Catching the train from Tupiza to Oruro was bliss - a real nice change from buses, although being in Executive class probably helped as we had more room, seats that reclined way back, videos with english subtitles (although the choice of films left something to be desired, have you ever seen Tom and Huck?) and we got dinner and a drink in the buffet car included in the price. Most people took blankets on with them, always a sign that it's going to be really freezing, but until we stopped in Uyuni at midnight we had the opposite problem - we were being slowly roasted. After that though the cold outside started to beat the train's heaters so they gave us all a blanket and pillow, and yeap by morning the windows had frozen on the ... read more

To cross from Chile to Bolivia we decided to take a three day 4WD jeep tour across the mountainous terrain of the high Andes up to the Salar de Uyuni, looping round to end in the Bolivian town of Uyuni. We rocked up at 7:45am and were bussed (very slowly in an old minibus with 11 of us in it) to the border, where instantly the paved roads of Chile are replaced with bumpy dirt /gravel track. Our driver chirpily cried "welcome to Bolivia" with a laugh. The border sits high amongst the mountains with a shed as immigration office and a rusty abandoned bus which you go behind for a pee whilst the wild foxes look on. The process was quick as we filled in the hand-drawn table ourselves and after Emma exchanged some money ... read more

We had planned to only spend 4 days in San Pedro, but on the second night Marie developed toothache which by the third night made signs of swelling (although this was probably contained by the freezing cold temperatures at night and our room being like an ice box). My self diagnosis was a dental infection (despite having a check up at the dentist's before we left). Luckily San Pedro forms the hub for small local villages and there is a basic medical centre here. Even more lucky is that they have a dentist who can do basic dentistry. A quick trip there on Saturday morning confirmed my diagnosis, antibiotics and anti-inflammatories were prescribed and we thought great sorted. The dentist wanted to x-ray me but couldn't do it that day so told me to come back ... read more

The 11 hour bus journey to get to here seemed to fly by, we're obviously getting good at this bus malarkey. Just as well really as we'll be on a fair few more yet! Copiapo is surrounded by big mountains on all sides and has a dry desert feel to it. It's a relative sized town of 100K+ residents that was formed for mining in the area and has a real manual labour, scruffy thing about it. It was still early when we arrived (about 8am) so we sussed out the buses for tomorrow night to Calama from where we'll make the 1 or 2 hour hop to San Pedro de Atacama, before we went in search of somewhere to spend the night. After a bit of map confusion we found a residencial, our cheapest sleep ... read more

The crossing from Mendoza, Argentina to Vina del Mar, Chile only took 8 hours. It was amazing how much different the mountains looked from the day before, as much of the lower level snow had melted and we could really see the different colours and layers in the mountains. They're actually really colourful in a strange kind of way. The border crossing took ages and was freezing, its a full on crossing which was surprising as you'd think that the 2 countries would be quite good friends. The only good thing was that both countries are in one building on the Chile side of the border so we only had to freeze once. There was lots of drugs dogs and we watched one poor guy get all his dirty washing pulled out in front of everyone ... read more