Hey all, here's the rest of Chile.....

Spent a really nice evening going for a horse ride from San Pedro. We waited for the heat of the day to pass a little before setting off and headed out into the Atacama desert. We passed pre-Inca ruins built onto a hillside and a canyon carved out of the sand by the very occasional rain storm. Then we headed up into the sand dunes and watched the sun set over the distant mountains - not bad. Sarah was panicking because I'd been put on a really flighty mare that acted like it would take off at any second but I survived - this riding malarchy is a piece of cake!

We spent another full day on a bus travelling to Antofogasta, a town that didn't have much to offer other than some shopping. We got an earlyish night because we then got up at 2:30am for a mammoth bus journey to La Serena. La Serena is nice and relaxing as the name would suggest - paved pedestrian walkways and little cafes. It was really nice to get to somewhere which has all the services of your typical Western city. We spent a morning updating the internet etc before checking out the beach. This was the first beach on our travels and we worked out that it was the first beach we'd ever been to together. Seen as we were nearing the end of SA (and cheap food), we checked out the Lonely Planet top dining recommendation, which was ace - I had scallops followed by steak.
We had a disappointment one evening in La Serena when we set off on a mini trip to visit an observatory. The area just inland from here is famous because it has the cleanest skies in the world and thus most of the best observatories. It has clear skies for approx 350 days a year...anyway, we were driven an hour, waited another hour and realised that we had come on one of the unlucky 15 days!

We took the bus to Santiago the next day and finally arrived in our last South American city. Man, I was glad to get those buses out of the way - we'd come across some shockers.

Wandering through the main plaza in Santiago we came across a street performer who instantly singled me out as a tourist - he then spent the next twenty minutes ridiculing me in front of a massive crowd. He would say something to me in English (his English was very good) and then he would turn to the crowd and say something obviously completely different in Spanish and they would all crack up. Ah well I made them laugh.

One advantage of getting back to a major city was that we found the only known Indian restaurant in Peru, Bolivia or Chile. I was craving spice so much (Bowman - you understand).

On our last day we went on a wine tour. We were taken around the Concha y Toro winery where they make the Casillero del Diablo (or Devils Cellar) wines - quite famous. This was a real classy place and we learnt a lot about wine whilst getting the guided tour as well as sampling a few glasses - ace.

So that just about wraps up South America. It went so quickly I cant believe it.
Bring on the next continent.
RJW