Goodbye to Santiago Leaving Santiago behind, it felt like we were closing the chapter on the first part of our trip and moving onto the second half, which up until now we've thought little about and planned even less. We have just under six months left and in that time we hope to see 12 to 14 countries between Chile and Mexico. Given that we've only seen 5 countries so far (plus Antarctica), we realised we had to pick up the pace. With that thought in mind we travelled 1700km north from Santiago to San Pedro de Atacama in the far north of Chile, a trip that involved 24 long, painful hours on a bus, our longest South America bus journey so far, and took us from Chile's most populous region to one of its remotest, ... read more

The most remote island? Located almost 4000 km from mainland Chile, and well over 2000 km from the nearest inhabited land (Pitcairn Islands), Easter Island has a fair claim to being the world's most remote place. Remote it may be but isolated it is not, as daily LAN Chile flights from Santiago and Tahiti, not to mention the huge numbers of tourists that visit, mean you never feel the solitude that the earliest inhabitants of the islands must surely have felt. Indeed, until 1968 the island was visited only once a year by a ship from Chile which brought supplies, something of a contrast to nowadays! In spite of these crowds it's easy to escape and find quieter spots where you can still feel some of the island's remoteness. It was with some excitement that we ... read more

Lonquimay The Central Valley area of Chile stretches south from Santiago as far as Temuco, and contains some of Chile's most interesting, though often overlooked, sights. Chillan was our first stop in the Valley. It's a busy town, birthplace of Chile's first President, Bernardo O' Higgins, but with little to attract travellers. As in other regions of Chile, it's the landscapes of the Central Valley rather than the towns that capture the imagination. We hired a car (a striking red Chevrolet Aveo) in Chillan and spent four days exploring these landscapes. We drove down the Pan American to Curacautin, an access town for Conguillo National Park, and also for Reserva National Malalcahuello-Nalcas, both of which contain active volcanoes. Conguillio Park has been in the news recently following the eruption of Volcan Llaima on 1-Jan-2008. We were ... read more

Leaving Chiloe behind we moved onto one of Chile's most visited regions, the Lake District. We had taken things relatively easy in Chiloe, so we were looking forward to plenty of hiking and climbing after leaving the islands. The Lake District in Chile lies roughly between the cities of Temuco & Puerto Montt. The main towns are connected by the Pan American highway, running through the western half, while most of the lakes, mountains and volcanoes are found within a series of national parks and reserves, in more remote areas closer to the Argentinian border. Access to these parks is often via dirt roads, meaning it takes time to see all the sites, and that you usually need to return to the Pan American to move north or south. The relative inaccessibility of these parks, however, ... read more

Christmas in Fireland After returning from Antarctica we spent six days in Ushuaia, including Christmas Day. These six days were probably the laziest of the trip so far - we managed a grand total of two hikes and visited only one museum. Most people from our cruise had immediately left Ushuaia, though Valery, our Zodiac driver, was still around, as he had another trip on December 26th, so we met up with him on two consecutive nights in The Galway or "The World's most Southern Irish Bar" as it liked to call itself. Such a claim makes you think it's a long was to the next Irish bar, but there was another one, The Dublin, only half a block north! The only Irish thing about The Galway was the prices, but in a town short of ... read more