5th April 2005

La Serena turned out to be a nice little town, nice walk along to beach with some of the new people, found out one of the girls is from Glasgow and is a Tim. On Friday night we went up one of the mountains (by bus i`m glad to say) to the observatry and did a bit of star gazing. Good for me being in the southern hemisphere for the 1st time. Got to see Jupiter with it`s stripes and Saturn with it`s rings. Didn`t see Uranus though!

On Saturday we finally met up with our truck (Kinda) and had 2 long days driving across the Chilean desert including camping by the road overnight, which was extremely cold (would swear to explain how cold it was but don`t want to get this site blocked for those at work). After our 2 long days on Kinda we finally ended up in a small town called San Pedro (think we have been to a San Pedro in every country so far). Very dusty and very hot during the day (well it is the desert). We are camping here which means one of the 3 groups on the truck does the cooking and i prefer that as the food they do is better (and cheaper) than the restaurants! No cooking by me as i`m a packer, which means a lot of hard work but still beats cooking and washing up!!!

Last night we had far too much to drink of some local spirits which means a very sore head this morning.

Tonight it`s out to the desert to watch to see the sights! Tomorrow we move into Bolivia and spend 3 days crossing the salt plans and more camping. We will be at high altitude for a while, hopefully no altitude sickness for me and def no beers.

I`m having trouble getting into hotmail here so hopefully will get to read emails in Bolivia in 4 days.