We caught the 1 hour bus from Santiago to Vina Del Mar on the 30th to spend New Years on the coast. They say that Valparaiso (the next town along) has the biggest fireworks display in South America and an awesome street party for new years so we were quite keen to check it out. After we checked into our hostel we went for a bit of a wander around. It was quite a nice place and you could feel a real buzz leading up to new years.

Rich and Dan came and met us and we went out for a few practice drinks. On New Years Eve the hostel had organised a BBQ where we met a few more Aussies and Kiwis which we quickly bonded with and became the loudest bunch at the Party. After the BBQ we stocked up on drinks and headed down the road to Valparaiso. We found an awesome spot in an empty section on the hill over looking the town and ocean and listen to the music in the street and had a great Fiesta. The fire works display was absolutely amazing and well worth the trip. The next mission was trying to get home. It was chaos on the streets so getting a cab or any kind of public transport was out of the question so we decided to walk along the coast. As we walked along the coast we were invited to join some locals partying up in their apartment which we happily did. I guess they were a novelty for us and we were for them. They even let Junior at the computer to put music on which he readily accepted. After a while we decided to call it quits and walked back to the hostel.

The next morning was a bit of a right off as we were feeling quite under the weather. I made the mistake of getting Sushi for brunch and Junior lined up for ages and got his Maccas for dinner. Then since we could only book the 4 bed dorm for the first few nights we had the joy of moving into a 16 bed dorm for the last night. Fun.

The following morning we moved hostels to Valparaiso and spent the night there. It was great to check out the town after the mess of new years had been swept away. The town was amazing with heaps of street art everywhere and a really cool vibe to it. We spent the day walking round taking heaps of photos and finished off with a nice bottle of red and home cooked meal at the hostel.

The next day we went back to Santiago to try and sort our passports.