I never expected Chile to look so much like the Sahara Desert but you can drive for hour after hour and see nothing but huge expanses of sand-coloured hills with absolutely no vegetation. We drove through these hills for a couple of hours on a day trip to the island paradise of Isla Damas.

After a while there were fields of cacti in all sorts of comical shapes as well as alpaca roaming in the distance. Our driver and guide was another Marcelo (we called him Marcelo the Second) and he would slam on his brakes to show us some hilarious-looking animal. He had the most incredible vision.

The town where we took off for Isla Damas reminded me of Bluff. It was beautiful, beside the sea and it felt like the end of the earth. I don't know what I was expecting the boat to be like, but it looked like it was fashioned from a few picnic tables and smelt like it had just dropped off a load of tuna. It was called Tio (uncle) Victor and I said a quick prayer that Victor was one of the reliable uncles.

As I was choking on seaspray, we spotted a pod of about 10 dolphins and they entertained us, forming amazing sights as dolphins always do. I tried so hard to get a good photo but my camera was too slow and now I have about 500 photos of the grey, motionless ocean.

They will look so cool in my photo album.

The area around Isla Damas has both penguin and sea lion colonies. We could only see the "penguinos" from afar but we marvelled at how they build their nests way up in the cliffs to keep their babies safe from treacherous sea otters. We saw pelicans and native Chilean birds but the coolest part was the sea lions, obese and so happy in their natural habitat. The males would puff up extra large to impress us as we sailed by.

Tio Victor puttered along to Isla Damas (named for its womanly shape) and we were given two hours to explore the area. It had white sand and aqua water and large sand dunes covered in cacti.

There was a great lighthouse which Marcelo said we could climb to at our own peril and curiosity got the better of us so we did. The view was amazing - down below was an island totally protected by the Chilean parks department, a stunning version of paradise.

The following day we left La Serena for another northern beach city, trying to get closer to Bolivia.The city was called Iquique and we had no idea how to pronounce it, which is why they nearly laughed us out of the bus station when we tried.

Check out more photos from my trip in my Flickr album.

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