Hola, Our 17 hour bus ride became an 18 hour bus ride after bus troubles. However, we were fed and we got to watch a bunch of movies. We also go to play bingo, which as boring as it sounds was actually a nice surprise. We arrived in Bariloche and it was beautiful. The city is in the shore of Lago Nahuel Huapi and is surrounded by snow capped mountains. Unfortunately, this means that the city is somewhat hilly so it was quite the hike up to our hostel, Tango Inn. The one perk of a hostel up a hill is that the view is spectacular! We were planning on going hiking on our first day in town, but there are not many busses that go to the town we needed to do the hiking from ... read more

Hola, Our flight from Easter Island was late in arriving, but fortunately our friend's driver, Fernando, was waiting for us with our names on it. He drove us to Viña del Mar, which is on the coast of Chile, where we would be staying with Joann, who is a friend of Peter's parents. Thoughtfully, she had dinner waiting for us when we arrived and we chatted for a bit. The next day, we were picked up and taken to the Naval Museum in Valparaiso, a city twenty minutes south of Viña, where we were given a private tour of the museum by a former admiral and friend of Joann's, Roberto Benavente. It was a very interesting tour, especially with someone who knew so much about the history of Chile's navy. We then went back to Viña ... read more

Buenos Dias, The bus rides to get to Chile were hit and miss. The night bus to Mendoza was terrible, complete with screaming children and a snoring walrus. The bus from Mendoza to Santiago was much more pleasant. It was extremely scenic as well. We went through the beautiful pass into Chile, going past towering, snow-capped peaks and even getting a glimpse of Cerro Aconcagua, which at 6962 metres, is the highest peak outside the Himalayas. It is illegal to bring furits, vegetables or meat into Chile. We realized, shortly before the border, that we both had sandwiches with meat and veggies in them. It felt like we were having to get rid of a stash of drugs or something as we wolfed down those subs so they would not confiscate them and we would not ... read more

Ola, We left Salta on a morning bus that would take us four hours to get to Cafayette. The scenery en route was absolutely stunning!!! The entire way was a mixture of red and black canyons, interspersend with green valleys, winding rivers and towering mountains. Unfortunatly, it wook us an hour longer than it was supposed to but that was because the clutch on our bus died twice. We arrived in Cafayette and checked into Hostal Rusty K. It has tiled terracotta floors and a beautiful cortyard with trees and flowers everywhere. We wandered around the extremelyu pretty town afterwards. We managed to find an ice cream store that served two types of ice cream that were made out of cabernet sauvingon and torrontes. They were excellent, and there was a liberal amount of alcohol present ... read more

Buenos Dias, The bus from Laguna Blanca took us to the lonely, windswept borderpost where the guard didn't even look at our pictures as he stamped us out of Bolivia. The bus, with others travellers on it proceeded down the hill towards San Pedro de Atacama, which is an oasis town in the middle of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. The descent was very interesting. We gradually descended 2000 metres in a little over 40 kilometres. The terrain was still barren, but very intriguing. The hill was constant, all the way down and it showed exactly how the Andes were forced up by the crashing of tectonic plates. It was strange to be on a paved road again! There were two Brazilians who, despite it being 930am, still felt compelled to share their bottle of ... read more