I´m in South America, how crazy is that! It was however after suffering a pretty gruelling 12 hour flight sitting next to some guy who loved splaying his broad sheet newspaper over me! I didn´t get much sleep and our first welcome into Santiago, Chile was to get thoroughly ripped off by the taxi driver, we ended up paying 40 pounds for a taxi that should have cost 8, robbing sniders. But once we got to our hostel things picked up it was like a boys dream; there was a free pool table, over 200 hundered movies, a playstation 2, free breakfast and free Internet, sweet as!

We booked in for three nights and began to explore the city, its pretty difficult getting places when we don´t know any Spanish but we manage to blag our way around pretty succesfully and we´ve done pretty well so far! The city itself isn´t that great its very much like a European city and it doesn´t really feel like you´re in South America. We explored the city for a couple of days and struggled our way around getting food and on the Metro etc. Then we booked our seven hour bus trip to La Serena (this was to be one of our shorter journeys), La Serena was really just a stop off before heading to the Atacama desert, we stayed there two nights and sampled our first South American beers and had a crazy but quality night out. The Chileans were pretty interested in us as it isn´t very touristy and everywhere we went people kind of stared at us but that was ok.

After two nights here it was time for our overnight bus journey to San Pedro this would take us 17 hours but at least we were saving money on accommodation! After sleeping a lot on the coach we arrived to what can only be described as an Oasis in the desert, the Atacama desert is supposed to be the most inhospitable place on Earth and in some parts hasn´t recieved rain for 50 years but this little town was awesome. The sandy roads are home to loads of small shops, wicked little restaurants and souvenir shops, it really felt like we were in the middle of nowhere, a bit like where they did the pod racing in Star Wars.

We had three days here and decided to sample a few tours, on our first day we randomly went to one of these small shops and asked if we could go sand boarding, they said no problem, they gave us a mountain bike, a sandboard and a map and said off you go, just bring the bike back at three, so thats what we did. We cycled 4km into the desert where we were the only people around, found some big sand dunes and attempted to climb to the top. This was one of the most tiring things I have done, but the ride down was pretty sweet although we did end up falling over many times and managed to get sand in every nuck and cranny, good fun though, we sampled it for a few hours before we were absolutely knackered then cycled back!

That afternoon we were booked onto a trip to Laguna Seca. This lake was so salty you could float with no effort just like the red sea (or the dead sea, whichever it is!), and again it was in the middle of nowhere and the scenery was amazing with about five volcanoes all around! We spent a couple of hours in the lake being careful not to step on the salt as it is so sharp that it cuts you! It was a great experience!

The following day we had a lie in as the previous day was so tiring then in the afternoon we headed on another tour to see the Moon Valley, Valley of the Dead and some salt caves. This again was an amazing experince as the landscape was just like the moon! I will upload some photos soon that´ll tell the story! We sat down at sundset on top of a sand dune and watched the sun go down!

We have managed to do all of this for 20 pounds a day, its so cheap over here, a hostel room is 5 pounds and a meal is again a fiver, we have sampled some pretty nice Chilean food in the crazy little restaurants. Overall I have loved San Pedro and would definately recommend people to come here if in Chile, the atmosphere is great and the fact you´re in the middle of the desert is amazing, its 25 degrees in the day and 0 at night! Love it!