Claire takes on the world….

Photos on this entry don’t seem to be coming up. I’ll fix them when I get a moment…

After 262 days, 12 flights, 15 nights spent on buses, 11 countries, and 1 baptism it was finally time to say goodbye to South America. Jenny and I saw a mini tornado from our bus on the ride down the coast of Chile to the capital Santiago. We almost fell over each other trying to get some photos out the window of our last sunset. In keeping with how the trip has been going we couldn’t get a direct bus to Santiago but luckily our 12 hour stop over was in a town called La Serena, where the beaches are clean and the hot chocolates are extremely chocolatey.
Before departing I have a few awards to dish out;

Best Place for Sunsets: Nicaragua

Best Food: Argentina (man those steaks!)

Cheapest country: Joint winners; Nicaragua and Bolivia

Best Experience: Performing a baptism in Peru. Sandboarding close second.

Scariest Experience: Need you ask? Earthquake!

Dodgiest Moment: Being left of in the middle of nowhere, in the dark, by an angry bus driver in Panama.

Best Music: Regaetton: It’s everywhere, but the Nicaraguans seem to like it most.

Best Song: That ‘Flo, la discoteca, dos!’ one. Or ‘Tocarte Toa’ by Calle 13. Have to get this amazingness recognised in Ireland.

Country I have to return to: Paraguay. There has to be something there! Maybe I needed more than 2 days to find it…..

I had plans to dish out loads of these, it all seems very important when I’m sitting on a bus with 12 hours left in the journey.
Anyway, that’s it, end of South America. Thanks to the crew, the people who made this amazing; Jenny, Michael, Aisling, Stevie and Kelly in Peru, all the gang in Nicaragua, and my make-shift family for Christmas in Argentina, Christian and Ylva.
I’ll probably keep writing for the rest of the trip; Australia, Asia and Sweden. Only 6 months left!

Last few photos from Chile:
Pretty church in the desert:

Wide view of our predicament

Wasn’t much else I could do with the bus that far into the sand, so I danced

Jenny’s emergency escape:

Jenny adding some extra weight to the truck to get our bus free

Mini tornado we saw:

Our last sunset

Saying goodbye

Tags: Chile, South America

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 8th, 2008 at 12:02 am and is filed under Chile. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.