wasnt helped by a guy trying to bring a suitcase full of cigarettes with him. We made our way to the Barrio Bellavista area where our arrival at the hostel had a feeling of deja vu about it - another crap hostel. We were arriving two hours later than planned but the guy at the desk said our beds weren...

Population: 16.8 million Area: 756,950 square km (9 times bigger than Ireland) Currency: Chilean Peso (1000 = €1.47) Timezone: GMT -3 hours Capital: Santiago Population of Santiago: 4.9 million