Valparaiso, Vina del Mar, Chile

Well, the last & final week of South America is upon us, and boy it´s be a tough week! Our biggest decision of each day has been... which beach shall we go to? It´s a hard life I tell you!

The coast is approximately 2 hours from Santiago and Valparaiso is a popular & charming town to spend a few days chilling out. It has a large port that sits along the shoreline, with rolling hills of big and small houses situated along cobbled streets. The hills can be reached by ancient hillside ascensores (elevators) which were built over 100 years ago between 1883-1916. To this day, they have never broken down...

We started our week, in a way that we intended to go on for the next 7 days.. on the beach! After the early wake ups and numerous hikes of the last 8 weeks, we were definitely looking forward to it. We caught the micro bus to Miramar, close to Vina del Mar, and just relaxed! The day was perfect, so we decided to finish it off by treating ourselves to a drink in the Sheraton. It was the most expensive beer of the entire trip - oops, not quite on the backpacker agenda! Still, the seats were comfy and we were happy to just sit back and look out over the Pacific Ocean.

The next couple of days were quite overcast, so we had to give the beaches a miss. However, we were being joined by Andy & Lynsey from our "Inca Trail Family", as they too were finishing their South America stint in Chile. It was good to be back with people we know (and love, ah bless), and so for these few days we made up our own entertainment and created the "AscensTOUR" (Can you see what we did there?). We picked out the 5 ascensors recommended by the guide books and took off with our guide (that was Andy) and cameras in tow. A fun day, and the beginnings of a business plan to get "AscensTOUR" off the ground were put into action. The tops of the hills provided great views on Valparaiso (of "Valpo" to the locals), and good hill top bars and little market stalls kept us busy for the afternoon.

We said goodbye to Andy and Lynsey on the Friday, and Nadia and I continued to hit the beaches, this time in Renaca (a little further along the coast) and Vina de Mar. It was so peaceful, with nothing but the ocean crashing against the shore and a little man walking around the beach shouting "Helados, bebidas, helados" ("Ice cream, drinks, ice cream") for noise throughout the day... pure bliss. The only time we had to move from our laying down positions was to reach for a drink or if I was feeling brave enough to deep my toes in the FREEZING cold Pacific Ocean.

We have spent these days constantly reflecting on the last 2 months, and commenting on our highlights. Unfortunately (or most definitely fortunately), we have realised that we have more or less commented on every single week of this trip, and struggled to pin point our most favourite moment.

Credit to South America, all the adventure, culture and fun, and also credit to the people we have travelled with along the way. It will be sad to say goodbye to this continent on Thursday when we fly to NZ, but I for one, definitely know I will be coming back here as there is still so much more to do and see. So, for now, that just leaves me to say:
Sur America esta increible, mucho gracias e hasta pronto.

More photos coming soon, and my next posting will be for NEW ZEALAND.