Diego De Almeida Copiapo

Whenever I think of Australia, at some point Terry Pratchett's analogous novel The Last Continent will come to mind, where he identifies their non-lethal wildlife as 'some of the sheep.' Multitudinous varieties of their snakes, spiders, crocodiles, fish etc have the capacity to jeopardise and take human life. Africa, Asia, North and South Americas, each bear their own brands of potentially lethal animal life. Europe as well, I suppose, in various forms, but ...

... nicer than things we've seen since Cuzco. The town reminds me of Moab, Utah a bit. Big activities are mountain biking, sandboarding, and trekking in the nearby Chilean and Bolivian mountains and volcanoes. But we weren't particularly interested in these things, honestly. We had a new goal: The Dakar desert rally was being held in South America for the first time, since a terrorist attack last year in ...

January 9th After a maximum of 3 hours sleep I roll out of bed at 5:00 and start packing up. We fix ourselves a cup of tea. We have a 14 hour ride ahead of us today. We decide to take the more scenic route along the Pacific ocean. It is a cold morning with light fog, and as the sun rises over the mountains itīs beams cut through the fog like a strobe light. My skin covered in goose bumps we ...

... of dollars were invested in the state of art facilities. We were lead down to the fermentation cellar which was temperature and humidity controlled where the great big French oak fermentation barrels were kept and told about the technology used in the fermentation process. It was an impressive room with a spectacular view over the vineyard through its massive windows. The most spectacular part of the tour however was the barrel storage room which was two floors down ...

... travels in these wine areas have been real eye-openers as we had no idea how advanced and modern or how beautiful the Chilean wineries are and the wines they produce match the facilities. We feel that Australia and the other wine-producing countries have serious competition and it is only beginning. Just a note on a wine story we found interesting. The grape variety of Carmenere is an old variety that used to be grown in France ...

... in this small town to a local place where we all had veinesse italiano which is also a chilean fast food favorite. It is a regular hot dog on a regular bun but then covered with chopped up tomatoes (red), avocado (green), and mayonaise (white) - get it - red, white and green, the colors of the Italian flag - It is a huge mess to eat as everything is really piled on with huge gobs of mayonaise last so when you bite in, everything squishes out the side. Cheap, about $3 and very filling.

... English, a bonus as 5 others didnīt and probably just told me no rooms available to get me off the phone, and he has one bed left in the hostel ! I booked it and am happy as heck that I know have a place to sleep and I can stay in San Pedro! Itīs my small victory for the day and Iīm on a high for a short time. I decide to head to the museum as it should now be open but it is not. I can hear some voices in the courtyard beyond the ...

... speaking English teacher (I should have mentioned that the English professor in the country school doesn't speak a word of English) and her volunteer, Vishu (a magic-playing American) in between signing autographs, accepting gifts (including hair clips ripped from their heads in desperation to shower me with anything they can find) and love letters, being littered with kisses, and being ...

... decided to go out and meet up with Blair and Ahikiva for a few drinks. It turned out to be a fun but late night. We got back to the hotel in anticipation of carry on drinking from the mini bar, which of course I told Blair it is absolutely fine, as long as he doesn't do a runner! He came over, no drinking was done, I was preparing myself for bed and left the boys to it. Blair then joined us for our adventure around Chile for the next 5 days. Our next destination was La Serena.

... to spot G&M coming off the plane. Unfortunately, from this rather awkward vantage point, you could really only see the calf-down portion of the bodies of arriving passengers, so we spent the better part of an hour betting what kind of shoe/pant-leg combination each of them would be wearing. Coincidentally, I won the bet. Needless to say, after two months of strange beds and even stranger bugs, I was pretty excited to be joined by my brother and sister-in-law for a ...