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Published: November 2nd 2007
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It may have been noted that I have been much less active in the whole blogging thing of late. This might leave you to believe that we have not been up to anything, but this just simply is not the case! If anything we have been up to too many things for me to put in the many hours required to write the blogs.
Right now I am sitting in Santiago airport on a transfer to Sydney. I will be here for 11 hours over all so will get to know the place pretty well. I thought I would take the time to sum up a few things about South America and what we did in our last month here.
We left Bolivia by crossing the Salar de Uyuni and the surrounding lagoon region of Bolivia´s remote south west. This was an organised trip that we took from the isolated town of Uyuni. We took the trip withfour other wonderful people that we travelled on the bus from Potosi to Uyuni with. For three days we were in the company of a young Dutch couple and two German cousins, Paul and Charlotte.
All the tours from Uyuni are
the same and there appears to be very little difference in the price or quality of tour. We set out on the three day journey driven in a beat up old 4x4 driven by a deceidedly surly character.
The flats themselves were absolutley the most incredible thing. There are few landscapes that you can genuenly experience in this way. The lake is a vast perfectly flat plain of pure white high in the Andes. Its pretty much improssible to put into writing just why this is so great so I wont really try. But the central experience is to walk off alone from the jeep and your companions and sit in the complete silience and solitude. You really do go somewhere else for a while there! The rest of the trip included some strange rock formations and canyons and a trip to see the gizas at sunrise- another really outstanding expereince. But I have to tell you it gets pretty cold out there at night and on the second night our accomidation was what I can only describe as a goolag on the shore of a lagoon.
Paul and Charlotte did the same thing as us and leave
the tour on the third day at a very remote border crossing into Chile. The tour agency had arranged transport for us from the Chilean border to the increasingly popular gringo hotspot of San Pedro de Atacama. ´Hotspot´ being the operative word. After a week or so in the high altitude the heat of the Atacama desert was really great.
We stayed in Chile for more or less 24 hours before we caught the bus to Salta in the north of Argentina. It was from here on that our trip has taken a slightly different turn. Its been a lot more about socialsing in hostels, exploring cities and taking advantage of Argentina´s beautiful attitude to night life. Oh and the steak, well thats something truly awsome! We spent a few days in Salta with Paul and some other guys that we´d travelled in from Chile with. Charlotte chose to stay in Chile. Things got a little nocturnal there for a while.
After Salta came Cordoba, Argentina´s second city and a pretty cool place all round. We booked ourselves into the very communal Baluch Backpackers, run by Israelis who decided going home wasn´t for them. We stayed there for
10 days in all, becoming fairly settled as features of the lounge and terrace. With different people coming and going all week we were well entertained. This was especially true at the end of the week when the hostal filled with American students in town for the Oktoberfest. We attened of course. Also got to go to a proper Argentinian´s flat party which was well worth the lanuage barrier.
Next up was Rosario, my kind of town! If we have any regrets its that we didn´t give ourselves more time here. The central reason why Rosario was such fun was the hostal, my favorite so far: Cool Raul. Cool Raul is a small communal place run by Omar, the self proclaimed Argentinian Robert Plant and infectous party animal. He likes his guets to be drunk within a few hours of arrival and especially likes to take them on what he calls ´night tours´which are essentially nights when he wants to go partying and insists that you all come along. Ace! Person closest answers the door too. He dosent actually do anything. We also met a chilled Dutch dude called Walter and some lovely Slovinian ladies. Good times in Rosario.
Next we made a very quick dash up to the Iguazu Falls which were incredible as well but not page filling. We had to get ourselves down to Buenos Aires, the city and the events that happened there in really do deserve a blog of there own.
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