After leavingthe desert we headed further North along the coast. Chile is only 400km at its widest point and we wanted to get to Peru eventually, so a trip further up the coast was the order of the day. I wanted to head to a place called Iquique as the surf was meant to be really good and after all of the bus travelling that we had done recently it would be nice to chill out in one place for a while, just to catch our breath. Our hostel was very traditional in the sense of hostal places, situated close to [View Full Entry]

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It was a long, hot, dusty, overnight bus trip to San Pedro de Atacama (it took about 12hours in the end). It was real desert. We travelled for hours on a lonely road with the sun beating down, with nothing to see but orange dust and sand. I had never been anywhere like this before. Then finally an oasis, literally a patch of life, green trees and buildings, right in the middle of nowhere, at 2400m altitude sat the tiny cosmopolitan town of San Pedro. It was very surreal. The town was real enough, with a real local population, but lots [View Full Entry]

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Lifes a beach and then you sit on one!! Have you ever seen a desert, no the kind that has chocolate sprinkles on top. The one where there isn´t much H2O around, well our journey through to Bahia Inglesa followed the edge of the Atacama (driest place on earth), past Copiapo. A town where mining is big, perhaps more popular than in the Neath valley, where a huge proportion of Chile´s natural resources are brought to the surface. As you can imagine Copiapo is dry, dusty, feisty and quite frankly rather ugly. Strangely it seemed to have an abnormally high population [View Full Entry]

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So our journey Northward started with a trip South, it sounds a bit backward but then again you somtimes have to take a few steps back to get forwards. We headed for Vina, where they have a large bus terminal and where our bus for La Serena would be departing. Tur bus was our choice of bus company and they turned out to be as good as ever with the traditional supply of dubbed movies and varying body odours for company as we counted down the six hour journey. We arrived mid afternoon and after a quick consultation with the LP [View Full Entry]

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The next stop was a small village called Ritoque. It was the place where we were decided to chill and kick back. Leaving the city vibe and returned to beach style with surf on the door step. We took a local taxi from Vina and headed around the rocky headland for about 35kms to the town of Quintero. It was another 6km down a potholed track to our final destination of Ritoque beach and our accommodation of a surf hut. It was really great, the hut was with sea views and had all self catering facilities. Our host´s name was Ian [View Full Entry]

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It was a grey and misty morning, as usual, when we left Valparaiso to head for the metro for the short trip to Vina del Mar. It is a large holiday resort close to the city and is full of high rises and apartments for the rich from the city to enjoy the weekends. It has a few miles of sandy beaches and row after row of street vendors selling candy floss, toffee apples, ice creams and local crafts at inflated prices. It had peddalo cars and a mini fun fair for the kids. Despite its generic look, we enjoyed it. [View Full Entry]

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The Lonely Planet says that some people will not understand Valparaiso. Well at first we certainly felt that way. It is a UNESCO world heritage site, and really quite unique. It is a coastal town and the largest port in Chile. The city itself consists of the flat portion called El Plan, which houses downtown and the markets, and the hills containing the residential areas. There is something like 40-60 different hills each with its own character and its own 'ascensores´, which are essentially very old funiculars. The houses are colourful and interesting but very ramshackled. There are a lot of [View Full Entry]

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Pichilemu is another of those surfing meccas. Ever heard of Punta De Lobos? No nor me, but anyway after 4 hours on the bus we were there. It was like a ghost town, with tumble weed and everything. Pilchilemu is kind of like a Chilean Barry Island. It has a huge beach, with dubious cleanliness and certainly will never win a blue flag award. It is a small town with penny arcades and fruit machines, straight out of the 1970s. It has about 30 empanda shops and chips shops that sell bags of chips in about 20 different sizes depending on [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Auckland airport 6 hours early, after giving back the motorhome, as the process went very smoothly and quickly. We killed time, as you do in airports, and headed for the check in desk when it finally opened, 30 mins late, to be told there was a delay and come back in an hour. Softening the blow with some food vouchers. This made us suspicious that something was not right. On return to the desk we found that our LAN air flight to Chile (12 hours duration) was cancelled. Arghhh! was the first response. Then they told us that [View Full Entry]

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Free, to do what we want at any old time. With a brand new van as replacement for the last leaky one and up graded to a bigger version, that thankfully did not smell of Stuart´s wetsuits, we started on our travels. Our plan was to travel up the Coromandel peninsula, an area that we had heard had unrivalled beauty and to perhaps catch some fo the beautiful beaches that settled into the northern part of the north island. We bumbled along the roads until we reached the left turn that would take us up the peninsula and into the town [View Full Entry]

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