Gothville Lots of people in Santiago, huge big busy place, most of the young people seemed to have taken the goth route which is a bit dissapointing and slightly scarey too! Other than that not a lot to report, got the bus here and then the metro to near the hostel, which is a mansion, converted, amazing place still looks like a mansion despite the swarms of backpackers. Big cricket followers, someone bought the ashes on tínternet and then put it on a h...

Public transport made easy After deciding to visit La Campana National Park we had the slight problem of how to get there as it appeared that very few buses or even tours go there. However we did it with relative ease, first getting the very efficient metro to Limache, (with a quick stop off in Viña del Mar to see how the rich live!) then catching a collectivo (group taxi thing) to a very small, unknown to us, town called Olmué. We felt very please...

The multi-coloured houses n´all Travelled through the day over the snow covered mountains, to highest mountain reaching nearly 7000M high, slow border crossing into Chile from Argentina however despite the great views. Our gold card passport (UK passport) failed us quicker entry than any other people to our dissapointment. We stayed in Valparaiso instead of the popular beach resort of Vina Del Mar as it was too expensive. Lots of different coloured house...

6 Days in Mendoza We spent quite a long time in Mendoza by our standards. There seemed to be masses to do and luckily we found ourselves a very cheap but good hostel about 10 minutes walk from the main plaza. We spent quite a lot of time wondering round the city centre, shopping (they have C&A and Etam!) and drinking coffee/beer in one of the numerous pavement cafes. Although it`s a city and is very busy we found there to be a really relaxed environment and ...

Anti-tourismWe arrived in La Rioja to discover they don`t exactly welcome tourists with open arms. We`d plannned to stay for a couple of days and do a wine tour but found there were no hostels or even cheap guest houses, no wine tours and no tourist information(it was closed and looked like it hadn´t been open for years). We quickly decided to move on to Mendoza (where they definately did wine tours) but found we had a 9 hour wait in temperatures of 42 degr...