I´m having a well needed rest in an intenet cafe before heading off to the hot springs! It´s a tough life at the moment. Arrived in Santiago on Wednesday (although I´ve already lost what day it is so that must be a good sign). It was so good to be in the sun and feel warmth. The flight over was quite grim really as the leg from Madrid to Santiago was a mere 13 hours and dare I say it but Iberia is not the best airline in the world.. but at least i arrived in one piece and so did my luggage. Only had a brief stop in the city which certainly looked quite vibrant and lively.. need to get to grips with Spanish language very quickly though. The main part of my South American trip began in ernest a couple of days ago when I left the city for a 5000 km road trip south on a big yellow Mercedes truck called Peggy. and it is very big and very yellow and intrigues the locals as its not very subtle. There´s a range of nationalities and ages on the trip from 18 to 70 plus and mostly Brits and Aussies and all seem okay and no really weird ones yet.. but then it´s early days i guess!

I´m now in Pucon which is close to a rather large active Volcano- Villarica (i havent got a picture on here yet as I haven´t quite got technically minded enough to upload them!). You may guess what happened next but I along with a few others had the urge to climb said Volcano as it was only 2847 metres... it seemed like a good idea at the time and it was a great expereince although I scared myself on a couple of occassions and have a few spectacular bruises to show for it. Made it to the top , walked up and across a glacier to get there and it didn´t erupt- a bonus really. (Nic, Ruth and Simon- you thought Adam´s peak was horrendous). As if my muscles didn´t ache enough after that I was even more foolish today and went hydra sledging\speeding which involves going down grade 3 rapids on a plastic sledge type thing which you hang on to for dear life... oh my goodness it was great fun but scared me even more than the volcano! Probably because I spent a good proportoon of the rapids actually off the thing. The photos prove it but won´t be for general circulation as they are so embarrasing.

Off to Argentina tomorrow to Bariloche where i´ll be in heaven as there´s loads of chocolate shops!! Keep the messages coming as it´s really good to get updates from home.