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Published: March 31st 2011
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We were accompanied throughout our bus journey north to Salta by the continuous looming presence of the snow capped Andes to our left. Salta was dark and damp when we arrived at dawn the next day. We dropped our gear at our hostel and then wandered about the town for a few hours, visiting a superb market and climbing a hill to the side of the city offering great views over the city. The centre was extraordinarily picturesque, with colonial churches and grand municipal buildings surrounding a central square. We hadn’t expected this from what was only supposed to be a quick stopover.
The next day we caught an early morning bus to the Argentina/Chile border and what a spectacular journey it was. The road wound through endless canyons and past rocky plateaus dotted with brightly coloured adobe villages, red flagged roadside shrines and, much to Kasia´s delight, the occasional llama.
The border must have been extremely high. We had climbed for hours without respite and when we got there we had both started to feel the effects of altitude sickness with head aches, stomach pains and dizziness.
Across the border and over the Andes, our descent to
the Atacama Desert began. The road dropped steadily, grinding through a desolate rocky world, past salt flats and arid desert landscapes which leveled out and stretched to the far horizon as we neared the oasis of San Pedro Di Atacama, our next stop.
It was a true desert town with white adobe huts, dusty dirt roads and stifling heat. As the sun dropped below the volcanoes on the horizon the temperature plummeted, the stars appeared and the bars and boutiques opened transforming it from a dusty backwater to a vibrant and stylish resort.
We only had one night in San Pedro, having booked our bus to the Peruvian border the next evening, so we made the most of it, drinking cocktails in a candlelit courtyard (our first since Christmas Day) and eating in a busy restaurant around a clay oven to the sound of a traditional Chilean band. At 11.00pm we took a star gazing trip out into the desert. The moon was waning but only one or two days past full so the stars´ brilliance was somewhat reduced. Nevertheless it was a magical experience, looking through various large telescopes set to pick up numerous constellations. We saw
Saturn and its rings, a beautiful gas nebula, learned to spot the Southern Cross (their equivalent to our plough and North Star), the Three Marias (Orion´s Belt sideways), Sirius, Gemini, Cancer and Capricorn and viewed the moon in extraordinary detail.
The next day we hired bikes intending to ride out for a day into the desert to the Valley of the Moon but thought better of it when faced with seizing gears, Kasia falling off amidst a cloud of profanity every time she braked and me hampered by a frame so small that my knees were up by my ears. Instead we headed to the ruins of an Inca town sitting on a hill over a creek winding between red stone cliffs. A much more relaxing experience all round, except the climb up to it!
We caught the bus as the sun went down, waking the next day at Arica, the last town in Chile before Peru. We stumbled through the pre-dawn darkness, bleary eyed, to the taxi terminal to catch a cab across the border into Peru. We were saved from a world of incomprehension and panicked gesticulating by a young American girl who was travelling on
her own, spoke Spanish perfectly and wanted to share a taxi with us. Phew!
The cab arrived at the Peruvian border but we had an hour’s wait until the Peruvians decided to open for business. Past the checkpoint we headed for Tacna, stopping to drop out savior off at the airport to continue her good Samaritan routine further north while we headed for the bus station to wait for the next leg of our marathon journey in surroundings so basic they looked like something out of a film set.
The Cruz Del Sur (Southern Cross) bus from Tacna to Cuzco was the best yet, comfortable, quiet and safe. They even insisted on all the passengers wearing seatbelts throughout the trip. So much for my worrying about the quality of Peruvian busses! We had to change in the city of Arequipa at midnight and then headed off on the last leg, arriving at Cuzco early the next morning with a few days spare to acclimatize to the altitude before heading off on the swansong of our trip, hiking the Inca trail to Machu Picchu.
Love and best wishes.
Tom and Kasia.
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Byjo and Sandie
non-member comment
Wow!
Hiya you two. Hope you're both fine. You look it! Great blog as usual. Still with you both all the way! XX