Chile

---

First destination in Chile was Chile Chico. It's a small town where the only appealing thing about it is it's name, we even asked a local what there was to do there and she responded with "Nothing". Unfortunately, we ended up having to stay the night here due to the natural landscape making transport very infrequent in Southern Chile. This landscape also means that the main attraction here is hiking, with endless national parks at every town.

Our next stop was the larger town of Coyhaique, where we negoatiated a room with cable to provide us with an excuse to avoid hiking. The following day we thought we'd get into the spirit of things and eased ourselves in with a 12 MILE walk, complaining for most of it and limping for about 2 days after it. On the positive side it did mean that we got to see some really amazing views as Chile is so green and very attractive, which is in stark contrast to what we had been used to in Argentinian Patagonia. En route to Santiago we stopped at various other similar towns, Puyhuapi, Pucon, Puerto Montt...got the walking boots out a few more times but we were keen to move North as Southern Chile is pretty wet and very cold even in Spring.

An hour outside of Santiago we stopped at the seaside towns of Vina del Mar and Valparaiso. We weren't here for long so we decided to do a tour of both towns. The tour was run in a typical South American fashion, lacking in structure and time keeping. What was supposed to be a 4 hour tour ended up being 8. We have grown accustomed to this, however, there were a number of middle aged members of the Commonwealth also on the tour who weren't prepared to live and let live. In typical imperialist fashion they were constantly whinging and shouting comments from the back of the bus much to the bemusement of the other members of the party, creating a clear divide. Unfortunately, our nationality meant that we were grouped in with the impatient South Africans and the miserable Australians. The less said about the Americans the better.

After a few days relaxing here we headed to our final destination in South America, Santiago. We went to the main attractions, got some shopping in (as Daniel was leaving having deposited most of his wardrobe across the continent) and had our final fill of empanadas. We were really sad to leave South America, it was part of the trip we were most looking forward to and it did not disappoint.

---

Comments

[Georgina]

Happy New Year
Sent an email on New Years Eve but just thought I'd say it again. As you know I spent New Year's Eve with Grandma who spent the whole evening asleep, woke up at midnight and then had a second wind so consequently we were up until about 2 a.m. and I was shattered because, of course, I hadn't slept all evening !!!! Thank goodness for a glass of wine and Jools Holland, that's all I can say !! Have just been catching up with your adventures and as usual they do not disappoint - you'll have some fantastic memories Grandma loved the present from you and Ash, she seemed to enjoy Christmas but slept through a good deal of it. Hope you all enjoyed Japan, haven't seen your dad yet so i'm looking forward to hearing all about it very soon. Katy and Luke send their love, take care lots of love Georgina xxxxxxxxxx