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Published: January 26th 2013
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Colonia Such a lot has happened in the last week or so I shall try to let photos tell the greater part of the story.
The night life has been lively on this trip, I have certainly encountered more cocktails than ever before and also drinking games to go with them! Fun and games - is that where the expression comes from I wonder?
Our trip to the Salt Flats was curtailed as so much rain had fallen that vehicles were being lost and breaking down in the area. However, the part we visited was incredible, mirages and huge ones at that were the first intimation that the laws of perspective as we have experienced them were not at work here. The salt seems to have formed pentagonal shapes, it was rather like walking on a flat face of misshapen honeycomb. Then because of the mirage effect we were able to take weird photographs. We had to leave the area quite quickly for two reasons, a long journey ahead and a huge storm was brewing around us, the lightning was spectacular.
That journey was punctuated by several incidents - fuses blew (we had no headlights and a
smell of burning rubber...) our second vehicle lost power and amusingly our vehicle's windscreen wipers became tangled up, so the driver had to stop, get out and manually move them each time he couldn't see through the windscreen! All this in the pouring rain.Bald rear tyres adds to the excitement of the drive....
Our arrival at 1am was no less interesting, the hostel had given away our bookings, luckily the second hostel had room for us!
After an early start, next morning we drove into the Desert. Oh it was beautiful, a mix of sand, mountains, lakes, snow - yes we had the white stuff too. In fact an Ozzie girl squealed with excitement as this was her first sight of it, so we stopped and of course played snowballs! The lakes were all very shallow, excellent feeding grounds for flamingoes. Several of the group waded out to take photos of them but the birds were not fooled, for every step we took, they took one away from us so it became rather like a shadow dance!
Our next day was a wet one so the girls elected to have a duvet day whilst watching episodes of
'House'. - very bonding!
From there we headed towards San Pedro de Atacama, that drive was wonderful, the desert changed, no snow but huge areas of gigantic rocks, lovely off roading and magnificent mountains. You might gather that I love the desert - thanks to you Dave and Oman of course. We all went sandboarding up in the mountains, off roading proved too much for the minibus so we pushed it through the sandy parts to the boarding slopes. That was fun, the views were spectacular, but they too were upstaged by sunset over moon valley. That was a highlight of the trip, something to be stored in the memory bank, not just the photo album.
San Pedro was lovely, a small town which welcomed tourists but seemed to keep its own character. I loved it most of all the towns and cities visited so far.
Back into Argentina, over the Andes which I missed oooops! Sleep had taken over.
A day in La Salta gave us time to do cable car trips, walking and of course eating. I will post the photos of the excellent meals we have had on this trip later - Bolivia
certainly excelled in this.
Then onto Buenos Aires and the Tango! This time I went to a lesson, we had a great teacher and came away feeling that we
could learn to tango, so as well as donating blood, I am going to sort out some tango lessons on my return! The evening lasted until the early hours, with a tango show and then a dancing session afterwards in a huge hall which seemed to be falling apart, but no-one cared, they danced. All ages together and very much following the style - telling the story and keeping facial expressions taut! An excellent last night together, our leader was very good and we all got on well together - even when I adopted a toy llama and made photo stories for Sam, they all joined in!
So now I am travelling solo, Buenos Ires was so hot I caught the ferry to Colonia in Uruguay and am having an wonderfuuly relaxing time here. The old city is lovely, the streets are cobbled, there are cafes everywhere, with old cars as stage props. It's fun!
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Dave
non-member comment
Desert travel.
Ah yes, but did you find the SIGN POST ! and the corner stones for the building plot? and what about that strange shaped hill.