This is where it got difficult…

18/10/2005 by drops.

Hi Everyone! It´s been a mad month, spanning over three countries, desert landscapes, salt lakes, waterfalls, two capital cities and sub-antarctic wildlife. Our photo gallery now includes two more countries, Argentina and Chile, and we´ve finished off the Bolivia folder.

Well, we had it so good, things had to go wrong some time. Right until we left Peru, everything went swimmingly, with lots of time to spare. Just after we crossed the Chilean border and added another country (NZ) to our itinerary, the weather started to play tricks on us and has played havoc on our schedule. It’s been a lot of running around, but we´ve had great fun all the same.We first visited the Atacama Desert in Chile, the driest place on Earth, where it doesn´t rain, ever, and the guidebooks guaranteed us sunshine. In our honour, it was overcast for days. From there we went to San Pedro de Atacama, a beautiful oasis village where we could´ve easily spent a couple of weeks. The surrounding desert is incredible, with otherworldly landscapes and colours, and there are no end of activities available, from stargazing to sandboarding.

Freak snow delayed us getting from San Pedro into Bolivia to see the vast salt lake of Salar de Uyuni, an ocean of white with a cactus island in the middle. When we finally got there, we were stunned. This part of Bolivia is really like another planet. As well as the amazing salt lake itself, we saw lagoons stained red, white and green by mineral deposits, seething geysers, strangely eroded rocks, and an ancient burial site set in a fossilized coral bed. To see all this, though, we had to put up with very basic lodging. Our bed on one night was a thin mattress set on top of a concrete block. Electricity was supplied, for a few hours, by a generator the size and power of a small lawnmower engine; and showers came courtesy of a draughty, bare concrete outhouse. We suppose this can be filed under ´life experience´…

We intended to travel into Argentina from San Pedro across the Andes, but the same freak snow blocked the pass on the day the bus was running. We heard that the passes further south were OK so we decided to head to Copiapo, a ten-hour journey away. When we got there, however, we found that buses across the border from there only ran during their summer… We had no option but to travel another 12 hours to Santiago and bring forward our flight to Buenos Aires.

Argentina has been great so far. Apart from being a feast for our tastebuds (the food, wine and coffee are all excellent here), the Iguazu falls make the Niagara Falls look silly by comparison, and are one of the highlights of our trip so far. The Talampaya and Moon Valley parks were also excellent, and the Peninsula Valdes area has been like a David Attenborough film set, with whales, elephant seals, dolphins and penguins to visit.

Our next stop is in the Patagonian Andes and we have a twenty-seven hour bus journey ahead of us. Better dash…

21:43:22 - Tuesday, 18.10.05

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