As Ben has abandoned me for the moment, I have spent the last four weeks on my own! I was very worried about this to start off with but it turned out all right in the end, although I'm looking forward to Ben's return tonight!

When we went back to BA we stayed in a different hostel which was in San Telmo because it was a lot cheaper than the Milhouse. To be honest, the reason for that was obvious! Ben stayed with me for the first night, then the next day we went to the Milhouse for him to get the shuttle bus to the airport, as the public bus took 3 hours! When he had left I was moved to another dorm room, but with a mum and a six year old kid, who both spoke spanish! The hostel was pretty unsociable and I basically didn't like it, or meet anyone there.

I also still felt like crap as I had a really bad cough and pain all down my ribs and lungs, which was so bad I couldn't sleep or eat and had got much worse despite the £75 trip to the hospital in BA! So I pretty much spent two days just sleeping and not eating anything or leaving the hostel because i felt too crap, then spoke to a friend who's a doctor back home, went and bought some antibiotics from the pharmacy, and slowly started to get better! I then decided I'd been moping for two long, got on the internet and booked a two week spanish course in santiago, and bought my bus ticket, then headed off on my own after 3 or 4 nights at the crap hostel!

The bus from BA to Santiago was certainly an experience! It supposedly took 20 hours but actually took 26, including a 4 and a half hour wait at the border crossing for reasons unknown! I was also the only English speaking passenger, and was sat right at the back, so didn't understand the 20 minute briefing about the journey that the conductor gave! It turned out anyway that the journey included a meal at a restaurant, although everyone else was with people and spoke spanish so noone really spoke to me! The crossing through the Andes was amazing, you basically go all the way down a mountain on a zigzagging road that has something like 24 hairpin curves! There was also some kind of bizarre raffle onboard the bus (which I did not participate in) where the prizes were solely ginormous pieces of untastefully adorned white ceramics! I did not understand what that was all about! Anyway I made it to Santiago in one, tired, piece, and back to la casa roja to be greeted by Agustin 'oh its you, your back!' always nice to be remembered hey, whatever the reasons!

I spent the first two weeks of my stay in la casa roja doing a Spanish course Monday to Friday, and the last week I wasn't doing Spanish, I just stayed because I didn't want to leave! The course definately improved my Spanish, although it was pretty difficult as they put me in the intermediate class, so I was a permanent fixture every afternoon, sitting in the garden doing my homework, looking completely confused and trying to get pepole to help me! I have to say as well that Erika, my Peruvian friend, helped a lot there too as while she was there everyone was speaking in Spanish, so I was forced to both speak Spanish, and understand Spanish if I wanted to be included! Less helpful was being with the Brazilians, Leticia, Gabriel and Guilherme, for 3 weeks, as they spoke in Portuguese, which I did not understand! but I even started to get the gist of that after a while! The phrases 'como?' 'que' 'no entiendo' and 'i dont know what your talking about gabriel' being the most commonly used!

The hostel was pretty sweet, a pool and jacuzzi and big garden outside with an outdoor bar, bbqs and parties often. So mostly I just hung around the hostel when I wasn't doing Spanish, sunbathing, going in the pool, drinking, chatting to people, playing ping pong, going out for food, sometimes cooking for people, mainly being cooked for! A few times we ventured into the outside world, to La Piojera, a famous bar in Santiago that does terremotos, (a fairly lethal drink made of wine, pisco, fernet and pineapple icecream) and to Bellavista, the trendy bar region. We had (more than) a few crazy nights when noone went to bed until 6 in the morning, I tried my hand at DJing, we had a few nights run of ring of fire, and we taught Brazil how to play s***head! And we had an amazing Australia day party, and last night leaving party for some of the staff!

So I left Santiago kinda sad to say goodbye to everyone, but this time on the bus to BA with two of the staff who were leaving, Tina and Alex, so I didn't have to do that horrible journey alone again!

So heres to everyone at la casa roja, Leticia, Erika, Gabriel, Guilherme, Reeve, Macca, Jaimito, Chuli, Agustin, Felipe, Eduardo, Tim, Martin, the NZ guys, Ailsa, Tina, Alex and all the other staff and guests who I came across in my 3 weeks, thanks for making my time on my own such great fun!