Escape from the desert

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We crossed the border into Chile around 5pm and after a short drive we reached tarmac and a proper paved road! This was a novelty as the majority of roads in Bolivia are unmade gravel roads. After being stamped into Chile, walking over a disinfectant soaked mat and a rather half-hearted bag search which didnt follow any of the procedures and rules printed on the walls in the customs office we were back on our way. A few minutes later we were on the outskirts of San Pedro De Atacama where we saw some poeple erecting a large stage. Our driver told us that there was a free concert later that evening and we should go. They failed to tell us that it was a rather large celebration for San Pedroans which we later found out.

We spent a while trying to find good value comfortable accomodation, but soon realised that 'cheap' was not a word in the San Pedro vocabularly. After finding somewhere to stay and bargaining with the owner as there 5 of us and staying two nights we headed off to try and book a bus to Salta and a tour to the Valley de Luna.

When we got to the bus company offices we found that buses to Salta only left every other day, it was a Thursday, the Friday buses were all full and there were only limites seats left for the Sunday buses. We frantically searched for other options to escape San Pedro earlier but to no avail. We were given one option by a man with a serious attitude who told us we could have a private transfer in a jeep for the five of us at a cost of $100 per person and we still couldn't go on the day we wanted. So we had to accept we were stuck in the most expensive tourist trap we had come across since we had arrived in South America!

There was a pretty good kitchen at the hostel so we all clubbed together and cooked a 3 course meal and sampled the Chilean red wine. We were just finishing dinner when we heard lots of fireworks. We decided to venture into town and see what was happening and it turned out to be a festival celebrating 25years of founding of San Pedro De Atacama. Unfortunately we didnt take the camera out and once in the middle of a big crowd with a bottle of red wine on the go. It was definately a big event, there were TV cameras and on stage a band playing a strange mix of rock / pop / panpipe music and dancers in very grand costumes. There was food and drink stalls and the whole town seemed to be out celebrating.

We started the next day off at a leisurely pace, took the washing to the launderette, went shopping for groceries for tea and lounged in the garden at the hostel for a while. Later in the afternoon we hired mountain bikes to go to the Valle De La Luna to watch the sun set.

Before we set off Andys tyre needed a little more air and once setting off and getting down the road we found Jess bike gears wouldn't change and Louisa's bike squeaked. We therefore returned to the shop to ask for some oil and for the man to check the bikes. He oiled the gears but got quite annoyed and whilst riding the bike that sounded like a small rodent was stuck in the back wheel said that the bikes were in perfect working order and it wasnt his fault if we didnt know how to ride them, but Guy had riden bikes in South Africa at quite a high competition standard and tried having an arguement with the shop owner, which didn't get very far with Guy who spoke no Spanish and the shop owner no English.

The bike ride set off relatively well as I now seem to have masterd the use of multiple gears (my bike at home only had three gears and I hadnt ridden it a few years). At first the bike ride was easy on nice flat tarmac, but once we left the main road we were on a bumpy, windswept dusty track and our bottoms were soon feeling it. By the time we got there we were a bit fed up and not looking forward to the ride back.

Valle De La Luna (Valley of the moon) is an area close to San Pedro which is famous for its resembalance to the surface of the moon formed by the erosion of the salt mountains. It is located in the great Salar de Atacama and surrounded by ranges of mountains and volcanoes. We dumped our bikes at the bottom of a sand dune and tramped up to the top to join the minibus loads of tourists which only came into view as we neared the top. We had only just made it in time, within minutes of us arriving at the top of the hill, the chain of volcanoes in view from the sand dune turned shades of red and purple, and the sun sank down. The colours soon started fading and we thought we better get a move on to get back to San Pedro before it was pitch black. Once at the bottom of the hill and reunited with our bikes we realised we were not relishing the thought of the cold, windy sand blasted journey back and on seeing a couple of pick ups pulling around the corner flagged them down for a lift back!

We awoke the next day with sore bums, the hard bike seats had not been kind on the bumpy track and the planned long bike ride soon shortened to only a 3km ride to the pre-inca fortress of Pukara de Quitor. I dont think we could have managed to ride much further than the 6km round trip. The ruins were just that 'ruins´ and after some of the 'good' ruins we have been too i find it hard to be stimulated by a large mound of rubble on top of a hill. However the views were good and it was a nice lunch stop for our banana sandwiches before returning to San Pedro.

Sunday comes and we escape San Pedro on the bus. We had just pulled away from the bus terminal when Louisa realised that she didnt have our passport. We were waiting in the que for the imigration control, so she ran off in frantic panic to try and find it. She returned looking like she was about to colapse just in time with passport in hand. She had left the passport as deposit at the bike hire place but had left it there by accident. The bike rental place had called our hostel but the reception guy (who looked permenantly stoned and had been wearing the same clothes for the 3 days we had stayed there) had forgottoen to tell her. As such this had happened and the bike hire place was closed as it was a Sunday morning. The neighbour to the bike shop had called the owner and they had arrived just in the nick of time to release her passport.

We arrived in Salta 9.30pm after a rather pleasant bus journey. The roads were excellent tarmac roads again! The bus passes along side the Atacama Desert and you can see fantastic rock formations and more coloured lakes. As we neared Salta the countryside got greener and the valleys looked lusher and more fertile.

We had planned to stay a day or two in Salta visiting the surrounding area and the Valley of the Seven Colours, but as soon as we arrived at the bus station we thought we had better book our bus to Puerto Iguazzu straight away just in case. It was then we found out that three bus companies went to Puerto iguazzu from Salta but the choice of times was 6am, 6.15am or 6.50am. I really dont understand why in South America all the competing bus companies busses leave at the same time, what is the point in that? Anyway, because of the early departure time and the fact that the journey was 26hours long we decided to skip staying in Salta and leave the next morning as Iguazzu Falls was higher up on our must see than the hill of seven colours.

Therefore all we saw of Salta was the bus station, a hotel opposite the bus station and a couple of roads on the way too and from a restaurant for our dinner our first Argentian steak. I have to say the steak was good but the Steak at Pacumuto in Trinidad beats it!

The bus left the next day at 6.50am and we had prime spots next to the toilet! The bus had already been on its journey for a while and therefore it was rapidly developing a pungent aroma. This wasnt helped by the bus attendant spraying cheap perfumed air freshener to try to mask the smell. Still we were due to change buses in only five hours and we were lucky we had seats with the time we booked them last night.

It was hot and the air conditioning was stuggling to contend with the heat. I havent been in Argentina long but it looks like a country of Parks and Football pitches! All along the journey there are leafy parks and squares and unbelievable quantities of football pitches! They seem to cram them in anywhere they can, even between two major roads. We arrived in Tucuman where we changed busses an had an hour to stretch our legs before continuing on our journey. It was a good journey but I was finding it very frustrating as my mum was having an eye operation as we were on our 21 hour stint of the journey with only one five minute break from now on. I had news that all had not gone to plan on the operation but I then had no signal to reply or call home. I eventually found out that mum was stable although they had been unable to perform the planned operation so then I could rest a little more easily.

We arrived in Puerto Iguazu at 10am and felt suprisingsly refreshed after our long bus journey, as usual when we arrived somewhere the first thing is to book where we are staying and the second to book to leave, then book the things in between. We have a tight schedule with flying from Buenos Aires to Santiago on the 4th December, although we plan to move the flight by two days to give us a little more time to enjoy Buenos Aires.

We took the day easy planning what we were going to do over the next day or two and that evening whilst walking back to our hostel bumped into Brendan, Richard and Joe who were on our trip in Rurrenabaque in Bolivia. As a result the ealry night went out of the window and we all headed doff to a club called Cuba Libre, where Brendon got is revenge for us getting him very drunk on his birthday in Rurrenabaque.

Due to the antics the night before we didnt get the early start to upto the falls that we had planned. We went to Iguazzu Falls on the Argentinian side. We walked around the upper circuit where there were hundreds of beautiful butterflies, some of which would come and sit on you (for the salt in your sweat i think). There were also quite a few big lizzards strutting around which were oblivious to the tourists taking their pictures. The falls are impressive, there is such a large volume of water going down them that they roar and there is lots of spray. From the upper circuit you could also see the swallows diving behind the falls to where their nests were and some of the many vultures that live on Isla San Martin.

We then returned to the visitors centre where we got on a truck and were given a guided drive through part of the park on our way to the 'dock'where we got on a zodiac. The boat took us up the river, passing numerous small waterfalls and a cloud of bright yellow butterflies which had formed around a small stream. We passed over some very fast flowing rapids and then reached the Isla San Martin. There was a quick photo stop before we were told to put our camers away so they didnt get wet. We then went upto the base of the Salto San Martin and Salto Bernabe Mendez and we got very wet. As we got close you could feel the light spray on your face, then the captain moved the boat even further forward and we all got a full on shower! You could feel the force of the water and we were nowhere near the main flow. We then went around the the other side of Isla San Martin and into the Devils Throat (Garganta del Diablo) here the water was even more powerful and we got even wetter!

Unfortunately we couldnt walk over to the viewpoint at the top of the Devils Throat as the walkway had recently been washed away by unusually high water levels.

After a quick trip back to the hostel to get changed out of our wet clothes and shoes we were picked up to go to Brazil!

We were picked up and taken to Parana, the town at the Brazillian side of the Falls. Parana is a big modern city which was busy with rush hour traffic when we were passing through. We arrived at Weekend Fly at around 6pm Argentinian time (7pm Brazillian time) and we were shown our 'plane'and introduced to our pilot.

Andy was the first for the 'Trike' (a kind of microlite) flight, he was strapped into what was no more than a basic office chair with only a waist seatbelt (the kind you get inthe back middle seat of a car) it was then time for take off. the flight took us over a residential estate and we couldn't believe how many houses had football pitches in their gardens, ranging from small 5-a-side to full size pitches, but this is Brazil!! We then went to the edge of the Parana river where the Itaipu hydroelectric dam is, which supplies 90% of Paraguagy's energy and 25% of Brazils. We then circling round more seeing the bypass that has been built for the fish to swim through to miss out on the dangerous slide down the damn and the pilot pointed out freedom bridge that linked Brazil with Paraguay.

That evening we went upto the hostel where Brendan, Joe and Richard were staying for a BBQ. Their hostel was so much nice than ours (but more expensive for double rooms), they had a swimming pool and bar and it was more of a resort than a Hostel. There was a table football table and the overcompetitive side took over Andy, he took on Brendan and Joe at the same time and successively beat them several times, while playing with a severe handicap of having me on his side, till he booted me out of 'his team´ and went on to win quiet a bit more comfortabley.

With the next day came our flight to Buenos Aires, unfortunately it was cloudy for the majority of the flight so we didnt see anything until we neared the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires from the air is a massive sprawling city but seems to have a of a lot of space with lots of parks and marinas. We flew over the River Plates stadium and then came into land where we were greeted by the striking workers from Aerolineas Argentina, whom have been striking for almost a week.

We left the airport excited by our visit to Buenos Aires, it is just a shame that we missed Georgina by only one day.

Bring on the Buenos Aires fun and shopping!

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Photos

Iguazu Falls #4
A lizard walking round the grounds

Itaipu Hydroelectric Power Plant
Supplying 25% of Brazils Energy and 90% of Paraguay's.