Bec & Simon

After we left Mendoza, we caught the bus back through the Andes (even scarier on the way down!) to Valparaiso, which is a beach town on the coast of Chile! It's a pretty cool place, a lot bigger than we thought it would be. Unfortunately, when we arrived and went to catch a taxi to our hotel, the driver told us that it was actually in a suburb, an outer suburb, an hour away... as in a whole other town! So we ended up on a local bus to the middle of nowhere (El Quisco), with our very limited Spanish and a bus driver who didn't understand a word we were saying. Luckily the young guy sitting behind us, Victor, lives in El Quisco and offered to help us find our hotel. He made a few phone calls and we ended up in a taxi, in the street our hotel was in looking for number 197. Just our luck... 197 didn't exist (we eventually found out that our hotel was actually back in Valparaiso but we were given the wrong address!)! Anyway, another adventure to add to our collection! It ended well though, El Quisco was actually a pretty cool little beach town, kind of Chile's answer to Ocean Grove. There were heaps of Chilean tourists there, in fact we were very out of place! We got stared at everywhere we went. But everyone was really nice, I think we were a bit of a novelty. Next stop Peru for the Inca Trek. We have to survive 24 hours in transit first!