As i'm sure you have noticed this up date is long overdue; i have been travelling since early January and only returning in Late Febuary. Whiles travelling i have been short of time to update my blog and therefore decided to wait until i returned for my next entry.

Where to start? Well the day before we left another volunteer Lewis (who i was planning to travel with) had his bag containing his passport stolen at the bus station. Thankfully upon going through his bag on a bus they decided to drop his passport which was kindly picked up by a Chilean women. After various phonecalls he was soon on the way to collecting it that evening. That could have put an abrupt holt to all his travelling so it was extremely lucky he got it back!

Now ready to leave, we set off for La Serena where we then met up with four other volunteers: Justin, Lucas, Kirsty and Eadie. We decided to go out for drinks at a bar, this was a new experience again, finding that heavy metal music is huge in Chile and that most bars were playing it at ear piercing levels, not quite to my taste! We soon moved onto Valley de elqui, a small group of villages in the mountains, home to many vineyards producing Chiles national drink Pisco. After a couple days we moved onto Caldera, working our way north through Chile. While in Caldera we visited Bahi inglesa, this is the most photographed beach in Chile, easy to see why from the deep level of colours within the water. After another couple days we moved onto Chañaral where we got a colletiva to Parque National Pan De Azucar. Camping on a beach, out in the middle of the desert and to top it off Chiles norther skies are renown for the clarity and visability of the stars and they certainly delievered, so ditching the tent to sleep under the stars was definetely the right choice. The parque also boasts a near by island home to hundreds of penguins and sealions, this is in scortching heat in the middle of the desert i should point out. On the down side whilse on the boat ride around i managed to chip out my front tooth attempting to bite a lollypop . . . not one of my finer moments. But after an amazing seafood empanada from one of the only 2 cafè their i was quite happy again.

Our next move was onto Calama, just a quick stop to stock up on food and water before moving onto San Pedro a stunning Oasis in the middle of the atacama desert. We spent an amazing few days in the area, an evening tour led us to Luna valley, canyon trecking followed a spectacular sunset over the valley. The following day was an early start up to see the tatio geysers, then 10 minuets laters we were jumping into hot springs, ending with a visit to a small village with just to inhabitants. In the evening we visited the salt lakes, this was a truely surreal experience being able to float on the water without any effort, thankfully followed by a fresh water lake to help remove the salt that had encrusted to our face by this point.

Now another early start as we said goodbye to Chile, we began our 3 day tour to Uyuni across the Bolivian salt plains. These were an amazing 3 days viewing some of the most beautiful secenery yet, however, on the first evening kirsty was in a lot of pain from an infection in her little toe, resulting in her and four other volunteers having to cut the trip short to take her to hospital. Although i can't knock the insurance company, after not finding a very good doctor in Uyuni they organised a private jet to fly her to La Paz where thankfully withing a few days she was fine again. We met the other volunteers in Uyuni where together we took a night train to Ururo. We stayed a couple days letting some of the others recover as they had also been taken ill. We then moved onto La Paz and after no contact with the two girls we some how managed up checking into the same hostel as them. Pretty crazy considering how big La Paz is, however. . . it may have been due to it being one of the cheapest hostels about that attracted us both, haha. We all fondly took to La Paz as a city as it had a lot more character to it compared to others. Our first idea was paragliding which we did on the second day. After driving all the way up a mountain to the take off point the instructer proceeded to say "i don't normally ask this but would anybody mind driving the jeep back down". Instantly thrilled at this offer i kindly accepted along with Lewis, having just as much fun driving down with Lucas and Justin flying right over the top of us as i did doing the paragliding itself! I also got upto some mountain biking the second mountain starting at around 15,700 feet, but that's another story on its own! We then travelled onto Copacabanna and spent a couple days on Isle del Sol an island on lake Titicaca. Then moving onto Peru our first stop was the floating islands, however, they are almost totally dependant on tourism now after over fishing the lake. Resulting in the islands containing the largest amount of touriests yet, but this being the price you have to pay for the inhabitants to remain there! Next was Cusco, here we spent two weeks looking at all the ruins around the area and a two day trip to Agua Caliente at small town before Machu Picchu. Machu Picchu was incrediable and certainly lived upto my expectations, paticulary after making the effort to walk up Waynapicchu, waiting for the clouds to finally fade to seen it in it's true magnitude. We spent longer than planned in Cusco due to Justin having a TB scare, thankfully it was just chronic bronchitis which he has now recovered from. We then made our way back to Chile with a stop off at Huacachina for some dune buggying and sandboardng, then finally Arequipa for a week, including a 3 day treck in the Colca Canyon. Then a rather large amount of busses back to Chile Consisting of about 2 days straight travelling, the worst being about 26 hours on a bus!