Yes, it’s official, we like Chile – a lot.

We took our 12th flight from Auckland to Santiago, I wasn’t looking forward to sitting on a plane for 11 hrs but it actually flew by quickly (geddit?)

We stayed in an Air BnB apartment in Santiago, it was OK and served our purpose, the Metro (tube) was 1km away and is a very good and cheap way of getting around.

See if you can get your head around this… we arrived in Chile, 4 hours BEFORE we set off from Auckland! All four of us experienced severe jet lag, it took four days to get over it, the first night we were all up at 2 am, bed hopping and giggling at the absurdity of being awake so late/ early.

I was really looking forward to a different culture after having just spent 3 months in Australia and New Zealand.

Santiago is a big busy bustling city, very grimy with some not so nice areas but you soon get a feeling that it’s OK, not to worry and you just keep your eyes open as you would in any big city. It’s a place that just needs a bloody good jetwash. Loads of stray dogs, which means loads of stray dogs poo too. Of course Arlo is in his element but he knows he’s not allowed to stroke the stray ones, Henna’s not bothered. Stray dogs also mean a late night doggy chorus of barks and howls.

The city is full of high rise blocks, people’s homes. Every 500m or so there a little play park, quite dated but there nonetheless, something we don’t have in the UK. Our favourite spot in Santiago was atop the San Cristobal hill, you can see the whole sprawling city from there, as well as the Andes.

Whilst being in Chile we’ve seen numerous rallies and marches. It was a Bank Holiday (Workers Day Off) and the workers spent it marching and campaigning for better conditions. We also saw an anti government march and 2, legalise cannabis marches, we like watching the marches as they have lots of drumming!

English is not widely spoken, fine with us, we are really enjoying practising our ‘Benidorm’ Spanish which I’m sure is nothing like Chilean Spanish. I’ve surprised myself at how confident I can be at trying to communicate, especially when being pulled over by the police, they don’t understand a word I say but I say it with a smile so it’s ok.  “No hablos Espanol” is usually met with a sympathetic grin. The few people we have met that did speak English were very happy to practice on us, I don’t think they get much chance, but this often ended up with us politely trying to move on whilst they were waffling away. We fit right in with the Chileans, they’re a short and stocky breed, the only thing that sets us apart is our summer wardrobe, we’re adorned in brightly coloured shorts and vests in the 22*’heat whilst it’s their autumn so they’re donning their hats and scarves.

After four days in the city we were looking forward to going to the coast, a beach again, we’ve not had a warm sunny beach in almost a month so we headed to Vina del Mar. Vina del Mar was not a beach holiday resort place…it’s another bloody city! I didn’t know that when we planned it and I was a bit disappointed. It’s a great place, all sky rise apartment blocks but clean and well cared for, still loads of dog shit though.

My second tooth came out in Chile, I got 500 pesos from the tooth fairy which is the same is £2.40

My most favourite thing in the whole world – having a ice cream

The next town to Vina del Mar is Valparaiso and everything you read will tell you how beautiful it is, and it is, some of it…it can also be rough and dirty. It’s famous for it’s street art which we all honed in on and although most of it is very good, there’s some crappy amateur graffiti stuff as well that just brings the whole town down to a lower level. The town itself is incredible that it’s built on a massive hill overlooking the coast, the houses are painted bright colours, some with murals on, there are numerous funiculars around to get you up and down the hill sides. One thing we loved about Valparaiso is that there were a lot of small craft outlets, all makers doing their thing in ramshackled old dwellings.

Another doggie mural.

Here is a picture of me and a painting of a dog in Valparaiso which is a famous city for street art.

We’d been in cities for nearly 2 weeks now and I couldn’t wait to get to the desert. San Pedro de Atacama was a 2hr flight from Santiago and what a difference. It’s the oldest desert in the world and it doesn’t look like our imagined picture of a dry, sandy, empty hot inhospitable place – I watched too many westerns as a kid obviously.

It is warm, yes and dry yes but it’s staggeringly beautiful, mountainous, colourful, endless, vast and peaceful (apart from stray dogs singing throughout the night) and again everyone is warm and friendly without the need to speak English. It’s very high altitude up at 2500ft above sea level – more on altitude later.

Our 8 roomed Hostal Paplito is brilliant, comfy beds, with a very caring and kind host. Private bathrooms and a great brekkie.

San Pedro is 1.5hr drive from Calama airport and we’re so glad we got a 4×4 as some roads are just dusty paths. It’s full of friendly backpackers and therefore is very touristy, so it means there’s loads of things to do. It’s described as the closest thing we’ll get to planet Mars,  and it is like being on another planet. With places like Valle de la Luna (Valley of the Moon) and Valle de Marle (Mars Valley). We spent a wonderful morning in a little Meteor Museum – more on that from Henna. The whole place is a geological wonder with fields of geysers and hot swimming pools. We visited the geysers (at sunrise, we had to get up a time 4am) after four days of being in the desert and although they were 17,000ft above sea level, we’d acclimatised a little so didn’t feel quite as bad

I’ve never had altitude sickness before, well, why would I, I’ve never travelled around the world before, I’ve never been up mountains so high that they are the equivalent in height to a sky dive! We went to Lagunas Miscanti and Miniques, these are two lagoons high up in the mountains, home to vicunas and flamingoes. the lagoons were 13,500ft above sea level. Arlo and I got altitude sickness, our hearts were pounding, short of breath and feeling sick and very tired. The air was incredibly fresh but lacking in oxygen apparently.

We spent our last Chile day at the absolutely fantastic Valle de la Luna, a vast landscape of mountains, caverns, sand dunes and stunning scenery. We did some proper desert hiking, we of course got lost and ended up doing a lot more than we had planned, we had to get back to our car by literally sliding down a hillside on our arses. The Grand Canyon better pull its socks up if it thinks it can compete with the Atacama Desert.

We went to a cave and we climbed on top of the cave and we had to use torches on our phones to light the way. It’s called Valley De Luna in the Atacama desert.

We had booked on a Stargazing Tour, it was cancelled two nights in a row because of low cloud, so we waited patiently for our turn on the 3rd night…we were let down,  our tour company had doubled booked us, so we did what any sensible Hazelwood/ Crossfield would have done – we blagged it – we followed the tour bus in our car and did our own stargazing mini edventure instead.

We’ll be saying goodbye to Chile tomorrow and saying hello to Argentina.