We arrived in a town called Ancud and set up our tent (weather still not great). Most places were closed as it was a Sunday so we went to the supermarket, Jonho cooked our tea on the gas stove in the rain and then we chilled out in the tent. The next day we got a bus to Pinguineras. When we were on the bus a man started speaking spanish to us, we gathered he said something about penguins so we said ‘Si’. When the bus stopped and was turning back around, we were in the middle of the countryside and didn’t know where we were and this Spanish man pointed at a car, so we went with him and there was a woman driving, an old lady in the passenger seat, the spanish man got in and told us to, so we did. It was pretty awkward as nobody said a word to us so we were both looking at eachother confused until Jonho asked where we were going. It turned out that the driver spoke perfect English (god nose why she didn’t just speak to us first) and the spanish man was a tour guide, they had a boat doing a tour to see the penguins which started soon so they were just helping us out! We got there and the boat took us around little islands which had penguins on, it was really cool and we were like little kids getting all excited and laughing when they fell over or jumped into the water. It was a fun day, despite the weather. We went out for food and then back to the tent!
The next day we went to a town called Castro. We went out for our first Cazuela which is basically a Chilean Stew and then had a walk around. We bumped into a sea lion in the street and stood watching it for about half an hour. We cooked at the hostel and chilled out there in the evening. The next day, we planned to go for a hike but the rain was non-stop so we played UNO at the hostel with some of the other guests, got a bus to Puerto Montt which is another town. We didnt do much in the evening apart from get a McDonald’s.
The next day in Puerto Montt we went to the fish market and had seafood and salmon empanadas whilst walking around and then for lunch went to a fish restaurant at the market. Jonho ordered a Coranto as it was the ‘local dish’ but didn’t really know what it was. When the waiter came over with it, we thought he had got the wrong table as it was a huge plate of muscles, with a boiled chicken leg on top, a bacon rib, a chorizo sausage and a huge potato. A very random combination of food. In the evening we cooked at the hostel and there were lots of Chilean men there who had lots of alcohol and were topping up our glasses. We had a laugh with them trying to chat via google translate.

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We left Pucon with the intention to go to Lican Ray which took us about 1 hour. When we arrived here, it was a ghost town. There was nowhere open and nobody around so we asked at tourist information and were told it will be like this until January… so we left.

We got a 5 hour bus to Puerto Varas and when we arrived had food and went straight to bed. The next day, we had a walk around the lake and spent the afternoon at a bar overlooking the lake (we took this opportunity as we finally had some ok-ish weather).

The next day, we booked onto a tour to visit volcano osorno. We took the chair lift to the top of the volcano with the intention of walking back down but it was way too cold once we got to the top, so we got the chair lift back down. The chair lift broke which meant us sat dangling in the air for 40 minutes stuck in the clouds, freezing and couldnt see a thing! After the volcano, we went to some waterfalls which were really cool. The water was emerald green and it looked really pretty! Finally, we went to the lake for a short walk around before heading back to the hostel.

The next day, we went to a small German town called Frutilla. This was by the lake with lots of coffee shops, old german houses and other shops. There wasn’t lots to do here and it started to rain anyway, so we headed back to the hostel and chilled out there.

We arrived in the morning and set up the tent in the campsite. It was really nice, sunny weather so we spent the day at the black sand beach by the lake. We sunbathed but didn’t dare swim as the lake was freezing!
The next day we went to the ‘rustic’ hot springs. There were lots of small pools surrounded by rocks, some cold, some were the temperature of a hot bath and others were too hot to even sit in! We had quite a chilled out day there and then headed back to the campsite and cooked our tea on the gas stove.
The next day, we planned to go for a walk but woke up to rain. So, instead went to the thermal baths which were more like hot outdoor swimming pools. These were alot posher than the hot springs. It didn’t rain whilst we were at the baths but as we left and were waiting for the bus there was a huge storm, we got soaked and once we got back we packed up the tent and headed to a hostel. There was no way we could have camped in that weather.
We got to the hostel, made our tea there and chilled out.
The next day it was still crappy weather so in the morning we took a short walk to the beach and then went to a bar and watched England Vs New Zealand Rugby and had our second Chorillina whilst being in Chile. This is basically a mountin of chips topped with cheese/meat/veg. The storm started again whilst we were there so afterwards we went back to the hostel with a couple of bottles of wine, cooked tea and had some drinks. The hostel was really busy and everyone was drinking. We met 4 french people around our age who all spoke English so we spent the night drinking with them. We discovered our new favourite drink… Piscola! (Pisco and coke).
The next day, we decided to go kayaking down the rapids. We were going to get wet regardless so it didn’t matter if it rained. It was a 10am start, Kerry was feeling a little worse for wear to start after one too many piscola’s. We arrived at the river and got kitted up. The kayak was a 2 man one which meant we were both at the front and we both had a guide behind us doing most of the work. Kerry’s guide decided to tell us it was his 1st day working for the company and that he had never been on this particular river before. First of all we started on the grade 2/3 rapids which  was crazy, we didnt expect the waves to be so big and choppy and then we went onto the grade 4 and 5 rapids. Kerry’s kayak tipped over, she had to swim to the edge and it was only the start of the rapid. It was very scary, the waves were so big and there were so many rocks so ended up with a bruised swollen elbow (which now feels much better). This was a really fun morning! In the afternoon we went to the pub to watch Man City beat United and then back to the hostel for another night of piscola with the French lot.
The next day we got up early and went to the national park which was a 6 hour hike up and down where there was waterfalls and lakes along the way. The path was very muddy due to all of the rain so our feet ended up sunk in lots of mud puddles and it was very slippy! In the evening we had a final night of piscola with the French… 3 nights in a row was like being back at uni!
On our last day in Pucon, the weather was still awful and we had soaking wet trainers from the day before so we got the bus in our flip flops to a waterfall, had lunch there and headed back to the hostel to have a chilled out day/ do some planning and booking for the rest of the trip.

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So, we both had a bit of a headache to start.. thank god it was only a 2 hour bus journey here. Once we arrived and checked in, we had a walk to the seaside, sat on the rocks and watched the sea lions. We didn’t realise they were there at first as they were all just lay in the middle of the sea on a concrete platform, then they started jumping into/ trying to get back out of the water and roaring at eachother. After this we went on a fununclar up some apparently ‘cool’ quirky streets where there is some street art and random graffiti. We weren’t that impressed.

The next day we headed in a different direction, up another fununclar. We had a walk round there, checked out the street art and then continued for a roof top bar crawl. We tried out a couple of the chilean wines and beers whilst chilling out with the view.

On our final day, before our overnight bus.. we headed back to some more roof top bars, got some food and didn’t do much else.. Next stop, Pucon.

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We arrived in Santiago at around 6.30am and were unable to check in until 2pm, so crashed out on the sofas. We went out for sushi and then to a museum on Chile’s military dictatorship in the afternoon. This had the potential to be interesting but unfortunately the majority of it was in Spanish.

The next day, we walked around the city and explored all of the sights of Santiago including, the presidential palace, the markets, the park and the viewpoint. We were absolutely buzzing with the market as they sold noodles/ chinese/thai ingredients!! 🙂 It seems that in the supermarkets everywhere we have been so far, they only stock pasta and tomato sauce!

The next day, we decided to do no more walking. We got the metro to San Cristobal hill which is a massive park built on a hill (which we did have to walk up due to the queue for the fununclar). We walked around the top, had some empanadas, chilled out on some grass by the swimming pool which had no water in and then headed back to the hostel to make our tea. We had a bottle of vino tinto and then headed to an Iish bar!

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We arrived Saturday afternoon, had lunch and a siesta and decided to go out to see what the night life was like. We were told it rains every 3 months in Mendoza, it rained on our first night here which was just our luck. Anyway, the wine is nice here and we managed to finish a few bottles and on our second day we stayed in bed until around 2pm a little worse for wear before heading out on a mission to the shops to make a sunday dinner which was a fail, so we ended up with steak and chips (its a hard life). We met a couple and was chatting with them for the rest of the night.
On the next day we went to the park, had a walk around the lake until Jonhos flip flop snapped, so we stopped off for a beer and chilled out by the lake for the rest of the day. In the evening we got a couple more bottles of wine, cooked in the hostel and spent the night drinking with the other couple we met.
The next day, we got a bus to the wine region and hired some bikes and visited some wineries, did some tours and tastings which included trying the different malbecs, different grapes and basically drank alot of wine. We even got 2 free bottles! In the evening we went out for steak and watched the football.
On our final day we attempted to go to a different area of the park which we didn’t see (due to Jonho’s broken flip flop) and ended up getting a bus to the motorway so we got off, got the bus back the opposite way and went back to the hostel to chill in the garden with our free wine! Time for another overnight bus, Next stop Chile…

We got here and set up our tent in the ‘camp site’ aka the hostel garden where the hostel owners kids were all playing football. We were again, the only people camping. We were told that it was an hour walk to the lake, so we set off for a day chilling by the lake. 2 hours later, we still hadn’t reached the lake and it wasn’t getting any closer to us.. so we decided to turn back. Meals were included in the price of our stay and we were told 8.30pm for tea. At 10pm we were finally fed the smallest portion of lentils and fried egg and were absolutely starving going to bed.
The next day, we hired some bikes and cycled to the valley, stopping off for some lunch which Kerry made at the hostel. Jonho ate pasta salad and enjoyed it (changed man). When we got to the valley it was all down hill and was so fun!!! Until, Jonho got a flat tyre snd we had to stop. It started raining, was freezing and we were stood on the side of the road trying to hitch hike a lift back until a bus finally came! We got back to the hostel and this time were fed around 9.30pm. We were prepared this time though and had snacks and wine to keep us going. We got chatting to an English couple and had drinks with them in the evening.
The next day, we got a bus to Tucuman as we had an overnight bus from there to Mendoza. There will be no separate post for Tucuman as it was a bit of a shit hole and all we did was get a McDonald’s.

We arrived here and decided to get yet another steak before chilling out for most of the afternoon and then going to watch a Pena in the evening.

On the second day, we hired bikes and got a bus to Quebrada de Cafayate which is a national park. From there, we biked back to the centre which was 50km and through what looked like a desert canyon. This was actually Jonho’s idea and Kerry was not so excited for it… but we both did actually have a really fun day. When we got back, with very sore bums, and very hungry bellys, we went out for pizza.. empanadas.. and WINE & we did absolutely nothing in the evening.

The next day, we visited 4 different wineries. They did tours of the wineries, which was quite interesting and then we got to taste the different wines at the end of each one..which was quite interesting too! Haha!

On our last day, we went to one more winery and this time they didn’t do English tours so we took the tour in Spanish which was, well, pointless. In the evening we went out for Parilla. It was more of a locals ‘restaurant’ with plastic chairs kind of just put up in a place you would never think was a restaurant. They had an open BBQ and we went up and picked what we wanted and they brought it over. It was SO good. Steak…. Chorizo… Sausages… Wine and they had the football on, so we watched that too.

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We arrived in the afternoon after yet another bus. There was a Mcdonalds just round the corner from where we were staying so we went there… had a siesta and then in the evening went and got a steak!
On the second day we walked around the city centre, went for a siesta and then Jonho got his hair cut for the first time. We went to the shops and got stuff for tea, we cooked fajitas and had a bottle of wine in.
The next day, the weather was awful to begin with, there was a thunder storm so we decided to go to a restaurant with good wifi, and good parilla (steak), and obviously wine. We booked our flights to India. Once the weather improved, and we were a bottle of wine down, we decided to go on telerifico (cable car) up to the look out over the city. We walked back down, went back to make our tea and then went out in the evening to watch some Penas. These are shows with traditional spanish folk music and dancing… We both even got dragged up a couple of times (Jonho didn’t take much persuading he was itching to get up).

Just for info regarding the siestas, everywhere closes between around 3pm-7pm.. so we might aswell do what the locals are doing.

Next stop Cafayate…

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We arrived in Argentina after our 10 hour bus to the border, followed by another 3 hour bus to Tilcara. We were quite tired so had some food, followed by a siesta. Later in the afternoon we walked up to the viewpoint overlooking the town and then to the market to get food for our tea. We made tea and chilled out watching breaking bad.
The next day we went on a hike to ‘Garganta del Diablo’ which is a waterfall within a canyon. We left at around mid-day which wasn’t so clever having to walk an hour uphill in 26 degree heat. The hike took us around 5 hours in total as we chilled by the waterfall for a bit. On the way back, we went to the market and as we were leaving Jonho went down the stairs with a thud. Its safe to say they didnt have a wet floor sign and we’re very lucky he was wearing his backpack, or we would have definitely been taking a trip to the hospital. In the evening, we made tea and chilled on the hamocks with a bottle of Malbec (costing us only £2).

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