Geoff n Lexa

Well you can’t visit the famous silver town of Potosi without visiting the mines ….can you?? Well, maybe after you’ve read this, you might understand why some people decide against it… Potosi’s historical wealth has certainly come at some considerable human expense, with an estimated EIGHT MILLION plus Black and Indian slaves dying whilst working in the mines from 1545 to 1825 and the 4824m Cerro Rico overlooking the city deservedly earning its nickname of ‘The Mountain That Eats Men’. To be honest it didn't sound like conditions had improved much and would no doubt be completely unacceptable anywhere in the ‘developed’ world. It does apparently depending on which mining cooperative you visit as standards varies widely , from completely hand powered operations, to those with electric lifts and lights and proper ventilation. Today it’s not ... read more

And so it was time to leave San Pedro de Atacama and head for Bolivia via the Salar de Uyuni. First it was a short bus ride out of town to the Chilean border and to get our exit stamp. Then it was another half hour or so into the hills up to the desolate Bolivian border, where we arrived at 9AM and tucked into breakfast whilst freezing our kerniggets off. As a side story back in the 70’s and 80’s, the Chilean Army, foreseeing a war, planted several thousand landmines along the border with Bolivia and its neighbouring areas, including around the outskirts of San Pedro. Many would-be mountain passes and transit areas still have these weapons buried in the ground, occasionally blowing up the odd animal or car that strays off the path. Most ... read more

Basically it took us ages to get over the jet lag and 5 days after we arrived in Chile we were just about beginning to come right, but maybe the fact that our 3 hour bus ride inland from Antofagasta took us 2260m (7500 feet) up didn’t help our recovery. We arrived at Calama in the early afternoon and walked a kilometer to a hostel, unfortunately paying for a night before discovering that the tour of the largest open pit mine in the world and the only reason we or anybody comes to Calama was booked out for the next 4 days… Things only got worse - apart from being jetlagged, tired and grumpy, we were staying in another expensive (to us) hostel (£10) that was very basic and there was a power cut across the ... read more

Our final few days were spent going a little further north, with our first stop being the Kauri museum at Matakohe. Kauri trees once dominated the New Zealand landscape, but now only a few percent of the original forests remain. Hence conservation work is taking place to preserve the few remaining examples of these giants of the forest that grow to about 40 meters tall in 500 years. It has to be said that at the end of the day the museum was about a type of tree and although this sounds quite boring, I actually quite enjoyed it. I won’t bother you with every detail of the museum, but essentially in just over a 100 years much of the forest was destroyed by logging, gum digging and burning. Just to explain the gum digging part, ... read more

Hot water beach was our next destination up the coast a little way and yes it does literally have hot water springs on the beach that are uncovered 2 hours either side of low tide. We arrived that evening when the water was too high to get in the pools, but we stopped for a cuppa whilst watching a pod of dolphins swim by and took a walk down the beach before heading to a campsite for the night. To catch the tide we were back at 8am the next day with plastic bowls from the van to dig pools in the sand, which then fill with hot water. There was more of an art to this than we had first thought as the hottest part of the spring is about 64degC and needs to be ... read more