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Ok, so here I am back in Chile after numerous weeks of travelling and stupidness. Last time I wrote I was in Bariloche, which I have to say I really miss. The four weeks I spent there were unbelievable. The school I was at, the people I met and the place and region in general were all amazing. My favourite place so far.
I left Barriloche on Sunday the 6th of April for Mendoza, where I stayed for a couple of nights. I did some wine tasting, cycled around the city and its huge park, and acted as translator in the local police station after an Irish girl I was with had her bag stolen while eating in a restaurant. After my few days in Mendoza, I headed towards the madness of Buenos Aires. This place is like an abyss that swallows all who enter. It has some really nice areas like San Telmo, Puerto Madero, Palermo Viejo and more. Also there are some really cool museums to visit and all the atttactions of a major European city, but it has to be said the main thing about Buenos aires, maybe the reason for its existence, is the nightlife. While I
Salar de Atacama
Here the salt planes are in a rocky formation because it barely rains. Other salt plains are usually flat due to more rain. salt...was there me and my buddy Jens managed to stay most nights in the apartment of an american girl called Eliza who we met in the school in Bariloche. This freed up cash for other activities. However it came with its problems as well. As Eliza´s apartment was being rented from the language school she was at in Buenos Aires and she was not allowed to have people stay over, if she did she received a fine. So because of this everytime we went out for the night we had to be up and about early in case the secret police from the school came over for one of their surprise inspections, which they did with frequency. I think it was one of the schools prime sources of income. This constant cycle of staying out late, and in Buenos Aires things dont kick off till about three in the morning, and getting up early really made me suffer and by the end of my first weekend there I was really not to well. So much so that I had to go to Uruguay to recover.
On the Tuesday, Jens and I took the three hour ferry over the Rio de
Valle de la luna
Treeking across a dune at sunset la Plata to Colonia in Uruguay and in all seriousness it was the perfect place to recover. Its a small, and tranquil colonial town and although I didnt see much of it because I was in bed a lot of the time, I really quite liked it. Also, I had a funny experience there which demonstrated that I still have a long way to go with my spanish. While walking around the town Jens and I noticed there was a football match at the local stadium so we thought we´d go check it out. It turned out to be a second division Uruguayan game and initially it seemed like there was no entrance fee and the only barrier preventing us from entering was a plastic bag full of socks I had just bought. The security guards at the gate gestured towards this bag and said something about food which I didnt really understand. I just assumed that he didnt want me to take food into the ground and so rather than explain I just left my plastic bag with others there and entered the stadium. When we left the stadium after the match finished we saw that the bags had
by the salt lagoon
Just me, my bike and the flamingos gone, and so went to ask the security guards where they were. The proceded to explain that because there was no entrance fee to the game, the other plastic bags were full of food to be donated to a charity! At this point if I had been alone I would have just given up on my finest quality uruguayan socks, but with the help of Jens and after about thirty different policemen laughing at the dumb gringos I recovered my precious plastic bag of socks.
The next day we took a bus to Montevideo where we stayed for two nights. I can't say I was amazed by Montevideo but I had a really good time there and also we were there completely out of season. The first night there we went to a Copa libertadores (the latin american version of the champions league) football game between Defensor of Uruguay and Gremio from Brazil. To our surprise the Uruguayans won two nil, but despite this the Gremio fans were amazing. They didn't stop singing and dancing the for the whole game, including half time. Happy people those brasileñas. For our last day we decided that we knew absolutely nothing about uruguay
Desert Landscape
A crazy landscape in the desert.
NB there are not many photos i) because my camera was stolen with lots on it and, ii) because the internet here is painfully slow. When I find a good place i´ll add more... and so we tried to go to as many museums as possible, after about five, we still didn´t really know very much. One thing though is that there are more cows than people apparently. In the evening we went to a flamenco bar with a group from our hostel which was pretty cool and then the next day we took the ferry back to Buenos Aires just in time for the weekends festivities and my birthday.
The next few days were spent wondering around the city visiting interesting places and going out. On my birthday I went out for a nice argentinian steak and then to a club I was told was really bad. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't. I´m not the person to ask. The day after my birthday Jens went back to Germany and I left Buenos Aires for Salta, a city in the north of Argentina 21 hours away in bus.
The region of Salta is meant to be the nicest in the country, but unfortunately i didnt really get to experience much of it as on my second day there my camera was stolen from my bag while I was in the shower! Im almost
a flamigo
This is for my Dad, he loves them. certain it was the guy I was sharing my room with. I told the hostel and they tried to track the guy down, same with the police, but nothing came of it. Anyway, I spent the next few days wondering around the city debating whether or not to buy a camera, eventually i decided i had too but that also I have to guard this one with my life. I know about 7 or 8 people who have had their cameras stolen here so I kind of feel like a member of a club.
Anyway after a couple days in Salta, my Australian friend Natalie arrived and we decided to head back into Chile, to San pedro de Atacama in the worlds driest desert, the Atacama. It was a shame to say goodbye to Argentina as it really is an asolutely amazing country and one I hope to return to someday in the future. We arrived in San Pedro on Tuesday and immediately liked the place, its a town of 5000 people but is absolutely full of backpackers. Despite this it has a really unique feeling, it feels like living in another century. My days here have been spent making numerous excursions around the the desert which is quite spectacular. On Wednesday we went to the salar de atacama, a huge salt flat with a salty landscape something similar to the moon I´d imagine and some flamingos feeding in the salt lagoons. On Thursday in the morning we went Sandboarding in the valley of the death which was pretty cool if a little difficult as with the boards we had it was impossible to turn. So most of the time we just ended up going really fast and falling over and hurting ourselves or getting a mouthful of sand. In the evening we went to the valle de la luna for sunset, a national reserve with some absolutley unbelievable landscapes and rock formations. Its the sort of place where its hard to believe you are actually there. Yesterday, I took on the task of a 55km bike ride, there and back, to some salt lagoons where its possible to bathe and float. To be honest when I eventually got there it was a bit of a disappointment as the weather took a turn for the worse and I wimped out of going for a swim because it was too cold. I ended up passing the time there chasing some flamingos around the lakes, but I dont think they liked me and they didnt really pose for any shots.
Today is my last day here in San Pedro and Chile, tomorrow I am taking a bus and a four by four over the border into Bolivia to a town called Uyuni. I am going there with an italian girl who i met in my hostel with whom it is really good to spend time because she speaks fluent spanish and no english and so I have to practice my spanish. I am really looking forward to getting to Bolivia as this is the place, i've heard, where the adventure starts.
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