Elqui Valley

Hola, I have left Santiago and have been travelling north through Chile, to La Serena and onto the Elqui Valley, where they make Pisco. (local wine brandy) Heres a couple of photos for you...
Bottle nose dolphins at Punta de Choros (very tricky to take photos of dolphins, they keep diving out the way)
Mmmm, Pisco!
Me on a horse (again! I am an expert Gauchio now) in the Elqui valley, with my Aussie Gauchas.

Friday

After Portillo I spent some more time back at Che Legarto hostel in Santiago. Last Friday was a fun day. It started unlikely enough at the post-office. The queue at the postoffice was full of business types ready to send there letters and documents, whilst I chilled out in the queue in my flipflops carrying an enormous snowboard bag. Would you believe it, I kept getting strange looks. So I bid a sad farewell to my snowboard, after 2 and half months carrying it around countless bus stations and hostels to 6 different ski resorts in south america but the snow was melting and its time to move on and do some travelling.

On my way back from the hostel I chanced by some Traditional dancing in the plaza and who
should be there, but La Presidente de Chile, joining in the dancing. Shes so famous, she has her own web page here http://www.presidencia.cl/view/homepage.asp

To finish the day, we went to see an American band, some friends in the hostel had met on the plane from BA,´the Ataris´. Before the show we went backstage with the band. Whilst the band manager tried in vein to chat up the girls from the hostel, myself and Shane observed that the bands rider was not Champagne, Cocaine and M&Ms (with all the brown ones removed) but infact Gatorade and some bananas. The band let some more fans backstage, and a young Chilean came over to us and told us how great we were for coming over to play some gigs in South America. We blagged being in the band for some time, despite not having a clue who they were - not sure what the kid thought when he saw us in the crowd rather than onstage later. The gig went great and made a nice change from Regaeton and Shakira (so if you want some new tunes - crawf, mike, janine, etc check http://www.myspace.com/theataris )

..Us, with Tom from the Ataris

the Ataris rockin....

...Pepe at the Che.

The Almost Frozen Lake

I have just returned from a weeks snowboarding in the luxury ski resort of Portillo (which conveniently has a cheaper dormitory too). So after snowboarding every day we could go to the Jacuzzi then kick back in the bar and drink expensive beers whilst the house band played Hotel California again (of course changing the lyrics occasionally to Hotel Portillo).

The photos are from when we decided to have a bit of extra fun(?) one day, we hired some snowshoes and hiked across the almost frozen lake for a few hours, hiked up a mountian, put a run in at the end of the valley, and hiked back. It took so long that we almost missed lunch. But it was a fun, memorable and tiring day out.


The almost frozen lake taken from Hotel Portillo... (small dots on the right are some skiers)The intrepid team: Prof Tim, Yumi and Matt

small dots on the left are some skiers (Matt and Tim) .It would seem skis are a bit more handy than snowboards and snowshoes for this kind of excursion. Notice how my snowboard is held together with ducktape. oops.

The almost frozen lake several hours later from the otherside. You can just make out the yellow hotel Portillo in the background here.

The house band! (A disappointing lack of Stevie Ray Vaughan material, considering the fine headgear)

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¡Muchas gracias Raul por el viaje a Santiago! ¡No Problem!

Hitchhike Snowboarding

I have been down to another ski resort, Termas de Chillan for a few days. I found when I arrived that I had to hitch hike from the hostel to the ski resort. So now those transfer buses in Austria don't seem so bad after all.
It turned out that, hitchi-hiking with a snowboard is easier than you think when everyone drives a pickup truck. You just jump in the back with other snowboarders, pets or lesser members of the drivers family.

One day though the driver wasn't so local, but a rich city slicker from Santiago. Driving on snow was not his forte. Theres nothing quite like a bit of wheel spinning around corners on snow and ice in the back of a pickup truck, up a twisty mountain road to make the start of your day that little bit more exciting than it should be.