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Hi there people. If been having so much fun of late that i´ve been a bit lazy on the oul blog!....Went to Salta in the north of argentina, did a tour of the surrounding area which has all of the cool rock formations in the pictures shown. Then i headed to the desert in Chile to a the town of San Pedro de Atacama. This place is extremely cool, as there are loads of things to do in the surrounding area. Its bloody hot too, although its close to freezing at night. I met up with some dutch people and an english girl, we all got a hostel together. The dutch fella is over 6ft, bald,and speaks with a scottish accent.....he´s good craic though!.... In san pedro we went to see geysers at sunrise(early out of bed for me!), and afterwards went to some hot baths, which was very nice. the only problem is when you get out of the baths, the air temperature is close to freezing, so you have to get dried and dressed bloody quickly! That night we went to a stargazing class, were you get to look through telescopes at the night sky...The desert is one the
best places in the world to watch the stars because there are no clouds and no light or air pollution....I was a really cool class, I have never seen so many stars in my life, the sky was just full of them...We could see nebulae, distant galaxies, the milky way, and even Saturn with its rings... I took a photo of Saturn through the telescope.
Next day myself and Stefan(the crazy dutch fella), hired some mountain bikes and set off on a 38mile epic bike ride...one of the best ever... the photos don´t do it justice, the downhill section snaked down through the mountains, it was great fun racing each other, though it was tough at times due to the altitude and the heat....We finished the ride by taking in Moon Valley at sunset, which was cool, but a bit annoying as there were tonnes of tourists there all jostling to take piccies of the sunset....
Next day we left San Pedro and headed off on a 3day trip to Boliva, across the worlds biggest Salt Flats- Salar de Uyuni, 12000 square km of salt. Seven of us were packed into 4x4, with the rucksacks on the roof. Our
Bolivian driver called Guida, was navigated the way, as we sat in the back getting out at regular intervals to take pictures...The scenery was spectacular, mountains everywhere, and then the salt flats were just white in every direction you looked......One morning we drove to an island in the middle of the salt flats that is covered in cactii for sunrise. That meant we had to drive in total darkness across the flats, but because there is no actual road, you can drive any route you want, which means that other 4x4s can be driving across the salt flats in different directions. The best bit is when the driver turns his lights off and you are driving in complete darkness!....
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Simon
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been there!
Just for once, not quite so jealous becaseu I haev been to the salt flats at Uyuni. I was about 4 at the time, in the late 60s. We camped half way across. My parents were driving a toyota landcruiser [i think] towing a small two berth green caravan. THey also had a tent with no poles - it just had tubes which you inflated by removing a spark plug from the car engine and attaching a tube. No smoking! So I have thius vague memory of staning on the flats at the age of 4 cleaning my teeth in a small plastic cup. BUt yeah, i am jealous really. Want to go there again!