It's early December and time is running out for us. Our plan is to see in the New Year in Rio de Janeiro, then fly home. So this time next month, we'll be back in cold, wet (currently very snowy) England. But we still have a lot of ground to cover - three more countries and almost 5000km! We've no choice but to do a whirlwind tour of Chile, Argentina, Uruguay and South Brazil. We considered taking the bus to Santiago, Chile's capital but that involved a 24h...

Iquique is one of Chile's best beach resorts. It turned out to be a great place to relax for a few days, lazing around by the sea. We were expecting a small out-back town with dusty streets, but when we arrived we found that Iquique is a rich, sophisticated city with glitzy casinos and residents with wealthy swagger. It was eye-opening to see such prosperity after our time in Bolivia. The Bolivian farmers living hand to mouth were a world away from these care...

We crossed the border and arrived in country number five; Chile. Our first stop was the very chilled-out town of San Pedro de Atacama - an oasis in the desert. This place is dry ... very dry. In fact, the Atacama desert is the driest desert on earth. There are some areas that have no recorded rainfall! Basically, it never rains and unsurprisingly the landscape around San Pedro is very harsh with no vegetation and obviously very hot, just dry sandy rocks for ...