Cordoba

11-13 August - Mendoza and Cordoba, Argentina

From Santiago we crossed the border into Argentina. It was about an 8 or 10 hour bus ride to Mendoza. Along the way we drove through the mountains and could even see skiiers. July and August is the best time to ski in Chile. We were hoping to get to Mendoza in time to go to a winery but we really didn't. We only had a few hours for dinner really before getting back on a bus to go to Cordoba. The only real picture I have of Mendoza is a fountain in one of the plazas.

Cordoba was a nice city. It was bigger than Mendoza. Mostly we relaxed, went to cafes, went to eat, went to the park, and walked around. We went to one nice museum that was a converted mansion. We also felt like watching a movie. The only one in English (with spanish subtitles) was The Hangover, which they translated into Que Paso Ayer? or What happened yesterday?.

One thing we found really strange is that a lot of restaurants appeared to be closed. At least thats what we thought. But it turns out Argentinians don't eat until around 9pm. We found a grill place around 8pm that was just setting up. The food was so good but so much. Most people go for the steak, which Argentina is famous for, but I'm not much of a red meat eater so I had the chicken. Man, was it good. I did have a bite of the steak. I drowned it in Chimichurri sauce, and it tasted pretty good. I don't think I could have a whole one though.

Santiago

9-10 August - Santiago, Chile

Santiago was only a few hours away from Valparaiso. The city was really nice. There were lots of outdoor cafes and nice restaurants like Europe (and Hoboken). Even if its freezing outside, it seemed like the people in Santiago loved to sit outside. I was too cold myself. The city even had a subway or metro system. It felt like I wasn't in South America anymore. (By the way, if you say subway to some Europeans, they don't think of the subway trains underground. They think of the sandwich. And definitely don't call it a train. They get all confused.) I had tried to get in touch with this lady Maria that I had met in the Galapagos. She lived in Santiago and said I could stay with her. I was already in a hostel but I wanted to at least meet up with her. But it didn't work out. I was only there a few days.

Anyway, we took the metro to a winery to do some wine tasting. We went to Concha Y Toro. It is Latin America's major wine exporter. The most famous and global wine brand is Casillero del Diablo.

The winery was really nice. We had a great lunch there before our tour. The tour took us around the grounds and saw a few of the many vineyards.

Then we went down into the Casillero del Diablo cellar. The reason for the name was the owner created a myth that there was a devil that lived in the cellar. He didn't want people to steal the wine. It worked. People believed the devil lived there and stopped stealing. The tour brought us down into the cellar. There was this scary audio they played of the Diablo story while we were in the dark down there. It was pretty funny because it was supposed to be scary, but it wasn't really. Then they showed us where the devil was. It was just a picture at the end of the hallway.

Then the best and most important part of the tour, the wine tasting. We got two tastings, a red and a white. I took a picture of the better one, the red. We even got to keep the wine glass as a souvenir. The one really good thing I learned was that 2007 was a phenomenal year for wines in Chile. So if you get a 2007 Chilean wine, that's really good.

Valparaiso

6-8 August - Valparaiso and Vina del Mar, Chile

From San Pedro de Atacama, I took a 20 hour bus ride to Valparaiso, Chile. I travelled with the Dutch girls again. Its funny how my new travel partners were dutch just like my last travel buddy. Anyway, when we got to Valparaiso, we were starving. There was some food on the bus, but it wasn't very good and it wasn't very much. We ended up finding this fancy restaurant overlooking the sea. We went all out on the food. It was pretty pricey for a backpacker budget but we didn't care. It was amazing food. We even went back there another time. Being by the coast I wanted to have seafood - seabass and congeer eel were the local favorites. Yum!!!

Valparaiso is a great coast town. There were these ascensors (elevators) all over the city to get up the big hills from the 1800's. There were colorful buildings and painted murals everywhere. It was a pretty artsy kind of town.

We took a 30 minute boat ride around the port where there happened to be a sea lion. The boat ride gave us a chance to see a great view of the city and the military boats that we weren't allowed to take pictures of.

We also checked out the nearby town, Vina del Mar. It was a short train ride from Valpariso. The trains were really nice. Chile was definitely feeling more like the US or Europe, much different than the rest of South America. It wasn't poor. Well we walked around the coast in Vina del Mar and ate at a great restaurant. It was all about eating in these towns for us.

San Pedro de Atacama

4-5 August - San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

I travelled over the border to Chile with three other people from the Uyuni tour - the two dutch girls, Tessa and Sanne, and Felipe the Chilean who was headed home to Santiago. As soon as we crossed the border, there were paved roads. Whoa. Sanne's ankle was hurting so she had to go to the doctor. We found the clinic in town and the doctor had told her that she need an x-ray and had to go to the next town, Calama, to get it. They returned back to San Pedro that night and it turns out her ankle was just twisted and not broken. She just had to rest for a few days. While they were gone I just wandered around the town. I wish I took pictures. It was the cutest little town. It had this hippie, chill, feeling to it.

The next day Tessa and I did a tour of the Valle de la Luna (Moon Valley) and also the Death Valley. It was a really beautiful area where you can see the Andes Mountains, the volcanoes, and the deserts. There were some interesting rock formations where one looked like a condor.

We hiked up some sand dunes to watch the beautiful sunset.

But the best part was to watch the moon rise through the valley. We were lucky because it was a full moon that night also. It was amazing.

Salar de Uyuni

1-4 August - Uyuni, Bolivia

Salar de Uyuni is the world's largest salt flat at 10,582 km² (4,085 square miles). Some 40,000 years ago, the area was part of a giant prehistoric lake. When the lake dried, it left behind salt deserts and a few lakes. Salar de Uyuni is estimated to contain 10 billion tons of salt. Also, Salar de Uyuni holds half of the world's reserves of lithium, a metal which is used in high energy density lithium batteries. There is currently no mining plant at the site and the Bolivian government doesn't want to allow exploitation by foreign corporations, but instead it intends to build its own pilot plant. There's an interesting article about that here

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/JustOneThing/story?id=8257028&page=1

I signed up for a 3 day tour through Salar de Uyuni and the surrounding areas. There was 6 of us on the tour. We had a pretty cool group. There were two Dutch girls, one Chilean guy, and a couple from Spain, but the guy in the couple was Bolivian. The first stop was a train graveyard which contained locomotives from the late 18th and early 19th century, in the middle of the desert.

The next stop was to the Salt Flats. There we took our first group picture and several silly photos and what our driver/tour guide liked to call "magical photos" where you create optical illusions with the camera.

After our photo session we went to Inkawasi, also called Isla Pescado (Fish Island). The island looks like the shape of the fish. It is made of coral rock and forest like areas of cactus.

After we hiked around the island and had our lunch that our guide prepared for us, we had another photo session.

That night we stayed at the Salt Hotel where everything was made of salt, the beds, the tables, the chairs, everything. They only had electricity from 6pm to 10pm, so I took a hot shower while I could. I had to buy a ticket and stand in line for the shower but no big deal. It got pretty cold at night because of the altitude, but luckily I rented a sleeping bag. We hiked around the area around sunset where the sky looked incredible with different colors.

The next day we got up early to see some of the lakes where they had flamingos. I don't remember any of the lakes names but they were beautiful. There were also beautiful mountains and volcanos and we also saw this cute fox when we were driving.

This was our picnic lunch in front of our car, named Fernando. And this is us in the car. It was Felipe's birthday so the girls gave him a balloon to carry around all day.

This is the Salvador Dali desert, where the landscape looks like one of Dali's paintings.

Vicunyas (a type of llama) in the wild:

Our flamingo pose:

Llamas!!!

That night we stayed at a different hotel. It was pretty basic with no heating. We were at even higher elevation which made it more cold. There was one little fireplace that we all huddled around desperately. We drank lots of wine to help us with the cold. At night I couldn't bare the thought of taking my clothes off to change in to pyjamas. I kept all my clothes on, slept in the sleeping bag, and put blankets on top. I was still too cold and couldn't sleep. I was the coldest I had ever been in my life. Then we had to wake up at 5am. I brushed my teeth with the cold water from the sink and then my hand was freezing. I couldn't feel my fingers and toes in the car the next day. Bolivia is some rough times.

Well with frozen toes and hands we saw soem geysers. Geysers are this phenomenon near volcanoes where hot water and steam shoot out from the ground. We tried to warm our feet on it. But the whole area smelled like eggs. Finally we got to the hot springs. Some people swam in it, but I didn't want to take my clothes off when it was so cold. We just warmed our hands and feet in the hot springs so we could feel them again. Its amazing that the water was so hot... and it was natural. Crazy.

We went to one last lake, Laguna Verde I believe is the name. We took our last group picture there, our ice skating posing picture. After that some of us went on to San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, and the rest went back to Uyuni, Bolivia.

The Salt Flat tour was definitely one of the greatest places in South America to visit, even though I had one of the coldest and roughest nights there, it was worth it. Our group was a lot of fun and the landscapes were amazing.