…….but I´ll get to that later 🙂 So I crossed the date line – that big milestone finally came so naturally and cheesily enough I had to take a photo of flying into ¨yesterday´s¨ dawn from the plane!!!

Okay, alright it´s a bit crap but it´s more impressive in real life I promise. South America is great so far, so much better than I thought it would be. Flew into Santiago which I expected to be mental but it´s not really, I liked it a lot. Pretty much zero english speaking folk though so I´m learning spanish pretty quickly! It´s easy to practice as the locals are friendly and talk to you all the time. The rest of the time I just make do with body language and gestures and I think they get me – well I haven´t ended up in the wrong place or insulted anyone yet so I think I´m doing okay 🙂

Have made a bit of a plan for what I want to see in Chile and Argentina and am really hoping to get right to the bottom but it´s tight timewise as I need to make Rio for Carnival on the 20th February so I´ll have to see….. You can get stuck in places if the buses get booked up.

Before I came, I got pretty excited about new food (as I always do) but they are just mad for their ham and cheese sandwiches, ham and cheese toasties, ham and cheese croissants, ham and cheese pastries (lots and lots of pastries)……. I think you get the picture 🙂 Now I´d never say no to a ham and cheese sambo but come on I feel like it´s all I´ve eaten since I got here. It´s that or pasta which I´ve kinda gone off at the moment. So feeling extremely unhealthy and sluggish on the food front right now. Steak in Argentina might improve things hopefully.

I have to say the buses are fan-feckin-tastic here, serious comfort people. Planning to do a lot of journeys by night as they are so long and I don´t want to waste daytime on the bus. They also serve you dinner or lunch on the bus – take a guess, oh yeah…….. ham and cheese!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Anyhoo, I bussed it to Mendoza, Argentina and had a nice day walking around. Chilled out on Plaza Independencia and had a stroll through some of (huge – 420 hectares!!) Parque General San Martin. I had pre-booked my hostal here as I heard things were pretty busy but when I got there, they were overbooked. So the guy there said when this happens, people stay in his buddies´ house which I was a bit apprehensive about but I said I´d go have a look. Now I totally regret staying there, as it was this gorgeous Argentinian house with a courtyard/garden, tucked away off the main thoroughfare. It would be such a lovely place to live for a couple of months. I met a couple of french and americans who were doing just that. Anyhoo it´s back to normal hostel living now. I was still trying to catch up on sleep so that´s pretty much all I did the first day. Went horse-riding through the mountains……….

…….the next day and it was just lovely. Really hot and it´s so good to be back in the heat. Again I happened upon another hostel up in the mountains where I met a lovely english called Lucy who has been travelling for the last 3 years now. This place was great and would be just fantastic to chill out for a while but for me, I was off on a night bus to Valparaiso.

Valparaiso was far bigger and more congested than I had expected. It´s a port town and it is quite touristy, a lot of folk from Santiago come here for the weekend. I teamed up with my room-mate, Rob from English and we walked around to take in the sights. They have these ascensors here which are basically rickety cables cars that bring you up to take in the views of the port and the bay.

The little houses and hotels up in these parts are lovely. Tiny little place, reminiscent of seeside towns in England. Valparaiso also reminds me of southern Italy with all the hilly streets, shuttered windows and the way it´s built into the hills. Went for a bite to eat that night in a local restaurant and it was totally worth the money (a tenner is expensive these days!!). There was a band including a guy playing the accordian and a couple of singers. It was just gorgeous, I can´t even describe it properly but it was so authentic, just local people having a simple, relaxing night out. Think of ¨Duty Free¨ (remember that TV show?) without the cheese but it had the same kind of vibe. I would have loved to capture it on video but I think it would have been totally out of place, in fairness though, it was good enough to invade their space for an evening.

I think when you´re travelling, you go through phases where everything breaks and/or you just get really tired. These last few weeks have been a little like that, the zip on my (fantastic) backpack broke so I had to get it replaced (with the worst zip ever – thanks Kiwi bag fixer guy) and of course the kind officials in Chile don´t seem to like the look of me so my bag has been searched at every given opportunity. They kinda look half sorry for me when it takes ten minutes to zip it back up!!! Next my ipod decided to throw a complete wobbly and refused to work any more so begrudgingly I had to wipe it and start all over again – nooooooooooooo 🙁 Having a struggle with my old boss in Darwin to get my last payslip so I can file for tax back. Very tired and kinda fluey after the bussing around New Zealand – don´t know why I feel tired, so much more so than we were doing the driving around ourselves in Oz. Anyway the list of tiny irritations goes on, nothing major but they all come together as they always do. When I arrived in South America, I kinda thought…… god do I have the energy for a new continent???? but having had a couple of good nights sleep, I feel soooo much better and ready to take on the world again 🙂 Oh yeeeeaaaahhhhhhh!!!!

And on that note I´m off to Pucon for a couple of days and then on to Bariloche in Argentina.

More photos on http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157613195065500/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157613156214995/ http://www.flickr.com/photos/lindybear/sets/72157613195118756/