Valparaiso

By the time we reached Valparaiso, we were pretty tired after all the horse riding and liver bashing. As a result we took it pretty easy here again and looked around the streets, ate nice meals.. and surprise surprise, drank more wine. We were staying in a ghost-town of a hostel, but just down the street was all the craziness of this awesome city. We loved all the graffiti on the walls, and spent most of the time taking pictures of the streets (we must have looked like such tourists). Highlights of our culinary experience included The Best French Restaurant Ever, and this awesome little place that only served one meal – an enormous pile of chips with some beef, onion and egg on top… Amazing! I think we put on about 3 stone in the three days we spent here. Three days later we reluctantly left our beloved Valpo and travelled back to Santiago for one more night before finishing our South American adventure with a big plane to NZ.

Uspallata

After an Emotional good bye to Leon and Rowan we were exhausted. For the previous 8 days we had done every activity in the guidebook, eaten every food in a cookbook and drunk every beer, wine and spirit known to man! So instead of heading south (our original plan) we decide just to keep hanging out in Mendoza for another few days before a short bus ride north to the mountain town of Uspallata. Still tired, we booked into the classiest hotel in town and chilled out with some cable TV for a further 3 nights. We did manage to do some more horse-riding (in the pouring rain)and visit a few attractions but mostly we just veged!

Mendoza (the Rowan and Leon weeks cont...)

After a short but extremely bumpy plane ride over the Andes, we arrived in the beautiful tree lined Argentine city of Mendoza (home to 70% of Argentina’s wine producers)!!!
Hardly any time had passed when we checked into the greatest little hostel anywhere in the world, before we were out enjoying the amazing food and nightlife that this vibrant little city has to offer. With hardly any sleep and a bad hangover we were picked up early the next morning for a full day of white-water rafting, and it was amazing. For starters, we were the only four people going rafting that day, so we had the river to ourselves. Secondly, the packed lunch that was included was immense, with every food and drink you could have dreamed of, including wine! By the end of the adventure downstream, we had all managed to fall out (except for Abi) and laughed all the way home, well for the 5 mins we weren’t all asleep!
On another day we also hired bicycles and rode around between the different wineries! I’m not convinced this is the safest activity, considering there are no bike lanes, a lot of traffic and every tourist is extremely drunk, but it is loads of fun! All in all we loved this place and would go back in a heartbeat!

Santiago and Pichilemu (the Rowan and Leaon weeks)

We arrived in Santiago from a 20 hour bus ride from the north of Chile. We went straight to our accommodation and low and behold who should we run into in the reception area but Rowan and Leon (for those of you that don’t know, they are our close friends and we were going to be doing some travelling together for 8 days). We had managed to hire a gorgeous little two bedroom apartment for a couple of nights and settled in there quite quickly. After
The following day we did some sight-seeing around the city, before a quick dip in the pool on the 24th floor of our apartment complex.
We then decided for a change of scene and headed south to the sleepy surfing town of Pichilemu. We hired our own little wooden, mountain cabin for 3 nights and managed to get in some surfing, horseback riding along the black sand beaches, and brilliant local cuisine. It was a great chilled out few days and highlighted by finding a beachfront bar with hot-tubs above the sand dunes, where you could drink cocktails in the setting sun!