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No photos just yet, we'll explain more later. We're in Bariloche, Argentina after a steptacular New Year in Viña del Mar, Chile and a few days elsewhere doing not a lot.
Valparaíso was nice enough, there was some kind of cultural carnival going on for the three days we were there, but nothing on the lineup looked particularly great. Instead we just spent a while wandering the hilly streets, going up 19th Century cliff lifts and looking at graffitied outdoor murals (the murals were proper things which had later been covered in graffiti).
A few minutes up the coast to Viña del Mar next, via the metro thing. The hostel was a bit rubbish, especially as it cost about twice what the Valpo place had, but Viña was lovely. We spent the first day sunning ourselves on the beach (incidentally it was on the Sunday between Xmas and New Year in one of the most popular holiday destinations in the country, so there were a couple of other people there), and the second shopping and drinking.
NYE was spent down on the beach with a couple of Americans, a couple of Canadians, a bottle of cheap "champagne", half the population of Chile watching us from the streets above (the other half were in Valpo), and the best fireworks display either of us have ever seen (it helps when you're a bit off your face and standing knee deep in the Pacific), launched from 5 hooge ships dotted along the bay. Unfortunately, we've just discovered that the disposible camera we took along was duff and none of the photos came out. We also failed to get contact details from the peeps we were with so can't recover anything from them either. b*****. New Year's Day was spent, as most are, resting. The next day we decided to buy a tent.
Last stop in Chile (this time round) was Valdivia in the Lakes District. Again, nice enough, but not a lot to do (yet another modern art museum closed for refurbishment). We visited the local Kunstmann brewery, but as it wasn't open to the public for tour we had to settle for a drink and some beer ice-cream in their slightly overpriced restaurant.
And then we came here. Arrived at 9pm (or so we thought) last night and had a race against the sun to get to a campsite before it got too dark to do anything. We then had to try to get into and out of town for dinner before the buses stopped running. We finally got back in at 1:30 this morning, only to later discover that Argentina has recently decided to bring back Daylight Savings (as of about a week ago), making it 2:30, which would probably explain why we were a bit tired (we're old, you see). I then had to pump up our air bed before we could go to sleep (we're really roughing it now). Today a mooch around town, tomorrow a hike around Llao Llao, whatever that means.
We'll get some photos of Valpo, Viña, Valdivia and here up soon enough, but unfortunately there will be none of New Year.
Love,
Nick and Vic
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