See It Do It Live It

Ask anyone in Chile where you should visit while you’re here and they’ll all say Valparaiso – or ‘Valpo’ as the cool kids call it. So we hopped on a bus from Santiago and two hours later found ourselves in this crazy little port town. Unfortunately we’d arrived on Sunday and it wasn’t so much crazy as sleepy! Nothing was open – so we had a quiet afternoon entertaining ourselves at the hostel before heading out for a bite to eat. In Valpo (yep – I’m now a cool kid)…read more

Towards the end of my time in Australia, I decided that I would go back to the original plan and spend my final two months of travel in South America. I flew from Adelaide to Sydney to Santiago, and travelled back in time by 13.5 hours! The flight was amazingly good, and I had two seats to myself. This resulted in me sleeping through the maltesers, the ice cream and the cheese and biscuits, to my utter disappointment! Graham had already been in Chile, working on a farm, for a…read more

For the past three weeks I have been living in another world. Well that’s what it feels like at least. Life on the farm is so different to my life back home – I have learnt and experienced so many new things in such a short period of time. And I’ve met some awesome folk from around the world that I know I’ll stay friends with for years to come! The farm is truly remote – it is accessed by a long dirt track which winds (often steeply) through the…read more

One of the key elements on the farm (at least during the summer) is bee-keeping. Bees are an important and useful part of the permaculture farm environment in terms of the pollination they provide. But they also make a heck of a lot of honey! I was lucky enough to get to assist Jorge with the honey harvesting on one of the days, along with Clayton and Ian (both from the US). We all donned masks and gloves. There weren’t enough suits to go around so that’s all I got…read more

If you want to see another country on the cheap, one of the best strategies is to make use of websites such as helpx and workaway.info. These list various places where you can work part-time in exchange for board and lodging. And so it was that I found myself heading into a remote part of Chile to find a guy called Greg and his farm. The first part of the journey involved a 10 hour overnight bus south from Santiago to Osorno. This was comfy and uneventful – just how…read more

A few particular memories from my couple of days in Santiago: Breakfast small-talk at the hostel quickly escalated into a full-blown debate on the problem of immigration and how best to solve it. Hearing perspectives from all around the world is always eye-opening and enlightening. Not a single Chilean spoke any English to me. Buying a SIM card and topping it up is a complex and unintuitive process. Apparently the pharmacy is where you have to go to top it up. Who knew?! Buying a socket adaptor is equally complex…read more