Valparaiso is a lovely little bohemian city built up from the port into the hills. It has a very arty vibe, with little craft shops and art galleries everywhere, rows of different coloured houses ascending the slopes, and masses of graffiti everywhere. In Chile graffiti is not illegal as they see it as a form of art and expression, so everywhere you go there is graffiti art of varying degrees, but Valparaiso seems to be in the centre of this!

We spent our first day wandering round near our hostel and getting our bearings, before going out for food. We had a Chilean dish, chorillana, which is basically a pile of chips, topped with a pile of fired onion and egg, meat and chorizo. We were told it would feed 2 or 3 people, but it was literally the size of my head! I gave up pretty early on but Ben perservered and we managed to beat it, although there was a large pool of oil that had collected at the bottom of the plate (I'm glad I only ate a bit!). I thought it was a bit like in Matilda when Bogtrotter is forced to eat the whole chocolate cake... anyway I'm saying thats a definate 1-1 now!

We spent our second day wandering along the top of the city to Pablo Neruda's house. He is famous in Chile and was a politician turned poet, who owns houses in several cities all of which are interesting and unusual. From up in the house there is a view of the whole of Valparaiso, right to the sea, which is really beautiful, and his house is full of wierd cool things, we left it inspired to buy our own houses and fill them with random junk and make them into museums, until we realised that would only work if we were also at some point famous...

Chile at the moment is in a kind of standoff with the students of the public universities, as the students want fees abolished, and have been on strike for 7 months, camped out in various unis across the country! Thursday is student riot day, which we forgot about as we went to the bus station to buy us some tickets, down a street where there had obviously been rioting that morning, and walked straight into a cloud of tear gas (its invisible, we're not just stupid!) I've literally never experienced anything like it before, my nose and throat were burning, and my eyes were streaming it was so painful! Ben was worse, he wasnt wearing sunglasses so his eyes were bright red, and it gave him a nosebleed, so he was walking along with blood all down his arms and holding a load of bloody tissues with red streaming eyes, I'm pretty sure everyone thought he'd been part of the riots! I feel like Chile was somehow getting back at us for defeating the chorillana so we'll call that 2-1 to SA!

We spent that night chilling in the hostel with our new hostel friends, and left the next morning for Viña del mar, in a car with the girls we had met in our hostel who were also headed there. Viña del mar is a beach resort so we spent the day on the beach, not getting toooo burnt, Ben braved the icy Antarctic waters, I did not! Then we ate sushi and went out at night with some Chilean guys (they love sushi here!) The next day wasn't sunny so we didnt have a lot to do, we went to a little Chilean restaurant with some guys we met, then made a mad dash for the bus station and got there just in time for our night bus to Pucon. I am aware that this will certainly be the most luxurious bus we go on in our whole travels! We had reclining chairs with leg rests and were even given pillows and blankets and a breakfast bar in the morning!