Hi everyone, I've nearly finished my week in Chile now and off to Brazil tomorrow morning at 7:30am so have got to be up at 5am! I haven't spent the whole time in Santiago though, I stayed for 2 nights in a really small surfing town called Pichiemu where there were only about 5 tourists in total staying there and the hostel was owned by a aussi which was cool. It's such a local town it was only put into a guide book this year! I took a 3 hour bus trip from Santiago to get there but it was well worth it. Didn't actually go surfing in the end though because the water was freezing and people were wearing full body wetsuits and gloves etc so didn't fel motivated enough to go out!! Had a really cool time there just chilling out and trying to learn spanish, which is killing me bythe way! It's so hard I don't understand anything, I feel so stupid because hardly anyone speaks english and all I can do is point to the dictionary andtry and make them understand what the hell I'm talking about. Hopefully I'll pick up on the portugese a bit better after a few lessons in Brazil. Yesterday I went for a 16km trek through a glacier valley in the middle of the Andes mountain range passing through gaseous water springs and a glacial origin lagoon before reaching the base of the San Francisco Glacier at 2,500 meters above sea level. It was really good fun because I had been looking forward to go into the Andes but didn't have anough time to do a real hiking trip in the nation parks. My legs are killing me today as we climbed a vertical gain of 650 meters during the hike. I'll let you know how the portuguese takes off after my week of lessons in Sao Paulo. Speak to you all soon Tom