A final Post: Santiago

So it's over and we are back. Back to work, back to life. Back to normalcy. Unfortunately things didn't go that smoothly this morning. After celebrating that our car batteries were not flat yesterday, Brandon promptly (and accidentally) left my headlights on overnight. Stress and calling road side assist ensued. I eventually got to work.

I realised too late that I had forgotten to cover our first few days in Santiago, so I will do them all in this post.

Living the high life: Zapallar

Playa Zapallar

We found a nice hotel on the net for a very good rate in Zapallar, an apparently good diving location and so we booked it. Only to find out from our hotel that there was apparently no way to get there because the buses there are limited to very early and very late to try to keep poor people away from the exclusive area. That was not going to stop us.

Coastal days: Valparaiso and around

On Wednesday we got into 'Valpo' earlier than we expected and rougher than we had hoped. The bus from Pucon had been far too warm and it was just not an ideal sleeping environment (again with the randoms getting on and off). Thankfully we were booked into a hotel and they let us check in straight away, and we had a nap. In the afternoon we went on the tours 4 tips walk because we didn't feel like doing much and everyone says said how great they are. It was good, in that we got some knowledge of the area and we got tips about where to eat.

Snow and horses: Pucon

On Friday night we got a night bus to Pucon, the only place we could find with ski fields that were still open. It is officially part of Patagonia, so we can say we've been to patagonia! Woo! It turns out that Saturday and Sunday were the last days for the ski field, and it was open later than normal. So when you read that Chile ski field are open until October what it really means is September, because all the slopes near Santiago were already well closed.

Cycling the Atacama and volcano climbing: San Pedro de Atacama

Our breakfast spot on the morning of our volcano climb

So on the day we arrived in San Pedro we thought we should book something to do some we had ages there, even though we weren't very interested in what there was to do. If you're coming from Uyuni, it's pretty much the same stuff so you won't need that long.

A salty tour: salar de Uyuni

On Wednesday we left on our 'salt flat tour'. It's more like a tour of South Western Bolivia, since you only spend one afternoon on the actual salt flats. Plenty of time by the way, we got a bit bored. We did a 3 day tour ending in San Pedro de Atacama, Chile.

A quick update before our salt flat tour

La Paz from the hostel breakfast room

So, where we left off allwas good in La Paz. Until the middle of the night on Sunday when Brandon started vomiting again and had the shivers. And I was down at reception having a terrible conversation with the spanish speaking guy there. Brandon survived until morning and the hotel called a doctor to come and look at him.