El Coche

Buying a used car in Spanish isn't especially easy. It seems cars are pretty expensive in Chile. It's especially difficult to find a 4x4 at a decent price too, as we were originally hoping to buy a Mitsubishi Pajero.

The two Pajeros (or Monteros as they're called here) that we went to see weren't in great condition and with a price tag of $7000AUD would have blown our budget.

After trapesing around the city for a few days, visiting some of Santiago's less desirable suburbs, we noticed a car advertised at a dealership a 5min walk from where we're staying.

So we went to check it out and it looked pretty good. The guys at the dealership were nice and the car was currently being used as the boss's wife's run around (our thinking was it can't be too bad if Felix the owner of the dealership was letting his wife drive their kids around in it!).

There's a lot of paperwork buying a car in Chile, you even have to give finger prints for the legal documents you sign.

If you can't tell from the photos, it's a Subaru Legacy '98, 2.0l AWD. We thought the next best thing to having a 4x4 is an AWD. 

Galapagos Wildlife

The wildilfe in the Galapagos Islands seems completely unafraid of idiot tourists pointing cameras in their faces, pretty amazing being able to get so close to so many wild animals.

Giant Tortoise (and my beautiful wife)

Pink Flamingo

Crab

Galapagos Penguin

Marine Iguana

Blue Footed Booby

Lava Lizard

Galapagos Albatross

Nascar Boobies

Sea Lions (and an English pelican!)

Land Iguana

Galapagos Landscapes

Errr, pretty hard to nail down the Galapagos Islands in less than 5000 or so photos!! Pretty amazing place for landscapes and wildlife, in and out of the water. Will try not to bore anyone too much and keep the pics to just the best ones. More wildlife/sealife pics to follow.

We visited about 7 or 8 islands over 10 days and being an archipelago, there´s lots of different landscapes to see.

(Panaramic shots are a bit too large for the page, have to scroll right to see the whole thing)

The Equator

Went to the Equator line yesterday. Bit of a cheesy tourist thing to do, especially as we've heard since it's not marked in exactly the right spot! Close enough though.

Quito

Big, smoggy, stunning, grimey, amazing city. Really loved Quito, it's a big smelly city, perched up high (2450m above sea level) on ridiculous terrain that you just wouldn't expect such a big city to be in. Old town had lots of beautiful buildings and a really nice feel to it. Great food, great city.

Slumming it in Santiago

Me Gusta Santiago

Santiago is growing on us and is actually a pretty cool city. Not very touristy, very modern, quite artistic and filled with lots of professionals and students going about their day.

Santiago

Okay, getting a bit blog trigger happy today, so this will be my last post for at least 45 mins.

Barcelona is architecturally one of the most amazing cities in the world, Santiago isn't. 

The backdrop of the mountains looking over the city is pretty spectacular though.

Ahhhhhhhhhh

You can't take them all

Unfortunately you can't take 8 surfboards travelling with you. A photo tribute of the fallen soldiers. Don't worry fellas, I'll be back. 

Thanks to Alex for looking after my babies!