Hola!

So here we are in beautiful Chile at last. I've definately had mixed emotions since being here. There has been elation at being able to speak ¨the lingo¨ and yet frustration at not being able to understand it! It's all good and well being able to ask for a diet coke, but when I get asked the question back, do I want it cold or room temperature? I get a bit stumped. I hear the word 'cold' in the sentence and I'm trying to figure out what being cold has to do with me wanting a drink. I got there in the end, when the waiter bought out a cold coke bottle and a warm coke bottle!!

We have picked up so many more phrases than what we were taught in our lessons back in NZ though and we've only been here 1 week, who knows what we'll be able to say in 2 months, I'd like a cold diet coke, maybe!!
We spent our first couple of days in Santiago, the capital of Chile and stayed in a great area with many artsy cafes where we spent our nights chilling out and having a drink or two! They serve beers out here in litre bottles, so you can imagine how Colin's loving it!!
We took a night bus 2 or was it 3 nights ago (I've lost track!) which took us to our first beach town of La Serena. The sun was shining when we got here and for the first time in 4 months we've been able to walk around during the day without wearing a jacket and it felt goooood!! Unfortunately we had to leave the next morning to continue our journey North to Caldera. Here was the prettiest beach town called Bahia Ingles, we even spent a couple of hours on the beach and burnt our faces, hehe.
We also met the nicest bloke and his wife (Francisco and Alexandria) who were on their honeymoon. He took us under his wings, almost literally as he's a pilot, and helped us with getting into town and they asked us to join him and his wife for lunch. The people in Chile have been some of the friendliest we have met on this trip, it's amazing! We took another overnight bus last night and we are now in Iquique which is still on the coast, but not as nice.
We're hanging around for a couple of hours, waiting to catch our next bus up to Arica tonight and from here we will cross the border into Peru and fly up to Lima, phew I'm exhausted justing typing about all the travelling that we have\will be doing. We have travelled almost 25ookms in about 5 days, hardcore!!

We're both looking forward to travelling with a group of people again, we meet up with our tour group on the 15th July and begin our tour the day after. We're also really looking forward to taking our first helicopter flight, which shouldn't be too long now, yeah!

I seem to be having trouble uploading our photos on this computer, so I'll try again soon.

Adios xxx