During the holidays (and the last week of Term 3) a group of nine students and two staff set off on their long awaited trip to Argentina and Chile. The students spent 10 days in the capital (Buenos Aires) living with a host family to experience real South American culture.

Each morning the students  did sightseeing activities around the city and then returned home with their host sisters in the afternoon. Some of the highlights included seeing La Boca soccer stadium, visiting the Recoleta cemetery which has huge vaults above the ground that you can see the coffins inside, attending an Argentine cooking class, San Telmo vibrant Sunday market, walking along the colourful street of El Caminito, having a tango lesson, visiting a replica of Anne Frank’s house and spending a day in the high school. The students had to quickly adjust to very late nights and early mornings. The food was a highlight as well – especially the ice cream, empanadas and pizza. Buenos Aires is a huge city with 13 million people. At first this was very daunting – we had to push our way onto the subway and sometimes we got lost.

On the second week of our trip we flew over the Andes to Santiago in Chile. This is where we got to practice our Spanish with lots of shopping and ordering food in restaurants. We also spent two nights in the port city of Valparaiso with it’s funky street art.

The last week saw us flying north into the Atacama desert – the driest place on earth. During this part of the trip we got our first taste of high altitude and got to see an array of different cacti. The highlights from the second week included sand-boarding, cycling through the desert, visiting the geysers, relaxing in a natural hot spring in the Andes, watching the sunset in the Valley of the Moon, feeding the llamas and floating in the lagoon (where there is more salt than in the Dead Sea).

If you ever get the opportunity to travel to South America you shouldn’t let it pass.