Red Hot Chile!

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We arrived in Santiago, and the South American leg of our trip, from Aukland. When we were passing through imigration in Santiago (ah lads, we're Irish - you can let us through) the immigration official laughed, said something in Spanish and announced the name of our hostel to all the other immigration officials within earshot. They all proceeded to laugh. Eager to please, and enter their country, I laughed and smiled too (and may have waved). A quick google translate later discovered that the hostel was called 'The Rude Princess'...at least they had the dignity to laugh at me....we're not sure what they made of Francis!

The flight to Santigo left New Zealand @ 4pm of a Thursday, we flew for 10 hours and landed in Santiago at noon....the same day. Santiago was definately one of the biggest cities we have been in for a long time, and coupled with extreme jet lag, meant that we walked around in a daze for the first few days. Also Francis' (3 year old) Spanish conversation class, and my 'Spanish for Dummies' audio book, did not prepare us for the level of Spanish we would need to navigate menus, bus timetables and hostel bookings. Luckily, 'The Rude Princess' had a Spanish phrasebook which helped us to turn a corner. Donde esta el bano por favour?

From Santiago, we took a bus north to the pretty town of La Serena. La Serena was much bigger than we thought, with 29 churches and a beach that housed mainly stray dogs and the homeless. From La Serena we then took a night bus to the desert town of San Pedro - "Francis, this CAN'T be our stop.....".

The hostel we had booked looked closed so we knocked on the door. "No, no, Full, Full" the man who answered the door told us. "No, no we have booking" we assured him as we flicked frantically through the phrasebook. When we got him to understand, he showed us in....to a building site! We had been promised "newly built" not "still being built!". There were no other guests about the place that was littered with tools, cement and workmen. With rucksacks still on our back, we walked straight back out of the place and past the builder who had let us in..."Hasta luego!"

Once we had found and checked into another hostel we booked a 3 day 4x4 tour across the Bolivian desert. Desert???!!! I knew I should have watched more Bear Grylls before this trip......

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