First week.....well 10 days

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Hello,

Hope everyone is keeping well. Sorry we haven't been in contact, things have been slightly more hectic than we thought, in a good way.
So far we have spent a few days in Sao Paulo, Brazil then moved onto Santiago in Chile. From Santiago we have made our way south through Chile, visiting Valparaiso, Talca, Temuco and National Park of Conguillo and we're now in Villarica in the lake district of Chile.
Sao Paulo was just enormous, the city buzzed all through the night, a really exciting feel to it, it is just on a different scale to London! Their equivalent to Hyde park is the most beautiful of mini tropical rainforests!
In Santiago we went on a funicular up the mini mountain (hill) in the middle of the city to watch the sunset over the Andes. The whole city is surrounded by the Andes with mountains of 6000m+!
We also ate in the central mercado, a specialised fish market, the fish was awesome but the local delicacy of razor clams and parmesano tasted wierdly of goat!!
We have stayed with a Chilean family, spending an evening listening to their Edith Piaf records on an incredibly rickety old record player, we have been for a wine tour in the Maule wine valley in middle Chile on Mountain bike and yesterday we went for a 7.5hr hike around the monkey puzzle forests and volcanoes of the Conguillo national park. In a little bit of pain after that one!
Plans now are to head down and across to Argentina, hike up to the crator of a Volcano, have a thermal bath (I think we'll need it), horse ride around a lake or two and then drive 2000kms on unpaved roads down to the southern most village in the world!! I think we may have packed this a little tightly.
After this we head to Buenos Aires on the 27th and meet David (brother) in Sao Paolo on the 1st March to head up to Salvador in Brazil. From there we need to work our way down back to Sao Paulo for our flight back on the 15th March.
It has been a great first 10 days and despite maybe sleeping a little bit too much we have made good progress. It has been 9 years since we have done any real travelling like this and it takes a little time to get into the swing of things.....oh yes and learn Spanish! The people of Chile are so friendly and so helpful, at one point on our journey to Valporaiso we had an entire bus collaborate to help us to our hostal, they really are as friendly as everyone says they are. We just need to work on our Spanish.

We have taken far too many pictures, a couple of good ones in there which is good news.

Take care one and all and we will try and upload a few pics later (if you are interested)!

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Photos

Sao Paulo market
mmmm...lunch

Brazilian Dude
Clever

Lost in Sao Paulo!
Lost in Sao Paulo!

Sunset over Santiago
Not bad....