A short stay in Chile for sandboarding, stars and spray painting

Our time in Chile was short and sweet (mostly because we chose to see Patagonia on the Argentina side, and our subsequent reeling budget was crying out for the cheaper climes of Bolivia), but it got off to a scenic start.

The bus from Mendoza, in Argentina, snaked through the Andes mountain range, offering up hours of window-gazing at the colossus peaks. (A few more hours than planned, though, as a lorry had overturned on one of the windy roads - a reminder that while these roads are beautiful, they are still pretty dangerous... N.B. Plenty more of that to come in Bolivia.)

After a very random border crossing - a solitary, ramshackle building perched in a near-barren pass between two roaring Andean mountain peaks - we made it to Santiago, Chile's capital.

We had booked an apartment with some friends which, while abit pokey for five of us, was smack in the centre of town and had great panoramic views of the city.

The customary walking tour took us around the main sites, and we also learnt about Chile's volatile political history - including the bleak years under the dictatorship of Pinochet (up until 1990) where over two thousands of people were executed, and another ten-fold that number tortured.

We also later visited a museum which chronicled in more heart-breaking details those human rights violations, and treaded on the creaking floorboards of a former torture cell - creepy.

On a lighter note, we also got an introduction to the country's graffiti scene (much of which is heavily influenced by the political turmoil).

There wasn't tonnes to do in Santiago, but we did have some super tasty waffle-sandwiches from Buffalo Waffles - highly recommended!

After a couple of chilled days in the capital, we delved deeper into the graffiti culture at the seaside town of Valparaiso, the home, and spray-playground, of the country's best-known street artists.

After a great walking tour around the colour-splashed streets (you'd do well to find a blank bit of wall that isn't plastered with some sort of art) we signed up for a graffiti workshop.

Unsure of what this exactly entailed, we were taken to our tour company's office to sketch out a few designs - before being taken to our own section of wall in the town and handed a suitcase full of actual spray paint cans.

After assurances we were definitely allowed to be graffiting/vandalising the wall, we sought our inner Banksy (we were told he also regularly holidays in Valparaiso) and started upscaling our designs.

It took a while to get used to the spray painting technique, but was such good fun.

I went for a traditional bubble-letter name tag (with a few personalised extras worked in such as a beard and a pen), and Freya sprayed a mountain sunset scene that signified lots of our favourite travelling moments.

Having left our mark on the town, we headed to one of the many trendy bars for an amazing Pisco sour cocktail (both Chile and Peru claim ownership of the traditional cocktail, but Peru will have to go some way to beat this one).

Earlier in the day we had also strolled down to the coastal fish market to take a look at the mass of sea lions that gather under a nearby pier - it didn't take long to find out why.

Every 15 minutes trolleys full of fish heads and off cuts were lobbed into the sea, sparking a ferocious food fight in the choppy waters below.

Our final destination in Chile was San Pedro de Atacama, the northern desert town that is also the gateway to the Bolivian salt flat tours (more of that in our next blog).

There's tonnes of adventure activities on offer, and first up we hired bikes and headed off-road to explore the Valley of the Moon (the huge, red-dusty cratered land looks like you're literally on the moon).

We also got a taste of the second valley - the more ominously named Death Valley (not sure why it's named thus, and we didn't ask) - to do some sandboarding.

After a quick induction (where our guide told us that someone had broke their neck the previous day!), we strapped on the boards and started (cautiously) sliding down the 60-metre high sand dune.

We were told it was like a mixture of snowboarding and surfing, but having done neither actually helped and we all picked it up pretty quickly - making left and right zags down the dune before the inevitable tumble before we reached the bottom.

It was pretty nervy heading down, and bloody hard work trudging back up the dune, but was ace. After maybe 7 or so runs we hung up our boards and headed out to see the stars in the desert town - ranked the best place in the world to do so.

Unluckily for us it had just been a full moon, so the sky was too bright at night to see the Milky Way at its full glowing-blue finest, and the popular astronomy tour also wasn't running.

But we headed out into the wilderness nonetheless from our hostel to have a gander. It was still pretty breath-taking.

Next up, Bolivia.