Chile

The Pachamama tour group

We stayed in Santiago for almost a week where we took spanish classes and were staying in a lovely hostel called La Casa Roja. The city itself is unexciting but it was a good base to start our trip. We did spanish classes with a Peruvian called Jesus and partied in the evenings - not much else to do there.

From there we took a 5 day tour into northern Chile in a group of 15 people - english, scottish, kiwis, dutch, 2 swiss, 2 columbians, 1 brazilian and ourselves. We saw lots of penguins, sea lions, pelicans, pink flamingos, visited museums, national parks, drove 2 days through the Atacama desert, visited a train cemetary (?) and swam in an oasis in the middle of the desert - very cool.

(Sunset at Bahia Ingles)

(Valley of the Moon, San Pedro)

We are now in San Pedro de Atacama - here 2 days (nice little town, white low size buildings, dirt roads etc) and we (and 7 of the others in our original group) have decided to cross into Bolivia tomorrow morning.


The group is myself and sanch, a Scottish girl Rowan, a Dutch guy Stefan, a Swiss guy Casper, an English couple David and Elli and a Kiwi couple Gareth and Vic. The weather here is really hot, very dry too (being in the middle of the desert). Apparently though it will be colder in Bolivia so we are packing accordingly.

Sancha at the Salt Flats, Michelle in the Valley of the Moon