It is day 4 of my immense travels and I have already completely overdone it; burnt the candle at both ends as my parents love to say. A brief outline of what I’ve done so far:

Christmas Day: After a jolly and drunken Christmas dinner at my dearest friend’s house, Chris and I left our adopted hometown of Santiago at 9pm. Hopped on a 24 hour bus to Iquique and arrived there on Boxing Day, getting to the hostel around 10 that night.

Dec 27th: Actually this day was pretty tranquilo. The beach in Iquique was beautiful and the waves were big without being too dangerous splash around in. I had a whale of a time playing in the waves, joining in with a group of Chilean kids with body boards (I stood near them screaming and laughing a lot and they gave me weird looks). Chris said he could hear me shouting from way up the beach… Loved the sea! Only thing that put me off was the amount of bloomin’ jelly fish! There were swarms of ‘em! I don’t understand it either because they kept brushing right past me, but I didn’t get stung. At one point I thought I had been stung but it turned that the mark on my bum from where I sat on my hair straighteners was just stinging because of the sea salt… That night was pretty funny: Chris went to bed early and I stayed up and parrrrrrrrtied with Argentines, Chileans and Germans. Good times! But was glad to escape to bed at 4am without having consumed too much alcohol as I had to be up bright and early the next day…

Dec 28th: We had to be up bright and early so we were ready and raring to go paragliding that day. I wasn’t at all sure about this but

I was assured many times that it was, like “totally safe”. I looked up the statistics online…I met a lot of people who’d done it, all saying they had been shit scared but that once they were in the sky it was mega easy and fun. So off I went.
I have never been so petrified in my life – you have to RUN off a CLIFF EDGE. What’s that about? Didn’t feel all that secure to me either! So I don’t know what everyone else was talking about – I never relaxed, I was bricking it from start to finish, still shaking when I came down. Didn’t realise I was afraid of heights but if you ask me it’s a pretty rational think to be scared of. At the same time, it was bloody brilliant. The view was spectacular, probably the most amazing view I’ve ever seen: It had everything from sand dunes, windy roads, beautiful coastline, city, and the best thing of all was this giant penis shape that someone had made out of rocks! Ha. Made me laugh anyway. And my guide was really good fun, even though he scared the life out of me making me let go of the ropes and flap my arms like a bird!!

After that we walked around a bit, went to the beach, ate a couple of times and waited for our 11pm bus, due to arrive in Calama at 5.30am the next morning.

Dec 29th: Arriving in Calama was a bit of a downer. 5.30am isn’t my favourite time to wake up in the morning, especially when you’re in the middle of a freezing cold desert wearing shorts and have 2 ½ hour wait for the next bus. But that’s over now. We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama around 9.30am and then got to the hostel. I really wanted to sleep, but after a shower I felt rejuvenated and so instead we went bike riding through the desert all day up to a place called Valle de la Luna. Hoards of tourists go there at sun down to watch the mountains opposite the sunset change colour.

Quote of the day from me, genius that I am: “Where does the sun go when it sets?” Said really loudly just as a group of English-speaking tourists walked past and inevitably burst out laughing at me… We also went in some sweet caves and did some trekking type shiz. It was a very fun day, though quite tough cycling up lots of hills – cycling down them at the end of the day made it all worthwhile though. I was more than ready to sleep until late into the next day, however my itinerary was not to permit such a luxury.

Dec 30th: Instead, I wake up at 3.30am to go on a tour to see some geysers. I didn’t know what a geyser was before I came to Chile so I will describe what I saw for those who do not know… Basically in the middle of the desert there were all these mental hot shoots of water that just come out of the ground. But mega hot, like, boiling and because it’s so cold (I’ve never felt so cold – high altitude, middle of desert in the early hours is a very cold place to be) there is loads and loads of steam everywhere. Was pretty groovy, but for me being that cold just isn’t fun. I half loved it because it was incredible and I doubt I’ll ever see anything like it again and half hated it and wanted to die because I was so cold and tired. Eventually we went to some natural thermal spa things. I went in but was a little disappointed because they weren’t as hot as I’d anticipated – in Pucon they were so warm that you’d be relieved by the time you got out and the cold air wouldn’t bother you too much. This one was more like a lukewarm bath. Quite nice, but not really satisfying. And getting out was horrendous. BRR! So now here we are. That happened today. I’ve spent the rest of the day being in bed, washing, and chilling ready for a brutal trip across the Salar de Uyuni tomorrow. I feel quite sick. Just a combination of too much sun, maybe a little altitude, not sleeping, exerting oneself, etc etc etc. Blah! Hard work this travelling lark!

So that wasn’t as brief as I’d intended. It’s put me in a better mood though, writing about it all, remembering the good times because I was in a bit of a grump, feeling ill and tired. Need some downtime now but that’s not going to happen for a few days. We’re about to embark on a tour across the Salar de Uyuni (think I mentioned that). Google it because it looks amazing. I can’t wait to see all that stuff, I’m sure it will be immense. BUT. The tour guide told us that virtually everyone gets very sick from the altitude, which is not fun. I’ve never had it properly, only a little headache, but it’s meant to be horrendous. Vomming and everything. Oh. So I’m half really excited and half really dreading it. At least by the time we get to places like La Paz and Cusco we’ll already be pretty acclimatised. Fingers crossed… If I really can’t cope with the altitude after more than a few days, I’ll escape – Argentina, maybe Brazil?!