New continent, new adventures!

After a 12h flight over the Pacific, Santiago welcomed us with spectacular blue skies and a nice view of the Andes. It felt good to feel the warmth of the sun again, as the weather in New Zealand had been pretty cold for the last few weeks. Dare we wish for no more woollypants?

Crossing the Pacific meant that we went back in time 16 hours, which meant that we've had the worst jetlag ever. No matter how we tried to get to the local sleep rhythm on day one, we have been dead tired during the day and lying awake at night. It seriously has taken a week to function normally again.

Somewhere in between the jetlag haze, we did some sightseeing in Santiago. Our slogan for China - "walk till you drop" - was successfully launched again:) After wondering around in the city, we took the cable car to Cerro San Cristobal, a hill in Northern Santiago. On the top you find a big statue of Virgin Mary and you can spend quite a long time there admiring the views of the huge city. Population is almost 5 million, which means an impressive city silhuette but also smog.

The next day we spent a few hours in a Pre-Colombian art museum learning about South American excavations. It was interesting in the sense that most of the history was new information. However, confession time: I'm not always sure if some items are interesting simply because they are old. Take cups and plates, for example. Sure it's an interesting thought that they were used hundreds of years ago, but the excitement sort of wears off after looking at a billion of them. But hey, we are still glad we went:)

It has been a bit tough with our Spanish. Libor is the only one who has taken some kind of a beginner's course, so our English-Spanish phrasebook has been in good use. The best thing is that we learn new stuff every day, words are easy to remember and the grammar quite logical. I am still on this "where are the toilets" and "hotdog and beer please" -level, but the language wizard Libor could soon go for a political debate with his skills. Seriously. I don't know what has happened, but he understands the strangest sentences and laughs in the right parts. So if he is around, the trip runs really smooth. If it's only me, at least I can eat and know where the bathrooms are. And this hotdog (un completo) that I mentioned, is pretty much the best snack ever - smothered in guacamole, tomatoes and mayonnaise. Muy bien!

After a few days in Santiago, we decided to head north towards San Pedro de Atacama, a village by the Atacama desert. Though South America has a reputation of being the continent for dreadful busrides with farm animals, this doesn't apply to Chile at all. Listen to this: seats folding into beds, free food, movies and toilets. So the 23h ride went smoothly indeed!

Atacama is the driest desert in the world and the nearby village of San Pedro de Atacama is located about 2300m above sea level. This makes the air dry and thin, and the nights very cold (so the woollypants are still around). On our first night we went on a tour, which took us to Death Valley, Cari Canyon and in the end the Moon Valley (Valle de la Luna) to watch the sunset. The salt in the canyon made the scenery look like it had just snowed, and you could hear the salt crack in between the rock walls. It was all very beautiful.

We also visited the local museum - more cups I'm afraid, but once again some interesting history about the area. Yesterday we rented bikes and did a 30km tour to see ruins and devil's gorge. It turned out that our navigation skills were a bit rusty as we took a wrong turn somewhere, which meant an extra 2 hour biking in a rough "pro-mountainbiker" area. The mud was flying and we had to start carrying our bikes cross rivers, but still it took us over an hour to realise that this is probably not the nice little stroll that the bike rental advertised. My bum was also so sore that sitting on the bike seat was not an option anymore. In the end we made it back to town and after a great Chilean meal crashed and slept a normal night, for the first time in a week.