Chillin'

Time to close the South American chapter of our travels. Our final ten days spent in Chile seem a bit of a distant memory now. Many apologies for not getting round to the blog for so long.

We left Bolivia at the end of our tour of the salt flats, hopping on a bus and waving goodbye to our fellow jeep survivors who had another full day of kneecap torture to endure. Think we made the right decision there. At the border we waited for ages to be allowed in to Chile officially. Full bag searches and disinfectant for our shoes. We hadn't realised border control was so stringent and had to stuff our packed lunches down while still on the bus, disposing of any apple cores unceremoniously out the window to avoid a nasty fine for introducing foreign pips. But we were soon in San Pedro itself. The place is really charming. Low slung white adobe buildings and dusty streets. It all felt a bit wild west. We slunked round the streets for a while looking for accommodation. The sun was blazing down and we were exhausted after our early start and the extremes of temperature. There didn't seem to be much middle ground accommodation available. Cheap and cheerful hostels or over priced hotels. We needed a bit of en suite action, so we went for the latter as a treat but paid through the nose for dodgy hot water and terrible tv reception. The bed was huge and comfortable though. We slept for the rest of the day.

We didn't really do much in San Pedro other than eat, sleep and wash when the hot water was good. There are lots of very funky restaurants and cafes in the town. Some with open courtyards and big blazing fires at night under the stars. We enjoyed our first exciting and really healthy looking food for ages. And started in on the Chilean wine straight away. It was enough of a novelty and still pretty cheap by European standards to enjoy indulging in fancy bistro dining and be satisfied with that. Graham went sand boarding one day, but said it was a bit rubbish. Fun for a few seconds, then hard work as you trawl back up the sand dune to slide down it again. Hot and too much hassle, but at least he did something cool. We had seen enough geysers and moonscapes to last a while so didn't really do much else while we were there.

After a couple of days we bought our tickets for the epic 24hr bus ride to Santiago and decided to head to the capital. We had just less than a week before flying to Auckland and thought we'd make the city our base. The bus ride was fine despite pretty paltry rations and a rubbish tv on the bus, but all the films were spanish anyway. Hey - there was food and tv! And room to stretch your legs and recline. Not up to Argentinian bus standards, but a world away from Bolivian standards, or lack of.

We had plans to travel out of Santiago again, over to the coast, but in the end just didn't make it. We found a friendly, funky hostel with an ex-pat US owner full of advice for seeing the sights and making the most of our time in the city. He and his assistant helped us book winery visits and tastings and by the time we had relaxed, eaten even more nice food and gone shopping a few times, the wineries were the most we could manage in our time left. We did go up a big hill near our hostel and ride on a cable car and visit a zoo, but mostly we relaxed and mooched around.

And drank rather a lot of wine.

We went to three wineries in the city: Concha y Toro, Cousina Macul and Santa Catalina. All different and all great. As we were relying on public transport we sampled rather more than we should have at the Concha y Toro wine bar and got thoroughly plastered by mid afternoon. Luckily the visits were spread out over a few days and we were rather more restrained and professional at the others. The beautiful buildings and surroundings of the wineries and the luxurious drinking were such good antidotes to the extremes of Bolivia, we didn't feel too guilty about being lazy travellers. We undoubtedly failed to make the most of our time in Chile, but we didn't really have all that much time and would be happy to go back there, in a warmer season, to see more of the country.

We experienced so much during our three months in South America, but we escaped without encountering the muggings, thefts and rip-offs a lot of travellers endure. We met plenty of people with shocking stories and count our blessings we were lucky to avoid that kind of thing entirely. We stayed pretty much within budget, got away without too many tummy troubles or nasty insect bites and, touch wood, nothing hideous has errupted or hatched out of either of us since we left jungle territory. The highlights were certainly our time in the Bolivian rainforest, trekking in Peru and relaxing on the beautiful beaches of Brazil. But the experience has been more than just getting to see new and fascinating places. The memorable stuff has been the people we've met, fellow travellers and locals alike, scary moments, perilous absences of health and safety regs, new cultures, the food - good and bad, strange customs and discovering the differences and similarities with home wherever we go.

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