Return to Europa

Late December 2006 to early January 2007

I landed in Madrid early in the morning the day after Christmas, and was met at the airport by Montserrat with whom I had kept in touch since meeting her in Thailand last April. She had since moved through London, (didn't like it!), and then settled for a while in the Spanish capital.

Being in Madrid felt very familiar after Buenos Aires, and in lots of ways it felt like I had just flown 10,000 km but hadn't really gone anywhere! It is remarkable how much the Argentinians are proud of their European roots, and their culture reflects that. What made Madrid even more comfortable was being in the company of a native Spanish speaker, so I could get lazy and let Montse do all the talking!

The weather in Madrid was nice and clear, sunny but cold. It was perfect weather for just walking around the streets and parks of the city, so that was what we did, stopping for coffee or drinks when we needed to get inside for a bit. The cold was a bit of a shock again after the heat of Buenos Aires, but in a way I quite liked it as long as the sun was out. Although it doesn't have a reputation for it, Madrid is quite pretty in parts and it was really nice to just walk around with someone who lives there.

One important thing I learned about Madrid is that Barajas Airport is very, very, very big. So big, in fact, that when I flew on to Zurich after a few days in Madrid I totally misjudged how long it would take me to get to Terminal 4...... the subway, the airport bus, long walks down endless corridors, monorail which took ages to arrive, unexpected passport control with big queue, another long walk through enormous terminal..... and I got to the gate just after they had closed the flight and taken my bag off the plane!

I then found that it is quite tricky to go back "the wrong way" through an airport from the gate back towards the outside world, retrieving your bag and re-booking your flight on the way. There are no signs pointing out your unconventional route, and all the airport security systems seem to be set against you. British Airways were very good about getting me a flight for the following day, but in a fit of extreme incompetence Iberia managed to spend four hours repeatedly telling me that my bag was on its way to me, eventually admitting that they didn't actually know where it was. They then suggested that I file a missing baggage claim while they tried to work out what they had done with it, and then go away (please) until tomorrow. In retrospect, considering that this was the first time in my life that I had ever missed a flight or had my baggage lost by an airline, I have been pretty lucky over the years!

So eventually I landed in Zurich, was reunited with my bag, and was met by Barbara with whom I had travelled in India back in February. We drove to nearby Baden, where she is finishing medical school as an anaesthetist at a hospital. Baden is a nice little Swiss town with not that much to it, but it does have a little hill with a little ruined castle on top, so we climbed up that. It was cold in Switzerland, but unlike Madrid there wasn't really much sun so I was able to gradually re-aclimatise for my return to the UK, (i.e. cold, grey and sunless!).

For New Year's Eve we visited Zurich, and walked around. It was a nice day, but it being a Sunday all the city shops were closed! That seemed strange… it was so long since I had been anywhere that still did that. Of course the churches were open, so we visited one and climbed up its tower for a view of the city. Then in the evening we went to see the new James Bond film, (which I surprised myself by really quite liking, although the fact that the subtitles had to be in both French and German did tend to take up half the screen!). After dinner, we joined the crowds on the streets to see in midnight and watch the fireworks. People were drinking and having fun, but there was no hint of the drunken lairiness that often marks similar events in the UK. God bless the Swiss and their well-behaved ways!

A couple of days later we went to Flumserberg to do a little skiing. There had not been much snow in Europe so far this season, but we were fairly lucky. There were enough slopes open and there was snowfall while we were there. I hadn't skied for about eight years, and even that was only about the third time in my life, so I was naturally wondering how I would get along. However, with a little coaching from Barbara, (who, of course, owns her own skis and all that!), I soon picked it up again.

Barbara had told me that there would be baby slopes open for me. This wasn't actually true as it turned out, so I had to manage on the one-up-from-baby slopes, which was actually no bad thing as it challenged me a bit. At one point, due to some mis-reading of signposts in the snow, we managed to meander off-piste into some deep powder which meant we we had to take our skis off and walk, (i.e. struggle through thigh-deep powder!), back to the piste. However, in the end I only fell over about five times all day, and with nothing broken and much fun had, I considered the skiing to have been something of a triumph!

So a couple of days later I took a flight from Zurich back to London's Heathrow airport, exactly one year to the day after I had started my trip from that same airport with a flight to Mumbai.

And that's it!

Argentina

Early December to late December 2006

I flew north out of Chilean Tierra del Fuego, and after a brief stop again in Santiago, I caught a bus through some beautiful Andean scenery into Argentina. My first stop was Mendoza, a small-ish city in Argentinian wine country.

My plan for Mendoza was all about chilling out. Patagonia had involved a lot of running around, hiking on glaciers and all that energetic, outdoorsy stuff. Now I was looking forward to just pausing for breath, drinking some local wine, and having someone do my laundry! At some points in the Patagonian cold, I must have been wearing every article of clothing I could find in my backpack, all at once…

Mendoza was a pleasant laid-back place to relax, with lots of pavement cafes to while away time at, and some attractive sunny squares to sit in and read. One day I made a trip out of town to the La Rural vineyard and winery, which also had a museum of wine making. They provided a free guided tour in Spanish and English, which of course ended with a sampling.

However, one of the most refreshing things about Mendoza was the noticeable drop in the cost of living compared to anywhere in Chile, (and also even compared to Argentinian Patagonia, where presumably stuff was so expensive because the region is a bit remote). The currently cheap Argentinean Peso is a hangover from the country’s financial collapse back in 2001, which obviously increased levels of poverty. But it is hard to pretend that lower prices for everything didn’t come as a relief to the dwindling travel budget…

So after a few days of R&R in Mendoza, I was ready to head over to big bad Buenos Aires! The reputation of this place really preceded it. Right from the point that I started planning this trip, I had people telling me that BA rocked their world like no other city on earth, and everyone that I had met on my trip so far that had been had backed this up. So it had a lot of hype to live up to!

The trip from Mendoza to Buenos Aires was to be by overnight bus, and since this was going to be the last long-distance bus journey of my whole trip I decided to splash out on the experience of going first class. This meant being downstairs on the double-decker, where there were only six seats on the whole deck. These seats reclined to be fully horizontal, and for the first time on this trip I actually got a decent night’s sleep on an overnight bus! The fact that they served dinner with wine, followed by glasses of cava, probably helped.

So I arrived in Buenos Aires fairly refreshed. Since I was going to be in BA for some time, I spent the first night in a nice enough hostel in the San Telmo area but in the morning started to search for a cheaper one. It was high season and there really wasn’t much else available, but walking back to my original hostel I noticed a sign for one called Ayres de San Telmo, and a woman standing outside looking a bit like she was locked out.

She turned out to be Jen, a Canadian flight attendant, and indeed she was staying there but couldn't get in. Jen told me that the hostel had only just been opened, everything was brand new and really nice, and that she was virtually the only guest. So when the staff finally answered the door, I booked a dorm bed for myself on the understanding that I could have the whole en-suite four-bed room to myself, unless they had filled the 40 or so other spaces in the place first. In the end, I did have the whole room to myself for my entire time in BA, and I don’t think they ever had more than a total of five guests while I was there. I suspect that this sort of thing won’t be possible once they sort their marketing out…

So now I had a nice place to stay, I could set about enjoying the city. Without any doubt at all, Buenos Aires met all the hype and then effortlessly rose several notches above it. I never thought that I would find a place in South America that I would genuinely not want to leave, but there it was. The bars, the achitecture, the galleries, the shops, the restaurants, the music, the clubs, the noticeably high percentage of attractive porteñas (female BA citizens), the culture, the diversity… and the dog walkers!

A common sight in BA are professional dog walkers who often have an unfeasible number of pooches strapped to them at once. Although upper-body strength would clearly be a pre-requisite for this job, city law actually limits the number of dogs a person can walk at one time in case they get out of hand. The law doesn't seem to bother anyone though; this guy has a dozen with him! Somehow they always seem well-behaved…. none of the nipping, yapping, snarling and humping you might expect from a group of random dogs thrown together. Anyway, being someone who loves dogs but isn’t responsible enough to own one, seeing sights like this always made me smile!

Being British, it was interesting to talk to locals about attitudes within the two nations towards each other, a quarter of a century after the Falklands-Malvinas conflict. In particular, I had a long and really interesting conversation with a young punky guy who worked in a t-shirt shop, had a mohican and spoke excellent English. He told me that many older Argentinians consider the war to have been a success for their country, and still resent British ownership of the aforementioned sheep-infested rocks. He himself was fond of the UK as he saw it as the cradle of punk rock, and also liked British people because they tended to be the most polite customers that came into his shop!

When he asked me how most British people viewed Argentina, I realised that images of the Falklands conflict have probably now been replaced by soccer player Diego Maradona’s infamous “hand of God” goal, which knocked England out of the 1986 world cup. In fact, Argentinians seem curiously proud of this incident of shameful cheating; you can buy numerous t-shirts, aimed presumably at English tourists, commemorating “la mano de Dios”…!

I have to say that I was never aware of any prejudice or resentment based on my nationality the entire time I was in Argentina, (and I had half-expected to at some point). The scars of the war are still there, though. In the Retiro area of Buenos Aires there is an ornate brick clock tower, built from English parts by Anglo ex-pats who were living in Argentina a century or so ago. It used to be called Torre de los Ingleses, but in the 1980s it was renamed simply Torre Monumental. Now standing directly opposite the tower is a monument to the Argentinian servicemen who died in the Falklands.

Anyway… in Buenos Aires I met up again with Henriette with whom I had been in the Peruvian jungle, Mike from my travels in Ecuador and Peru, and Kath from Torres del Paine. It seems that people travelling in South America inevitably gravitate towards Buenos Aires, (and then often stay longer than they had intended!). Also through Jen I met Alegria, with whom I spent some time in the city.

There was just so much to do. Jen, Alegria and I took tango lessons, and although I managed to avoid crushing any of my partners’ toes I have to admit that I wasn't too light in my loafers. But it was great fun! Then there was a night in Pacha. Clubs in Buenos Aires don’t open until about 2 a.m., then they just keep going until well into the following day. Other than the late hours, Pacha was actually not dissimilar to any other big club playing house music anywhere in the world, except for the fact that it seemed everyone was wearing sunglasses, usually pushed up on the head. Ahhh, that’ll be for the sunrise on the outside terrace! Actually on the morning we were there, a violent thunder storm raged outside accompanied by highly destructive gales and horizontal rain, but that didn’t stop some hardcore porteño clubbers getting soaked greeting the dawn in an al fresco stylee....

Then there was the visit to the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, the Museo de Arte Latinoamericano, the Museo Xul Solar…. the tango show at Café Tortoni, the incredible open-air percussion show that Alegria and I watched, the tour of old underground tunnels created by previous city inhabitants, the nice soft black leather jacket I got for an absolute song. Not to mention the countless excellent meals, especially the bife de lomo at a parrilla (steak house) called El Desnivel. I swear it was the first time in my life that a slice of beef has melted on my tongue. Wandering around the huge, ornate Cemeterio de la Recoleta where Eva Peron is interred, taking a stroll around the colourfully painted area of La Boca, the weekend street market and performers in San Telmo...

So as you can probably tell, yes I did love Buenos Aires. However, I did manage to tear myself away for a couple of nights to fly up to Iguazu in the northeast corner of the country, where Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay meet. There are some of the most amazing waterfalls in the world, including the awesome Garganta del Diablo, or Devil’s Throat, which is semi-circular and so the water appears to be pouring into a huge demonic gullet. The noise and spray close up to the thing was incredible, and it was quite hard to take pictures while keeping the camera dry. I came away from it soaked to the skin just through the airborne spray.

With some of the less violent falls you can take a launch out on the lake to have a look at them. Then, after they have issued you with a dry bag for your precious belongings, they take you right up close to the falling water and you really might as well be under the waterfall itself. Thankfully the day I went it was very hot and sunny, so drying off, (for the second time), wasn’t too much of an issue.

After I had seen the falls from the Argentinian side, I decided to try to see those on the Brazilian side as well. So on the day of my afternoon flight back to Buenos Aires, I set off early on the morning to try to “do” the Brazilian side of the falls before lunch. This was a woefully over-ambitious plan. Once the logistics of getting a bus to the border, getting off for immigration, waiting for the next bus onwards etc. had been dealt with, I just reached the entrance to the park where the falls were in time to turn around and go back! Apparently they aren’t as stunning as the Argentinian ones, and you can’t get as close so I don’t feel too bad about it.

My morning jaunt across the border into Portuguese-speaking Brazil had reminded me what it was like not being able to speak to or understand the locals again; my assumption that Brazilians would be able to understand my Spanish were somewhat ill-founded! However, it made coming back to Argentina actually feel like a homecoming to a familiar place, and I suddenly had a new-found pride in the Spanish abilities that I had scraped together over my five months in Latin America.

So then it was back to Buenos Aires, and almost time to leave for Europe on my Christmas Day flight. My hasta luego to BA, and indeed Latin America, was to visit Pacha again, this time in the wee hours of Christmas Day. I saw the sun come up, (no storm this time!), with the partying porteños then left around 8 a.m, squeezing into a cab with some Dutch clubbers. I went back to my place, got my stuff packed and got myself to the airport for my 2 p.m. flight to Madrid. Thankfully there was an empty seat next to me, and I slept all the way back to Europe.

Chile In Patagonia...

Late November, early December 2006

Crossing the border into Chile, the desert continued until we reached the little town of San Pedro de Atacama. As we got off the bus, the rates quoted by the hostel hawkers at the bus stop were the first reminder of the fact that we had just moved from one of South America’s poorest countries to one of its richest. In fact, the price of everything in Chile came as a shock after Peru and Bolivia. However the standard of living had also risen correspondingly, and my first impression of Chile was that it was remarkably like being in Europe.

San Pedro was a cute little town, and a pleasant introduction to Chile but with little specifically to hold you there. After a day or two, I moved northwest towards Iquique on the coast. It was from there that I would hop back onto my round-the-world air ticket to cover some of the more unreasonably long South American distances, and cut out some of those 40-something-hour bus journeys!

However Iquique, a town sandwiched between sheer-faced, arid mountains and the sea, also had its own specific attraction – paragliding! Its geography lends itself to the business of walking off a mountain top wearing this kind of parachute thingy, finding thermals (rising columns of hot air) to carry you up into the blue, eventually drifting down to land at the foot of the mountain or, if you get some strong thermals, the beach. The day before I did this I spent a few pleasant hours reading on that beach. It was the last time I would see a beach on this trip, and even though it was a bit urban, it was a nice place to lie and read for a bit. The sea was way too cold though!

So never having done this paragliding thing before I took a tandem flight, strapped to a Chilean named Leo. It took a while for us to get going; it was a particularly calm day, and there was not much of a breeze on the mountain top to float our collective canopy. However, when one did come along we were ready, and off the edge of the cliff we strode. A good way to spot thermals is to look for birds, gliding and circling and doing the same thing you are trying to. Chasing the local avian life we managed to squeeze a creditworthy 35 minutes out of the flight, although we had to land on the plains at the foot of the mountains; conditions were not good enough to carry us across the main road to the beach without considerable risk of us becoming road kill! So paragliding was a great feeling. It was beautifully quiet up there, except for the wind in your ears, and it was quite a kick to look beneath your feet and see nothing but thin air between you and the ground!

From Iquique I then flew down to the Chilean capital, Santiago. Here the feeling of being in Europe rather than South America was even stronger. It was approaching midsummer, and the weather was hot and sunny. In the evenings grassy squares in the city, such as Plaza Brasil near my hostel, would be full of people playing with their dogs or sitting on the grass reading or talking, and pavement cafes would be busy with locals. Lucy from Birmingham in the UK had compared Santiago to her hometown, (for readers unfamiliar with Brum, this is not a compliment to the Chilean capital!), but I think that the comparison is a little unfair. Santiago doesn’t have a great deal of interest in terms of classic tourist activity, but it is a pleasant place to spend a few days just enjoying the vibe, and a few nice old buildings. And in terms of South American capitals, it knocks Lima into the proverbial cocked hat any day.

Santiago was also where I was able to indulge in something that I had been missing for the whole trip so far; going to the cinema. I went to see “You, Me and Dupree” which was actually pretty lame, but at least it had an English language soundtrack with Spanish subtitles which I found was a great way to work on my Spanish!

Then I flew from the capital way down to Punta Arenas in Tierra del Fuego, the southern tip of the continent. Even though it was still summer, I found a very different climate….. cold, with winds that whipped across the plains and had me digging for that thermal underwear again. After one night in a very cute little hostel run by a young Chilean woman in the flat vacated by her dead grandparents, (all original furnishings!), I headed up into Patagonia to Puerto Natales, the gateway to Parque Nacional Torres del Paine.

Not really knowing what to expect, I soon learned that Torres del Paine, (named after its huge granite towers), is a pretty big place. Most people go hiking in the park for between five and seven days, usually doing “The W” or “The Circuit” paths around the mountains and glaciers. However, I wanted to indulge in no such strenuous activity, and set about seeking advice as to how I could experience the park with minimal effort on my part! One thing I did know was that I wanted to hike on the Grey Glacier, so I came up with a plan to do that as part of a three-day hike in the park which was essentially hiking one half of “The W”, (or a “V”).

Since it was high season the overnight refugios needed to be booked a few days in advance, which gave me a couple of days to fill. So I rearranged my schedule slightly and took off north into Argentina to El Calafate to visit the Perito Moreno Glacier, an expansive and very active stretch of ice in Parque Nacional los Glaciares. It moves very quickly, calving regularly into Lago Argentina with a thunderous cracking sound as the huge pieces of new ice floe fall off into the water. First we went to the observation area and caught this dramatic happening several times, then we donned crampons and spent four hours hiking on the ice itself. It was amazingly beautiful. There were vivid blue lakes in the ice, deep sink holes where water gushed straight down to the bedrock, huge ravines and splits in the ice, and ice caves. On the hike I met Australian Samantha, who I would spend a few days hanging out with later on back in Chile.

Then I headed back south into Chile, and set off into Parque Nacional Torres del Paine. On the first day I took a catamaran across a lake, then hiked about five hours to Grey Glacier in the company of some English people I had met. The park is just breathtaking, with pristine lakes, mountains and forests and its infamous “four seasons in one hour” climate which has you continually peeling layers off and putting them straight back on again!

One thing I had to get used to in Torres del Paine was having to carry my own backpack; unlike on the Inca Trail in Peru, there were no porters here to bribe into carrying my stuff for me! I think as a consequence of this, by the time we reached the refugio for the first night I had developed a mother of a stiff neck and was finding it hard to turn my head. Fortunately for me, that evening I met both British ER doctor Kath and German sports therapist Semira over a few glasses of wine. However, the strongest drugs that Kath had were paracetamol, (and also I learned that ER doctors don’t do sympathy!). As for Semira, she steadfastly ignored my clanging hints about a theraputic massage, and fair play to her really… when you’re on holiday, the last thing you need is people leeching off your professional abilities! So I just drank…. a method tried and trusted through the years to kill all kinds of pain!

So the next day was the ice hike on Grey Glacier. Kath and I took a boat out with a group of people, including for some strange reason lots of doctors, and we all strapped on crampons and got our picks out for a few hours on the ice. To be fair, the Grey Glacier is beautiful but probably not as stunning as the Perito Moreno Glacier, and not as dramatic either as it moves much more slowly and so calves much less regularly. However, when you hike on Grey you get to do ice wall climbing! This involves getting yourself up a vertical ice wall of about 25-30m, using only your crampons and a pick in each hand, and was quite a rush! I loved it.

The following day Kath and I hiked back down to the point of “The V”, then after a night in a positively luxurious refugio went up the other side of “The V” the next morning. We ate lunch in possibly one of the most beautiful places I have ever had lunch, sitting on a log on a mountainside, sheltering from the wind and watching little avalanches constantly happening on the mountains in front of us. Then Kath continued onwards, (much more hardcore than me!), while I turned back to catch the last catamaran across the lake to leave the park and return to Puerto Natales.

Bolivia

Mid November, 2006

Taking a bus south and skirting around the bottom of Lake Titicaca, I entered Bolivia and stopped briefly at Copacabana on the shore of the lake. To quote Lonely Planet, Copacabana is "neither figuratively nor literally the hottest spot north of Havana", but I did find that it was a nice place to make a brief stop. However, since I'd had plenty of "Titicaca time" on the Peruvian side, I pushed on to the capital, La Paz.

La Paz was reasonable enough as far as the capital cities of South American countries go. At first it was a little weird to see the shoeshine boys in the street. They all wear balaclavas on their heads over baseball caps, so all you can see is a pair of eyes through little holes and under a visor. This apparently is to hide their identities, as having to do what they do is somewhat shameful. It takes a little while to get used to the fact that they are not, in fact, about to mug you, and I was constantly reminded of how the youth of Britain are now banned from wearing caps and hoodies in certain places. This lot didn't seem at all delinquent though, just constantly keen for work regardless of the type of footwear you sported. I can't count how many entirely inappropriate offers I had to buff up my suede and Goretex Merrels.

In La Paz I met up with Lucy who I work with at the BBC back in London, and who had also taken a career break to travel. Her path was taking her through South America in the opposite direction to me, but we coincided in La Paz and went to a fake English pub which was quite entertaining in its lack of authenticity. It was quite weird, but at the same time quite nice, to talk to someone about work stuff and work people after eleven months away from it all.

La Paz was also memorable for the (slightly touristy) Mercado de las Brujas, or Witch's Market. This is basically a series of street stalls selling charms, indigenous medicines and the like, including such items as dried llama foetuses, (pictured). It also features old men sitting by the road who will read the coco leaves for you, but they don't do it for gringos. That is actually quite a good thing as it stops the custom turning into just another tourist gimmick.

After La Paz the overnight bus took me south to Potosi, where they mine an ore containing silver and various other metals. The main point of visiting Potosi is to go down into the mines, which was quite an experience. First you are kitted out with rubber overalls, boots and a helmet with miner's lamp, all of which seems a bit over the top when you think you have signed up for a gentle stroll around some tourist-compatible mines. Then they take you to the miners market, where the miners themselves go daily to buy supplies such as dynamite, fuses, detonators and of course the coco leaves which they continually chew to help them along in their work. At the market you buy some of the above commodities as gifts/tips for the miners that you will meet underground. By the standards of most visitors these things are very cheap, but to a Bolivian miner they can be quite expensive.

The guide, always an ex-miner who has learned English, demonstrates at the market how you can chuck dynamite around to your heart's content; it will not explode on its own. He also demonstrates that you should never put a detonator between your teeth by... well... putting a detonator between his teeth. It is at this point that you realise how little European/Western concepts of "health and safety" mean out here...

There then follows what turns out to be quite an experience. You are led through the mines, scrambling up and down shafts between levels, moving quickly along tunnels and regularly having to jump out of the way of two-tonne wagons of ore being pushed and pulled by four men. All around were men at work in pretty appalling conditions, drilling, shovelling, blasting and transporting the ore. One particularly interesting moment came when they started blasting two levels beneath us. Suddenly four miners appeared at our level, (having just lit the fuses and legged it upwards), and as they appeared I thought that I could smell gas. Before I could say anything the thumps started occurring below us, and everyone, (except the miners, who didn't seem bothered), eyed our tunnel’s supporting beams with a little scepticism...

On the surface after the tour came the gratuitous dynamite detonation display. This consisted of the guide showing us how to roll the explosive into a ball, place the detonator in it and insert the fuse. They then lit the fuses, and left the dynamite fizzing in the hands of their hapless visitors, (see picture)! Eventually relieving the tourists of their bombs, (the fuse is over a couple of minutes long), they then walked over to some open space nearby, and set them down. There then arose the unexpected complication of a lorry approaching the charges on the mine’s access road! A lot of shouting and hand waving got the lorry to stop sufficiently far away that it suffered nothing more than the shower of pebbles and dirt that we all got...

After Potosi I travelled on to the town of Uyuni, the place to arrange tours of the remarkable salt flats and volcanic regions in the south west of Bolivia, and booked my place in a six-seater 4WD vehicle for the three-night trip which would eventually deposit me in Chile. The next morning when I checked out of my hotel I was reminded that I was in one of South America’s sketchier countries. The hotel room had mysteriously increased in price overnight from 75 Bolivianos to 125! To add to that I found that the English-speaking guide, explicitly promised by the tour operator for our salt flats expedition, spoke not one word of anything but Spanish. In fact Martha The Guide turned out to be not much of a guide anyway, more a cook with an itinerary, so her lack of linguistic abilities didn’t matter too much and I suppose it did help me to practise my Spanish. However, another South American tour operator was telling fat porkies to Gringos...

Fortunately the fellow travellers I was crammed into the jeep with, Israelies Ofer and Erun, Herman and Diane from Belgium and Casper the Dutchman, were a good bunch of people. After visiting a "train graveyard" and a salt hotel, (constructed entirely out of salt), our next stop was the amazing salt flats, miles and miles of blinding white plain stretching out to the horizon. The place was full of tourists who were, like ourselves, using this uniquely featureless landscape to confuse perspective and construct interesting and wacky photos. Then, after what I understand is the traditional vehicular breakdown on these trips, we reached our hostel for the first night. In fact it was during this breakdown that Martha The Cook With An Itinerary really came into her own, as it turned out that she was as much a mechanic as the driver/mechanic was. Having a look at what they were up to I noticed that we continued our journey with two bolts per front wheel suspension unit where there should have been four, but at least both wheels were pointing in the same direction now...

The following day we went on further south to visit some very beautiful lakes and rock formations, including a famous "rock tree" formed by wind erosion. It being desert, the temperatures could vary wildly during the day but would plummet to below freezing at night, and the lack of light pollution made the sky at night an incredible sight. I hadn't seen such a detailed night sky since I was in the Great Thar Desert in India, last February.

After a very early start on the third day, we started off by visiting a volcanic region. There were huge steam geysers spurting out of the ground, and pools of thick brown mud steaming and bubbling in the early morning light. We took a pre-breakfast dip in a very hot thermal pool, which felt wonderful after I had got over the idea that taking my clothes off in temperatures hovering around freezing was really stupid....

Eventually we reached the border with Chile, where Diane, Herman and I said goodbye to the others and got on a bus to carry on to San Pedro de Atacama on the other side.