Buenos Noches, Amigos

So, last day in South America, hey? Four months, one week and four days. During which time I've spent about 24 hours in airports, 48 hours on planes and an amount of time measurable in weeks on buses.

I'm back in Santiago, now, pretty much counting down the hours. That's not to say I've not been trying to squeeze adventures into my last few days. I've managed to squeeze in my longest South American bus journey (23 hours) and my weirdest night in a South American hostel (I seemed to be staying in a room with some 16 year olds on a school trip - which made me feel pretty uncomfortable).

I spent two days mountain biking around Death Valley and the Devil's Gorge. Now cycling in the world's driest desert (okay pub quiz geeks, you and I both know it's Antarctica, but you know what I mean - stop being pedants) I kind of expected to end up lost and burnt, so made sure I had heaps of water and appropriate gingerfactor suncream - I didn't expect to end up so cold and wet.

I'm a bit worried at how much of an experience snob I'm becoming. I seem to be unimpressed with things that other people find amazing. I spent a night stargazing in a desert observatory which, don't get me wrong, was good, but wasn't The Best Thing Ever like I'd been told it would be. Gas nebular; schmas schmebular.

With that in mind, here are some South American highlights:

Fave Country: Bolivia - didn't leave the Gringo Trail but what I saw of it was ace.

Best Road: The coastal road south of Paraty (I was bored of views by the time I hit the Andes).

Biggest buzz: Sunset dune buggying in a Peruvian desert.

Fave animal: Blue footed booby (pelicans are all majestic and alpacas have good haircuts and are well tasty but neither dances so well, and that counts for a lot).

Best sunset: Thursday night in Easter Island (a few people have commented about my sunset on Easter Island photos, they were from the Friday night - I didn't have a camera with me for the good sunset, which is just as well because it might just make your eyes melt).

Experience that I'm most enjoying bragging about: Swimming through a shoal of sardines as it was being eaten by sealions and pelicans.

Best game: Jenga in Baños (my least favourite game was the Sux Game).

Best hostel: Y Keu Ken, El Calafate (honourable mention to Hostel Portunhol, Barra de Lagoa)

Most I laughed: In the jungle with Lana and a terrapin.

Best meal: Lomo del Diablo, Q, Quito (thanks Mum).

Weirdest Meal: Guinea pig

Best night out: Pirate Bar, Asuncion

And some things I'm not going to miss about South America:
- Stray dogs.
- That bin next to the toilet.
- Reggaeton, The Cranberries and one minute megamixes.
- Inca Ruins.
- Not speaking enough Spanish to wholely understand what's going on. Ever.

And also: HSBC, not letting me validate my new card, but cancelling my old card anyway. That's not good customer service is it?

So what's next? Wait and See...

Just Deserts

I'm in the Atacama Desert. It's not raining. Strange that. I'm staying in San Pedro, it's in an oasis and is ever so slightly more user friendly than Copiapo was.

It was a bit of a mission getting here, mind, two overnight buses on the spin. Forty eight hours without washing, changing or speaking English. Well backpacker.

Last night watched the sunset over the Moon Valley - second moon valley of my trip, incidentally - then watched the sunrise over the El Tatio geysers this morning. At the risk of sounding ungrateful, i think that the highest - as in altitude - geysers in the world would be quite spectacular anytime. The whole sunrise thing seemed extravagant. And VERY cold: the kind of cold that freezes geothermal springs. It meant I ignored the signs and got into a geyser, gently scalding myself on the egg-smelling, toxic steam. Now I can't see a reason why that would be a bad idea, right...

Goodbye Easter Island

I'm back on mainland Chile so not feeling quite so remote. Saw some pretty spectacular stuff during my last couple of days on the island. Went to Rano Raraku, where they carved the Maoi, which just about fulfilled my Easter Island fantasies. And yes, I did take the same photo that everyone else takes - you know the one. If I knew the Spanish for hypocrite I'd stamp it on my face.

Climbed Rano Kau to see the crater lake. I'd seen photos and they looked rubbish but the lake itself is immense. Also saw about the most spectacular sunset I've ever seen, pink and black skies with Maoi in the foreground. Well Easter Island.

I'm in Copiapo now. Now don't quote me on this but I don't think that Copiapo is used to tourists. I ended up here by a mix of accident, panic and bad Spanish; I rocked up at ten this morning to find nothing open and the only people around some kind of zombified sub-species wheezing about with their haircuts flapping in the breeze. I figured it could be a long day but things are open now and the town seems a whole heap less threatening.

Belly Button of the World

I'm on Easter Island which is about as remote as it's possible to get; over 1000 miles from the next living person. The island is properly tiny. I don't really understand how it became colonised.

I've seen a fair few Maoi - that's big stone heads if you don't speak Rapa Nui. They're kind of sterner than I expected them to be. And they have bodies - what's that about?

Spent yesterday mountain biking around the island to see all the more remote bits. I got very muddy and slightly perplexed as to why (Death Road aside) I'd never really been mountain biking before. Loved it. Got a little bit over-confident, apparently biking over a lava flow is quite difficult.

For the title of this entry I wanted to make some kind of Maoi pun (About a Maoi?), but I'm really not sure how to pronounce it. I've generally been pronouncing it slightly different everytime and still nobody has corrected me.

Paradise Valley

Back on the Gringo Trail. Phew.

I'm in Valparaíso which is a place everyone seems to rate but I'm just not getting the attraction. It just seems so ugly. Sure the residential bits in the hills are all charming and colourful, but the downtown seafront bit is just a bleak, boxy port.

They like their funiculars here. They're everywhere - I reckon that there might be more in this town than in the whole of England.

They also like Pablo Neruda. Nope, I'd not heard of him either but apparently he was about the best poet of the twentieth century and he hid in a basement here for a few months when they outlawed Communism. See you've learned something.

I walked to Viña del Mar today. It's a resort that's grown out of itself and is now a sprawling beachfronted metropolis. And once again, it's pretty ugly. I'm sensing a theme amongst Chilean cities...

Off the Gringo Trail

I seem to have left the Gringo Trail. I can't see why, Valdivia is just like Chelmsford and everyone who comes to England visits Chelmsford, right?

Chelmsford has less shoddy buildings but nowhere near as good wildlife. Now I'm a bit over sealions, but seeing them hanging out next to a building site was amusingly incongruous. I also liked the large amount of hawks hanging out in the fishmarket, you don't get that in High Chelmer.

Yesterday, whilst still in Pucon, I was firmly on the Gringo Trail, doing the tried and tested hike to the top of the Villarica Volcano. Crampons. Ice axe. Well mountain. Harder work than I expected mind; think Day 2 Inca Trail only with ankle deep snow, sheet ice and toxic air. Yummy. Didn't get to see any lava (just leaky gas smoke - rubbish) but did get to slide down the mountain afterwards.

_________

Anyone who does want to visit Chelmsford send me $100 in Chilean currency in a stamped address envelope and I'll sort you out with some traveller tips. The main one being, "Don't go to Chelmsford."

Where are the Scones?!

I'm in the Lake District and I can't find any scones. Or Kendal mint cake. What's that about? It is cold, rainy and filled with hills and lakes, so it's not too unlike its British namesake.

Pucon is tiny. I'm not certain but I think there are more hostels than houses here and as it's completely out of season (apparently the desert is a better winter destination than snow-capped mountains. Pah.) everyone's offering aggressive discounts.

Oh, and a siren went off just now. I'm not certain but I think it was a volcano warning. I ignored it; that's what you do with sirens, right?

Pumaman?

I'm in Santiago. Staying in the district of Bellavista, which is ironic because the view from here is fairly terrible. Just ugly, ugly skyscrapers. Eurgh. Turns out some bits of the city are okay though. The art gallery has a really good roof, for example.

We left the Galapagos (I got to swim with a shark on my last day. Hurrah.) then had a couple of days pottering around Quito and Otavala before Mum headed back Blighty-wards.

So I'm back on my own, again and it's all going swimmingly: ATM's aren't working and a drunk man's urine trickled into my dorm at 5.30 this morning. An auspicious restart to the whole solo travelling thing.

__________________

Shouts
Mum: Feliz Dia Mamá or "happy othermothers' day" (does anyone know why us Brits don't have the same mothers' day as the rest of the world?) and thanks for spoiling me for the last while.

The few of you who understood the title: "Hello Brave Hikers." It's weird travelling without you guys - not least because I'm sober. Summer in Thailand - right? (Incidentally, the original Santiago could fly, Imagine how much better this Santiago would be... how those skyscrapers would rattle)

Paddling with Stingrays

I went paddling with some stingrays yesterday. Now I can't think of any high-profile celebrity deaths that would suggest that that's a bad idea. There were sharks and puffer fish in the water too, all good things to tread on.

I saw albatross this morning. Now to me an albatross is a near mythical beast that you only really hear about in Hemingway novels, so I was only expecting to see one, maybe two. I certainly wasn't expecting to find them napping in the footpaths like big, ornamental seagulls. Well illusion-shattering.

Not like the blue-footed boobies. They are fast becoming my favourite thing, at the moment they're in my top ten, somewhere between "eating endangered species" and "seeing old people fall over". They're so charismatic. The guy boobies do a goofy, little dance to impress the ladies, the lady boobies find it a bit amusing, but ultimately turn up their beaks and make moon eyes at some one more badass. Reminds me of me, I guess.

Wildlife photography is easy in the Galapagos. Even I'm taking photos. If you're lucky I might even post them...

Swine flu for Sealions

Mum's here. That means I should probably be writing in proper English, as opposed to the rather more casual style that I have adopted. We shall see (She has already made me wash behind my ears and has rubbed a piece of mud off my cheek with a licked hankie).

So mum met me in Quito and we mosied on up to the Equator monument (first time in the northern hemisphere for three months, felt like home), it was anticlimatic.

We're now in the Galapagos on a cruiseship. It couldn't be too much more different from the tour that I have just left - There's only a handful of people within ten years of my age (even within 30 years we're still probably in the minority); there's a dress code for dinner (although if Ellen get's her fascist way that's only a matter of time) and when I set up a table of cheese rolls and vegewash in the reception area i was advised that there was steak medallions in the all-you-can-eat buffet.

Getting out here was well masked, apparently they're taking this global pandemic bobbins quite seriously. Even the sealions around the airport were wearing masks.

So I've seen me some wildlife. But they frown upon you playing with it (hippies!). It's taking most of my willpower not to catch a lizard (I reckon it could beat a crab in a straight race but would lose in a fight).

I kicked a turtle in the face (it was self defence - I was sure it was pulling numchuks on me, like a sneaky ninja) but then felt rude, so swam with it a bit (for the record have also swam with sealions and iguanas - people on the boat keep saying they've swam with sharks. Liars).

I've not seen tortoises in the wild yet, but I have just come out of the Darwin Centre and seen 100-year-old giant tortoises doing naughty things. Even Lonesome George was at it, the dirty dog.

Best animal facts:

Sally Lightfoot crabs aren't named after Sally Lightfoot - it's because they "sally forth."

Land iguanas are yellow because they eat yellow flowers.

Bluefooted boobies don't think they have blue feet (or a silly name).