Xi'an is the start of the Silk Road. We had two full days here. The first day was a bright and early start to get to HuaShan, one of the five sacred mountains of Taoism. This is a truly spectacular, and surprisingly expensive, place. We semi cheated by taking the cable car part of the way up before hiking the rest of the way. Plenty of incredible views, sweating, a little swearing but no spiritual revelations for us. On the sheer face of the south peak is an amazing only-in-China experience, the plank walk, a narrow (~40cm wide) "path" bolted to the side of a 2000m vertical drop. The whole thing is a bit chaotic, you pay your CNY30 and are strapped into a safety harness, then it's down a vertical ladder to the walk itself ... read more

After 171 days in South America it's time to go home. We've had a fantastic time, seen and experienced some wonderful things, and met some interesting people along the way. We've been up mountains to altitudes over 5000m and down canyons more than 1000m deep. We've frozen in temperatures of -15c and sweated in the high 30s. We've been in deserts where it never rains and in rain forests where it hardly stops. We've been to cosmopolitan cities that have everything and isolated villages with facilities that can't even be called basic. We've seen people who live wonderful lives and those who live in hell. We've slept in hammocks, seats and beds on buses and boats and in hostels, hotels, tents, peoples houses and the great outdoors. We've traveled over 30,000km and had some perfect journeys ... read more

This is a cool town, very arty and bohemian. In the early 90s the city commissioned some artists to paint murals to create an outdoor museum. Time hasn't been very kind to them, they're not in very good condition nor as interesting as the regular graffiti and murals done more recently on other walls all over town, some of which are excellent. Just a few km's down the road, or a few stops on the train we took, is Vina del Mar an upmarket beach resort with lots of high rise apartment buildings, international hotels and expensive shops. It's OK for a few hours but not very interesting. The weekend we spent in Valpo was just the right amount of time before we head back up to Santiago for our flight home.... read more

Having given up on climbing Volcan Villarica we headed to Mendoza for some vineyards, wine and bife de chorizo. This meant another crossing of the Andes which true to form didn't disappoint. The weather was typical of the mountains - as we climbed higher the snow got heavier but the sun also sometimes came out, beautiful. Then once more we'd be in mist and cloud, all four seasons in a day, again. This is the land of the Monkey Puzzle tree, there are thousands of them in the parque nacional the road passes through. They really are strange. On the Argentinian side we had to stop in Junin de Los Andes to change bus which meant an overnight stay. Unless you're a trout fisherman there's not much there but it's a nice enough town for a ... read more

From Castro we took a bus directly to Peurto Varas, skipping Puerto Montt which is an unattractive place with little to see or do. Happily the weather was being kind to us again, when we arrived it was cold but clear and dry, we can live with that. Like all of the lakes and rivers in this part of the world the water here is beautifully clear and clean, but very cold - although amazingly we did see people paddling and even swimming one day !! they're a lot braver than me. The view across the lake to the perfect cone of Volcan Osorno is quite something as are the waterfalls at Petrohue which we went to on our second day. Although they're called waterfalls they're more like big rapids, but no less impressive for that. ... read more