Pucon the bus

Greg looking over the beach at Ritoque



Graeme frolicking amongst vines



An orange dragonfly at Casas del Bosque



Graeme and I at the vineyard



Looking up at Santa Lucia in Santiago.



Puppy rumaging in the garbage at the bottom of Bellavista where Pablo Neruda's house is



"QUESO!" Graeme and Greg in the grounds of Pablo Neruda's house



Pelicans on the way to ritoque



All the huge apartment blocks just past Renaca on the way to ritoque. If there's an earthquake it would be chaos.



Marty surfing at Ritoque

Hola,

In Santiago at the mo but heading to Pucon at 11pm tonight. It was one of the places on my southern trip. I have had to change it somewhat as it is much more expensive than I thought it would be. But from there it is much easier to get to Puerto Montt and possibly Chiloe. Pucon is meant to be amazing anyway.

In the past couple of days Graeme and I have been hamnging out and doing a bit of touristy stuff. On the way back from Valpo we stopped in at an amazing vineyard, Casas del Bosque in the Casablanca valley. Was beautiful. Graeme pranced through the vines.

Yesterday we did a bit of a tiki tour through Santiago but it was so hot we had to come home and cool down. Plaza de Armas, the centre of the city, is about 4 degrees warmer than anywhere else and in the middle of the day it was just too much. We did stop at a restaurant where they were serving (on their English menu) " Mister hamburguer with Lethers" and "Beef with something else" which, if the ground wasn't covered in shit, I would have been rolling around laughing on. It was mighty amusing.

Before we left Valparaiso, Greg, Marty, Graeme and I went for a drive up the coast to Ritoque, about an hour north of Valparaiso. It was your typical beach 'town'. There wasn;t much to it but there were a lot of people on the beach and a spectacular view over the sand dunes from the hills. Miles and miles of sand dunes. And Graeme and Marty got to go surfing.

There have been quite a few small earthquakes since we've been here. I have felt a couple and Graeme says he feels them quite often. The Andes are jaw droppingly large as a backdrop to Santiago and the amount of devastation they could cause is beyond imagination. Well, not the Andes themselves but the plates beneath them. It's quite humbling.

It's been so hot today we could barely go outside. We thought about going to a movie but it didn't happen. Ferociously hot. Looking forward to going back to Vaolparaiso where the temperature is tolerable. I'm hoping Pucon will be the same.

Many more photos to come. Probably a lot of the volcano in the south. :)