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 the beach with many non aqua orientated games and entertainment to keep you occupied at any time of the day. We had pool for the evening, wiff waff for the day and if any of ... read more

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 of 'lady boys'some of who joined us for the rest of our bus journey, with their vanity cases and loud pumping house music through their ipods. However our destination was far more picturesque, it is ... read more

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 was a sceptic who had lived over in Chile for the past twenty years, I asked him in our introduction where he was from and he replied that he did not believe in countries. '"I ... read more

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 interesting murals, but also a lot of ugly graffitti, and dogs. The dogs are everywhere. All sizes and strangely breeds......you would think with them all living on the street they would interbreed and eventually all ... read more

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 they were putting us up in Auckland´s best hotel, the Crowne Plaza, with all food provided, and then gave us some more food vouchers to spend in the airport while we waited for them to ... read more