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Published: August 4th 2008
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Hola!
We left Bolivia and it was a real contrast arriving in Northern Argentina. From the mud brick buildings and unpaved roads of Bolivia it was back on the tar for an easy drive down through Northern Argy to the city of Salta. Everyone on the truck couldn't get over the contrast and we really felt like we had just been transported back to Europe.
Salta was great, the central square was buzzing at night with people out for a drink or dinner, just sitting outside with plenty of time to kill. We did the whole Argy dinner thing of eating our steak and drinking the red wine and free champagne at about 10.30pm and finally at 2am we left the restaurant. Even at around 11pm families were still arriving to have dinner.
The steak was fantastic; enough to feed an army, cooked perfectly and it only cost about 5 quid! We knew then that we were going to enjoy Argentina!
The wine wasn't too bad either and we had a great cheese and wine night at one of our campsites followed by Andy, our Kiwi driver providing us with a Hungi. The Hungi is a typical
way for the Maori's in New Zealand to cook food. It involved us digging a huge hole, then lighting a fire to heat up the earth, then putting in the raw food, covering up the hole and allowing it to cook throughout the day. The food tasted great although it´s a lot of effort to prepare the whole thing.
We had a couple of days to enjoy Salta and the surrounding countryside before heading back over the Andes to reach the Atacama desert in Chile. Apparently it is the driest desert in the world and it hasn´t rained there for over 50 years. The main reason for our visit was to go star gazing. We met up with this cool, crazy French guy who took us to his house and told us all about the stars, the milky way and the planets. It was really interesting learning all about what's out there and great fun looking through the huge telescopes at the night sky. It's hard to remember all the different facts he told us but apparently if you were able to travel at the speed of light, it would still take you 24 years to reach the star
which is closest to earth.
The next few days were drive days to reach Santiago. We enjoyed a few beach camps along the way and Helen did her best to entertain us all in La Serena with her fantastic singing voice at a local Karaoke. All that practice she had in Japan paid off, although to be fair her vocal chords had been well oiled by the numerous glasses of red wine and massive cocktails she sank before grabbing the microphone!
So we reached Santiago and said goodbye to the truck, and over the course of the week, our truckmates. The seven weeks we had enjoyed travelling with these people from Quito down to Santiago had been a great experience. We had seen and done a huge amount and there was a wee bit of sadness in saying bye to everyone.
We were pretty tired after the tour so had a lazy couple of days just relaxing and sightseeing in Santiago. We visited the "Bodies" exhibition where dead bodies had been preserved and then sections taken of them to expose the component parts of the body. Parts of the exhibition were a bit freaky, especially the different growth stages of a baby but we really enjoyed it.
Having seen what an amazing machine the body is, we put it to good use the next day with a skiing and snowboarding trip in the Chilean Andes. The snow was powder and with it being a weekday there weren´t too many people going about. Helen skied really well and apart from a couple of wipeouts i was happy with my boarding. We had both really fancied skiing whilst over here and it was cool to think that we were skiing in the Andes in July.
The next couple of days we headed out to the coast and the town of Valparaiso. It was an arty sort of place, full of quirky little shops, cafes and other buildings all brightly painted in different colours. We really enjoyed just wandering round the old streets, eating some nice seafood and generally getting away from the hussle and bussle of Santiago for a while.
We made it back to Santiago and got ready for the flight to Buenos Aires. It was hard to believe that it was around two and a half months since we had first arrived there all nervous about what we would find. The weeks have gone so fast but we have covered a lot of ground and seen so many new and interesting things. Now it´s time to explore a little bit of the east side of South America.....
Hope everyone is well, all the best.
Helen & Craig x
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