After days on buses and in the desert it was a really nice shock to wake up on the bus to the view of the ocean as we arrived in Iquique. We had only planned one day hear, thinking that there would be nicer places further on and it struck us as we arrived that this would have been a really good place to just hang out and chill for a while. As we had arrived really early in the morning we had the opportunity of walking through the well maintained, boardwalked, pedestrianised mainstreet, flanked by the Georgian - style buildings all by ourselves. It really was beautiful. At the end of this street, you arrived at the beach where we again got to wander along boardwalks as the sun came up (you can maybe understand why we wanted to stay a while!) As you can imagine, we spent the day on the beach, except for a brief visit to a church, which was a bit of a waste because it was closed and I really wanted to see the star sparkled ceiling. Just to keep things in perspective, it is now the 22nd of February (although you may have noticed the blog is written just a little bit after that) and we were due to be in Cusco on the 3rd of March. Time is ticking ... so we boarded a bus to Arica, which is a border town of Chile that will take us into Peru. Other than the beach and the border crossing, we were looking forward to accessing National Park Lauca from Arica, which we did on a 3 day trip with just us and a guide. The Lonely Planet describes Lauca as ´at woozy heights with snow-dusted volcanoes, remote hot springs and glimmering lakes, Lauca is an absolute treasure´and it really was. We saw flamingoes, vicuñas, llamas, alpacas, vizcachas and loads of other birds along with the incredibly rare Andean dear - the huemal. The lagunes were clear and sparkling, the mountains were high and imposing, the thermal springs were at boiling point and we saw only one other car with tourists and a few park rangers. At a minimum of 3000ms, breathing was hard (especially when Tim had to push start the car), the nights were freezing (no central heating here) and the days gave us frost, fog, snow, rain and sun. We got to visit a number of rural settlements, experience the fun of carnival (including being covered in flour and shaving cream) and visit one church (about 400 years old) that has a table tied in the corner because, as the story goes, this table once escaped on turned up on the door of an unfortunate resident who subsequently died the next day. It really is hard to describe any more the beauty, tranquility and near perfection of Lauca but it has certainly been one of the highlights of our trip so far. Sadly, our time hear had to end and we headed back to Arica to continue our journey northward and into Peru to make our way to Cusco. The only downside of our time here was as we were walking to the train station to get the train to Tacna (Peru) and Tim somehow managed to hurt his back. You know, we have been climbing, walking through difficult and unmade paths, we´ve walked up stairs and down hills and walking on a flat piece of pavement Tim all of sudden stops and nearly falls over because of the pain in his back!! Well, I then had to carry his pack and the two days packs, whilst he struggled with the weight of mine until the train station - at least we weren´t boarding another bus for a bumpy ride! He had now recovered but more about that later. Next time you hear from us we will be in Peru which we are quite excited about. Take care Tim and Tracey

San Pedro de Atacama the gateway to the driest desert in the world and at 2440 metres above sea level, pretty high as well. There really isn´t that much to do in San Pedro and there really is a limited amount of exploring of the desert that we really wanted to do, so we approached the numerous tour operators and settled on two tours. Day one we headed off at the reasonable hour of 7:00am to visit Él Sector Soncor´in the eastern section of the Salar de Atacama (Atacama salt lake) and were able to see the three different species of flamingoes - Chilean, Andean and James. We then went on the visit the town of Socaire and it´s church before heading out to Lagunas Miñiques and Miscanti (and some more flamingoes). I think that the draw card of these lagunes is that they are at 4100ms and there is very little else around except some mountains, quite a bit of snow and a few volcanoes. On the way back to San Pedro we visited the ´Hidden Oasis´, which is a naturally growing orchard of plums, pears, quinces and variety of other fruit, farmed by the local indigenous community (about 6 families) but not for sale to the general public. It was kind of impressive because it is so unexpected out in the middle of the desert, in such a high and dry area, to stumble across such a fertile valley. Our final stop was a tourist town, called Tocanoa where we had an ice cream and patted a Llama. Day two (and tour two) started at the incredibly unreasonable hour of 4:00am for the long drive to the El Tatio geysers. The first thing that hits you as you get our of the car is the incredible cold. I had on pretty much all of my clothing and still my hands were frozen and I lost the feeling in my legs. The second thing that hits you is the steam jets that are all around you and as you walk through the geysers you do start to feel warm for some time. From what I could understand the geysers are produced when the cold water hits the warmth of the rock and the jets of water and steam (or vapor) explode through the earth probably in the weaker surfaces. (I have no doubt that someone out there has more knowledge of this than me and could offer a much more scientific explanation but that will have to do for now ...). There is also a thermal bath there which we chose not the take advantage of at this time, mostly because it was early, it was way to cold to get changed in the open air and there were lots of people in a very small area of water and not very many toilets around! Instead we walked around and checked out some of the other geysers and pools where apparently people have died because they got to close and fell in or got disoriented in the steam and fell in (now there are rangers and stone fences to stop such things happening to poor unsuspecting tourists). On our way back from the geysers we stopped at a small village who farmed Llama´s and saw some incredibly cute llama´s and lots of baby llama´s, all with very cute and colourful ribbons in their hair which apparently denote ownership. There was one little boy here, with his baby llama who clearly did not like the tourists and kind of hissed (the boy not the llama) at people who came by and tried to pat the llama. The sad thing about this was the tourists who ignored the child´s discomfort and clear message and just kept talking very loudly to him in English; thankfully one of the guides intervened and he was left alone. I know it shouldn´t but it does constantly surprise me the amount of people who really need to learn some travel manners. So, having had two luxurious nights in a bed, it was time to get back on a bus and this time head to a beach town called Iquique. Time is moving so quickly for us now, it seems like the year is flying by. I hope all is going well for everyone at home (England and Australia) and work and weather aren´t treating you to harshly. Take care Tim and Tracey

So I think last time we spoke I was about to tell you about the longest bus journey ever. Having had the opportunity to spend the day re-organising and planning we realised that our time management had not been so great and having spent so much time in Argentina we now needed to re-arrange our plans and get ourselves heading north ready for the Inca trail in just less than a month. So we boarded our midnight bus our of El Chalten, following Ruta 40 (the tourist route) all the way to Bariloche. Despite the long, rough and bumpy road things were going well until we got to Perito Moreno (the town, not the Glacier) and as we all sat there waiting to go again, we began to realise that our bags were actually being taken off the bus - a not so subtle way of telling us that we needed to change buses. Unfortunately no-one really seemed to know when the next bus would arrive but thought it might either be in 5 or 6 hours or at 5 or 6 o'clock. As we were near pretty much nothing we all sat down for the long wait. All was not so bad though, we managed to spend most the time chatting with an American / Polish couple (Brian and Aga) and the time passed quite quickly. The bus finally arrived about 6 hours later and so the journey continued. Our plan at this point was to get to Bariloche and get an another bus as soon as possible to cross the border back into Chile and work our way up to Santiago before going across to San Pedro de Atacama. As with all the best plans, this one went quickly awry once we arrived in Bariloche. Whilst trawling all the bus companies we soon found out that the next bus vacancy was in four days. So with the help of another new friend (Rafael) we managed to all get on a bus to Mendoza, where we hoped to be able to cross the boarder into Chile and directly to Santiago. So, after a four hour stop over in Barlioche we continued on our way to Mendoza. Whilst on that journey we were seated next to another American couple who were also going to Santiago and had a bus booked out of Mendoza 1 hour after our bus arrived. At some point during the night the bus stopped at some station so we quickly booked some onwards tickets and continued on our way. The trip between Mendoza and Santiago was broken up only by the border crossing, which took some time and one of the customs officer´s there seemed very concerned that Tim and I were transporting fruit and vegetable products across the border and so went to great pains explaining the consequences of such actions - most of which we didn´t understand but the general point being if they did find such contraband in our bags we would be fined 120 000 Chilean Peso´s. Anyone who has ever flown into Brisbane airport will be well aware of the penalties for transporting such illegal items and so we were probably the only ones he didn´t have to explain to!! After having made it through customs our kamikaze bus driver got us down the race track mountain road in record time, overtaking buses, cars, trucks and pretty much everything else in his way - I think we descended about 1500ms in about 5 minutes! Still, it made for some incredible views and the photo´s are pretty cool. So, after nearly 40 hours, we made it to Santiago - I think this may have been my favourite city so far. Having encountered one really rude hostel employee where there no vacancies (thank goodness - the American couple we met on the way stayed there and said the staff continued to be really rude) we found a nice hotel, close to restaurants etc, had a long and hot shower and headed out to find dinner before a good night´s sleep so we could make the most of our short time in Santiago. We really just a couple of lazy city days in Santiago. We did a Lonely Planet walking tour of the city, had lunch at the fish markets, caught up on some internet stuff and finished the day with a dinner of cheeses, salamis and biscuits at a little pub that we found (not much is open in Santiago on Sunday nights). Monday we finished off the sites that we hadn´t managed to catch the day before and got an afternoon bus to San Pedro de Atacama. Once I leave this continent if I never have to catch another bus, I will not be unhappy!! Next San Pedro, the desert, the beach and some incredible national parks and really cool animals... Take care Tim and Tracey

Having thoroughly enjoyed our time in Torres del Paine and Puerto Natales in general, we actually headed back over the border into Argentina and El Calafate for the experience of the Perito Merino glacier. I think that the uniqueness of this glacier is that it is the only one that is continuing to grow which is really quite astounding in the days of global warming and the loss of other glaciers around the world.

El Calafate itself was a pretty enough town, teaming with tourists all heading to Perito Moreno and taking advantage of the apparently fabulous climbing opportunities. Our only goal was to visit the glacier and do a mini ice trek before moving on. This we achieved the next day. There is no doubt that the glacier is impressive. It´s size, the calving, the noises it makes are all incredible; the fact that it is there at all makes the visit worthwhile. I think though, that Tim and I were spoiled by having seen Glacier Grey first. Perhaps it´s just that there is something infinitely more rewarding about the physical effort it took us to get to Glacier Grey or maybe it was that there were less people at Glacier Grey, whatever the reason Glacier Grey remains our favourite of the two.

The mini ice trek was quite cool though. You got to walk along the glacier and hear up close the noises it made as it calved and you could get a real sense of the immense size of the glacier. You could peer into the crevices and see the depth of ice and see the pure ice water in the pools that gathered under the ice. You could also taste the pure and untouched water from small waterfalls so it was definitely an experience we were glad to have had the opportunity to have. I guess it just didn´t take our breath away the way that Glacier Grey did - or perhaps we are just getting to spoiled by all the natural beauty we are surrounded by??

Having achieved our one ´thing to do´in El Calafate we got the early morning bus out and headed to El Chalten for some more awe inspiring scenery and a wee bit more walking and climbing.

El Chalten is essentially famous for the Fitx Roy mountain range which offers inumerable opportunities for walking, trekking and hard core climbing. Tim and I stuck to the walking and just a bit of climbing because there was simply no other way to reach the top and having already walked for 3 hours we weren´t going to be beaten by a sheer cliff face that stretched further than the eye could see! Our first day in El Chalten was a bit lazy really, gathering information, taking a short walk to a nearby waterfall and generally just resting and trying to stay out of the wind that blew constantly. Despite the winds we bravely decided to camp and so spent a relatively uncomfortable night wondering if the tent was going to blow away leaving us completely exposed to the driving rain. Luckily we survived the night and so set off the next morning to see what all the fuss was about with this Fitz Roy mountain. The first three hours of the trek was pretty tough and I was so glad that we had decided to leave our packs and campsite in El Chalten rather than carry it all with us and camp closer to the mountain.

By the time we reached the last part of the trek I was just about ready to give up. It was cold, windy, rainy and I was exhausted and nearly moved to tears when I saw just how difficult the next section was. Still, keeping in mind that it would surely be worth it, off we went. For about 1 hour we zigzagged up the mountain, completely exposed to the elements, at times having to stop and lean into the wind just to stop getting blown off the mountain. The path was wet, slippery and stony and full of people coming down as we were going up. But we made it. We made it to the top and we greeted by an absolutely pristine glacial lake, seemingly unpolluted and untouched by human habitation. Over the next small rise was an even more remote lake, so peaceful, so serene. It was worth it. By this point the wind had increased so much that the only escape was to hide behind the huge rocks until it died down long enough for us to make it to the next rock to hide behind. We finally made it down the mountain and I could only feel sorry for the people who were still on their way up the mountain as the wind continued to increase, the rain came down and visibility was reduced. Although my feelings of sympathy were somewhat tempered by the fact that you have to be slightly mad to start such a climb at 5:00 in the evening!

Anyway, we returned to camp and took refuge in our tent for the remainder of the evening as the wind and rain continued. Our last day in El Chalten the weather was just so bad that we barely left the tent and spent most of the day making onward plans. Late that night we boarded a bus for Bariloche, via the ´Tourist Route´, Ruta 40, hoping to be able to cross back into Chile from Bariloche.

And here begins the most exhausting of our journey´s so far .... But more about that next time.

Until then, I hope all is well with you all

Take care

Tim and Tracey