La Serena, Valparaiso and Casablanca

Our first destination after San Pedro de Atacama was a very relaxed small city of La Serena. Right after disembarking from the bus we were approached by a local who insisted we go and stay with at his mom's house (Maria's casa). He sounded legitimate and the hostel is also listed in the Lonely Planet, so we decided to give it a go, especially since it was close to the bus stop. The family that owns the house is very nice and right of the bat told us where we should go for some cheap, but good food. Well, we didn't hesitate a second and took their advice and went for the local Menu del dia deal in the restaurant Los Pinos. If I tell you the truth, it wasn't far from perfect, very very good. Unfortunately, we didn't have great weather in La Serena, so we just took a short stroll around the beach and visited Plaza de Armas which is a square in every city. I'd definitely recommend to stop in this city on the way to or from the North of Chile.

From La Serena, we headed to a much bigger city Valparaiso which with its hilly scenery and colorful buildings reminds a bit of San Francisco. The situation from La Serena's bus stop repeated itself and we scored a great accommodation deal with very nice local folks. This seems to be the standard for how the locals travel and it gives a great insight into the living ways of the people. We had only one full day in Valparaiso, so we spent it browsing around the city and also took an old funicular up one of the hills (Cerro Concepcion) from where there is a pretty good view on the harbour and also some nice restaurants. However, we learned from San Pedro and didn't succumb to the great smells of food here, but rather made our way down towards the plaza Victoria where the restaurants seemed to have good deals on Menu del dia.

Our last stop before Santiago was a smaller cozy town of Casablanca where one of my college buddies (Jaime) has family, so we had to give it a go and pay them a visit.It turned out to be one of the best days we had in Chile. First we met his uncle Enrique at his cafe called Willys where we enjoyed one of the Chile´s brews and then Enrique´s wife Ximena offered to take us to a local vineyard called Casas del Bosque. Here we tasted about 8 different kinds of Chilean wine which Jenni confirmed to be very very very good and we also found out that the vineyard exports to Finland. After that we visited Jaime´s grandma, had a great lunch and then checked out their house which was quite nice. We definitely saw how the locals live here and most importantly, how hospitable they are. The communication between us was difficult at times, however, our Latin American dictionary came in handy. After our visit we got on the Tur Bus again and headed back to Santiago were we prepared for our trip to Peru.

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.