What a week! What a week! What a week! This country has turned into a fiesta hotspot and it's all in aid of the Fiestas Patrias!

After being at uni just two weeks, we were granted a week's holiday to celebrate Chile's independence day, the 18th September. Most people were given three days holiday but schools and universities profited from a whole week's worth of festivities. The date of the celebrations is not in fact when Chile actually gained independence, but it is when the process began.

Despite being given a week off, university students feel the need to start partying from the Friday afternoon beforehand in what's known as las Ramadas. Classes are suspended from 12pm and the campus is magically transformed into a music festival before your very eyes. I headed down with some friends at around 5pm and it really had kicked off! The Universidad de Concepción really does lend itself to a glastonbury-esque festival as it is surrounded by luscious woods and has a large expanse of green pasture. At the end of the large area a stage had been erected complete with musical instruments, gigantic speakers and flashing lights. Throughout the night different bands and DJs entertained the crowd and I really enjoyed an ecclectic mix of rock, reggae, reggaeton and cumbia. There was even a cueca or two thrown in, which sent the crowd into histerics as they jumped around waving their makeshift hankies around their head and performing the national dance, Cueca.

After a Terremoto or two, no make that just one as a single glass of this toxic drink consisting of white wine, grenadine and pineapple icecream is enough to set you on your merry way, I was linking arms and joining in as if I'd been dancing it all my life!

The area was also encircled by stalls that students themselves had set up selling all the typical drinks including Ponche (white wine with fruit pieces), Borgogna (Red wine with fruits) and Chicha (a heavily fermented wine). The beer had a price of 300 Chilean pesos which is roughly 40p! Insanely cheap.

The party moved at around midnight from the uni to the take aways and then on to flat parties where we ate, drank and danced salsa, bachata and merengue among other things. Definitely my kind of partying.

From that day on and for the rest of the week Chile was saturated in Chicha, partying, barbecues, empanadas and cueca. Making the most of the holiday time Claire and I went to stay with a friend of hers, Isaac, who lives in a little town called Peumo in the O'Higgins region. The night we arrived we were whisked off to yet more partying but this time town styley, in makeshift pubs, bars, restaurants, arcades and nightclubs set up especially for the week in what is known as la Fonda. It really did have the "eat, drink and be merry" atmosphere that us Brits are so familiar with at Christmastime, but with just a hint of cowboy thrown in for good measure. Just brilliant.