So we took a bus across the border to Bariloche in Argentina. Ah Bariloche! Possibly my favourite place in South America, well definitely one of my favourite places. Again it is another out of season ski town (apparently excellent skiing), again cosy looking wooden chalets all over the town, and again a backdrop of snow covered volcanoes and lakes. But the difference with Bariloche is that it is completely surrounded by lakes and volcanoes, not just a couple. But...

We took a day bus to the pretty town of Puerto Varas. It is a typical ski town, covered in wooden chalets with restaurants everywhere offering fondues. What made this place even prettier was that it was surrounded by 3 snow capped volcanoes and a beautiful blue lake. Our hotel was a vast improvement on the last place. Fortunately this one was built of stone and not plywood. We even had central heating (shock horror!) something we haven't seen in a long time des...

You would think by now that we would be used to taking night buses. Well that's we thought until we took this 10 hour journey to Pucon. It wasn't the most uncomfortable of buses but the driver kindly played his music all night and from the early hours decided to start randomly picking up people and dropping them off (to earn extra money of course). However beneficial to him, this resulted in little sleep for us. On our arrival, the place looked like a ski resort...

We caught a bus to Santiago, Chile's pretty capital city. We were informed of a free walking tour that you can take around the main parts of the city. We missed the one that started at 11am so had to wait until 3pm to catch the next one. In the meantime we spent the day wondering around looking at the various old buildings including parliament and palaces. The city is incredibly modern, as is most of Chile, and wandering around you could easily imagine yourself i...

So we arrived in La Serena via the endurance test of a 17 hour bus ride. Chile appears the most developed country we have visited so far in South America, so gladly the roads are in a lot better shape making the journey not as arduous as it could be. The downside of course of being in a economy with more infrastructure is that everything is more expensive, which has been noticeable from the moment we crossed the border from Bolivia. For over a month we have been...