This time we’re taking you back to May 2010 and to a desert in northern Chile.

We leave Pisco Elqui taking a morning bus ride through the valley back towards the coast. After a couple of hours we arrive the lively fishing town La Serena on the northern coast of Chile.
I think up a hilarious and catchy, or as just puts it super annoying, song called “HEY LA Serena” sung to the tune of Macarena it really only has three words and a prelude of pretending to speak Spanish and anyone can join in. Basically it goes:
Takeabus tothecoast of northern chile
Haveabigheadache cozyoudrinktomuch pisco
HEEEEEEY! LA SERENA!!!
Thankfully one homeless guy thought it was pretty good, he and his toothless grin joined in before falling over.

Anyway, our stay in La Serena is short as we are making our way up the coast to San Pedro de Atacama. So we spend a brief dazed moment at 7am walking around La Serena. Even at this early hour there are people getting about their daily business and painting graffiti on the steep streets that lead down the hill to the harbor. But we have no more time to explore, we board our bus to Calama for our 14 hour ride.

The scenery flies past.

Some of the scenery

By the time we arrive at Calama it’s night time. Calama bus station is small, crowded and dirty. We push through the mob to get our bags and find the next bus to take us to San Pedro. All goes well and we’re on our way for the final leg of our trip.

Well 2010 has been the year to travel and to not update your blog as often as you should.

As a parting gift for the year here is a quick summary of the fantastic year that was 2010:

Traveled well over 26141.025 nautical miles or 48413.159 kilometres.

Visited 9 different counties.

Howdy Folks,

That’s right we’ve been in Vancouver a whole 3 weeks now! Yes, the blog posts of the rest of Chile and Peru are still in writing i’m sure over the next few months we’ll get around to them.

What have we been doing? Exploring and of course, applying for jobs, jobs and more jobs. The job hunting is going ok, last week was particularly busy with interviews and phone interviews. I think in total we had about 8 between us and are now waiting to hear back or get an update. Keep your fingers crossed for us. If anyone has any contacts up here in Canada we’d greatly appreciate if you passed our details on, even if it was just to meet them and take them out for a beer or coffee.

Vancouver is a very beautiful city, the tall glass skyscrapers refelect the greens and blues of the forrests, mountains and water. We’ve been checking out the different areas such as coal harbour, yaletown, north vancouver, gastown etc. There always seems to be some festival or something on. For instance, we woke up one Saturday to music and drums getting louder and louder…turns out there was a Phillipeno parade meandering its way down our street.

To Jess’ great surprise and delight, we found out her favourite band Karnivool were going to be playing at The Venue in Vancouver for $15. Karnivool are a Perth band with a solid following down under but as we found out the rest of the world hasnt found out how great they are. Or they just agree with my summation being that they sound like a cat drowing amongst several garbage trucks. Fortunatley their live show was fantastic for Jesse and the Venue had a bar so i was happy. I even attempted to sing along which was easy when every word is a high pitched meow of varying lengths.

Street concert on the way to watch Karnivool

The Venue – Vancouver Downtown

G’day Everybody,

Most people doing the clockwise trip of South America travel to Pucon, Chile from Bariloche. Most people take a leisurely overnight bus for the 10 or 12 odd hour trip through the Andes. Most people. Not us. Nope, 10+ hours on a bus at this point in our trip was fairly frightening for me at least. 10 hours couped up in a small seat without food and with the person in front reclining their seat all the way no matter how much i press my knees into the back of the seat. Terrifying!

Instead i consult a snowboarding mate i met on the Internet. Yup you’ve got to love the world wide web. He tells us of a quaint little town much better than Bariloche, only 6 hours from Bariloche and has a short route to Pucon. Brilliant! The places name, San Martin De Los Andes.
San Martin De Who?
Yup San Martin for short.

Pretty Trees

We were excited to arrive to El Calafate in Southern Patagonia and be greeted with a very picturesque village with amazing autumn colours, and the mountains reflecting in a flamingo laden lake.  Since all the hostels in the town were so expensive we decided to “posh pack” and upgrade to the most popular spot on trip advisor. After a bumpy ride out of town on a dirt road we arrived to a lovely little hotel right on the lake. We had wine and canapés overlooking the stunning views on arrival which worried us….. Had we miss read the price tag or something? The room was fantastic and I was very excited at the prospect of a bath and a hair dryer (it doesn’t take much). It allowed us time to get organised for what everyone comes to El Calafate to do and that’s the glacier.