Santiago

Well, its been a while since I was at a computer with a fast enough connection to load the blog so thats my excuse for not writing much lately!
Just arrived back to civilisation in Santiago, the capital of Chile.
Had a fantastic last few days in Bolivia - the salt flats were just breathtaking and had lots of fun taking funny photos as if we were standing on top of bottles and things... Then came the drive over the altiplano, where the truck climbed to an altitude of over 5000m at one point, was brilliant. Passed so much varied scenery; pink lakes, turquoise lakes, glacier topped mountains, desert, and much more. Crossed into Chile then and camped for three nights in a little town called San Pedro, where it was absoutely freezing at night so not the most enjoyable camping experience... We visited an observatory there though which was fascinating - the sky is so clear here and there are so many stars to see, got a really clear photograph of jupiter through one of the telescopes too. We then had a couple of nights bush camping; one in the middle of nowhere in the atacama desert, then on my birthday on a lovely beach in a national park where we also took a boat ride and saw lots of pelicans, penguins and sea lions. Next came two nights in a seaside town called La Serena where it was nice just to relax and get clean after all the camping! We had one final bush camp last night with a huge bbq and lots of chilian wine...
I leave Santiago for New Zealand in 2 days and have just booked a days skiing here for tomorrow, can´t wait:-)