Hey everyone,

Well I´m sorry to tell you all that I wrote (if I may sy so myself) an AMAZING entry...a proper little narrative story when the computer decided to delete it ALL!! SO no I have lost my enthusiasm so I am going to have to resort to bullet pointing again.

• After my last entry we arrived in la serena by bus. The bus was so much better than the ones i have endured 24 hour trips in on the way to skiing so hope that it will be like this for the rest of the trip.
• The hotel here was slightly different to the one in santiago...i.e FREEZING but serve us with lovely tea and bread and apricot jam in the morning.
• The first night we were offered a 3 course meal for 2 pounds 50 in a empty snackbar type restaurant so we didnt expect much!! It consisted of flavoured water with a potato, mini corn on a cob and some meat swimming around in there i.e.soup. Battered fish and smash. And a unset creme cramel. But for that price we can´t really complain!! The night improved drastically as we ended up in an empty kareoke bar where they sold cheap cocktails with measures triple those in England, only to be joined by a crowd of chileans to sing classic songs and salsa to latin american music. Alcohol is definately the perfect ingredient for group bonding as we all got on so well!!
• After only 5 hours sleep we had to get up for our full day trip to a dam, some towns, papay factory, a pisco factory (chilean alcohol) where we bought some lush mango pisco, 3 course lunch in someones backgarden where we stole some oranges from the orange tree and ended by stargazing the southern hemisphere- the highlight seeing saturn with its rings!! Never been so cold in my life though so today I went to by a massive furry lined jacket for only a tenner...hopefully this will help me survive the salt flats where it will be minus 25 degrees
• Had the most AMAZING hot chocolate before we went to bed...actually tasted like melted chocolate
• Had the best night sleep last night and just pottered about the town today. The sun has come out- hooray!! Typical because I had put on tights, leggings and trousers! Bought a hot lunch for like 1 pund 50 from the supermarket and ate it on the steps of a museum...yes we got lots of strange looks from the locals!
• In about half an hour we are setting of the san pedro on an overnight bus so I shall tell you about this experience in the next blog.

Apologies again for the lack of detail. I shall try not to delete my next blog and make it a bit more interesting. Hope you are all enjoying yourselves :-) xxx

PS. the photo is the views we enjoyed while being driven around