The Adventures of the Morrisons

As we have travelled through South America we have shared stories with many a traveller. We've also listened to many too. Where to go, where to stay, what to see etc etc. However, we decided that it's probably best to work things out for yourself and make your own decision. It's certainly worked so far albeit we've taken loads of useful advice on board so far.

Santiago was our destination. Mixed reviews ahoy here for sure. The one prevailing feature was that the city is one of the most "smoggy" in the world. I guess if nowt else we can now confirm that. The 2 days we were there were beautiful and despite the city backdrop being the Andes there was absolutely no sign of them whatsoever. In fact, you probably only see 20 odd blocks along from various high up vantage points in the town.

Despite this we had a reasonably enjoyable time here, aided again by a hostel that was more like a hotel. Our verdict I guess would be, nice clean central town area, however not much to do which is a crying shame for a capital city.

Onwards and upwards we thought though. Valparaiso was next on the hit list. Apparently a lot of people head there for the weekend as the beaches are nice and going out is a great option. By South American standards it's an amazingly short bus trip, only 2 hours. Before we knew it we had passed through 150km's of grape vines and arrived.

This place is a shambles, and I do not use the term lightly. We stayed in a hostel called YoYo, supposedly the party hostel. We had stayed in a few dorms of late so a double was booked for 3 nights. My god it was a mess. By the time my backpack hit the floor we decided we were leaving. I've been in better smelling public toilets. That pretty much describes the town too. It smelt like wet dog on a warm day in the nice area's so off it was to the bus station again to get out. Typically there was only one seat left on the bus so we booked one for the next day to Mendoza in Argentina.

The one redeeming feature of Valparaiso was that the guide book listed a curry house. We set out to find it. It had shut. The one glimpse of relief had been shot to pieces. However we found a Mexican restaurant which made slight amends. As it was our last night in Chile we set about spending the last of our cash in style. Thankfully not enough beers were consumed to allow us to partake in the oncoming karoke but it did allow us to drift off to sleep kind of forgetting about how disgusting our hostel was!!