Advertisement
After snow stopped us leaving Santiago for a few days, Dan and I made it back across the Chile-Argentina border (again!) for a spot of wine tasting in Mendoza. Mendoza is Argentina's largest wine producing region, bottling a staggering 720 million litres per year. We were sold the hostel on the basis that we would get free wine all day. Probably not the finest grape (nor in the safest area - my roommate was robbed on the street outside), but free wine is free wine.
We took a trip around some of Mendoza's wineries on bicycle the following day. The bikes had seen better days - days in which the brakes actually worked! We got to see the wine production process, which with the noise and my not-so-perfect spanish translated as "it starts here, goes there, next to there, and into bottles from there". To be honest I doubt our not-so-informative guide said much more than that! But the main reason to be there was to taste the wine, and I think we got our money's worth!
The next evening we made our way to Cordoba - Argentina's university city. This coincided roughly with my birthday (all those who
forgot are forgiven, just make it up to me with a large present 😉, so we painted the town red for the weekend. Cordoba is a lovely spot, and the people are extremely friendly. The highlight of the stay was going skydiving on the day of my birthday. Five of us went for the jump (Senior Power opted out due to a fear of hights, or at least that's what we were told). It was absolutely fantastic. We jumped from 8,500ft above the city of Cordoba. It wasn't quite as nerve-racking as I had envisioned - the height is so unrealistic that I don't think my brain fully comprehended it as I flung myself out of the plane. The adrenaline for the freefall was immense - I'm sure I deafened my instructor with my shouts and screams for the first 20 seconds. After the parachute was pulled, it was a peaceful glide over the city, similar to the paragliding that I had done over Rio. The company we did the jump with were excellent, providing us with an excellent DVD and photos of the jump. And, more importantly, got us all to the ground in one piece!
From there
we made a very short stop-over in Salta, in the north of Argentina, en route to San Pedro de Atacama - an oasis in the middle of the atacama desert in the north of Chile. San Pedro is a dusty little town, and a great spot to try a spot of sandboarding. We rented bikes (these ones had brakes and gears that worked - the luxury!) and headed out to the exaggeratedly named 'Death Valley'. Sandboarding is very similar to snowboarding, but (you guessed it) on sand. The idea is you climb a sand-dune, put some wax on the bottom of your board, strap your feet in and glide down the sand-dune. In theory it worked out that we spent most of the first few goes on our arses. Then when our skill and confidence grew, so did the speed down the hill. Unfortunately, on my best attempt, I misjudged where to aim the board. The nose went into a pile of sand and stopped. I flew off the front and landed shoulder first into the ground. I winded myself completely, and I can still feel my ribs ache a week later. Everyone at the top of the sand-dune got
great entertainment out of it though.
That evening we cycled out to Valle de la Luna, a valley with a landscape apparently like that on the moon. It was a grueling cycle - 14km uphill - but a worthwhile sight at the end of it all. Not sure if this is exactly like what Neil Armstrong and friends stepped out on in 1969, but it was an impressive landscape all the same.
San Pedro is also a close neighbour to the El Tatio Geyser field. The geysers are best viewed in the morning, so at the cruel time of 5am we set off. I was dead to the world at this insane time, and so it took about half the people in the room, and numerous attempts to wake me. The geyser field has over 80 active geysers. With water at temperatures up around 200 C, it's fairly important not to step backwards when getting that photo! Our guide was a man capable of enthusiasm for the most un-exceptional of things - he explained to us in great detail the reason for the presence of tiny little shrubs on the mountainside, that I'm sure no-one else in the
world cared for! He kept me in good humour all day though - every sentence ended in "That's right", and just remineded me of the Irish comedy act D'Unbelievables. Dats Right!
From San Pedro we travelled out across the Atacama desert, through the Bolivian border, and north towards the famous Salt Plains of Uyuni. Along the way there was lots of beautiful countryside. Lakes aplenty - the White Lake, the Green Lake, and Lake Colorado; a thermal pool heated from volcanic activiity below; a patch of desert called Dali's Desert due to it looking like a landscape from a Dali painting; the Stone Tree, but beyond and above all was the majestic Salar de Uyuni - the Salt Plains. The Salar stretches for over 4000 square miles, at an altitude of over 3,500 metres. About 40,000 years ago the current plain was actually a salt lake - but that dried up to leave the landscape we have today. I hope some of the photos can do it justice!
The three day tour finished in Uyuni, leaving us longing for some warmth and comfortable beds - the first night of the tour we had slept in lodgings at -10
C with no heating! But since Uyuni doesn't contain much of interest, we got on a bus north to La Paz, Bolivia's capital. And the journey truly reminded us that we had left behind the comparative wealth of Chile and Argentina. 11 hours across an extremely bumpy road with sub-zero temperatures outside, no heating inside, and as a coup de grace the floor of the bus was half flooded. Welcome to Bolivia!
Advertisement
Tot: 0.089s; Tpl: 0.012s; cc: 7; qc: 51; dbt: 0.0415s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb