San Pedro de Atacama, back to Argentina & Uruguay

Located at the heart of the most arid desert in the world, the small town of San Pedro de Atacama is one of Chile most famous touristic attractions. The town itself has not much to offer, but its surroundings are definitely worth a visit. San Pedro is by far one of the most expensive places in Chile, but prices seem outrageously prohibitive mainly because we were arriving from cheap Bolivia, so we decided not to stay too long there and to do as much as we possibly could in a couple of days.

Agencies offered some tours which were quite similar to what we had just done in Bolivia, so we selected the only ones that seemed relevant to us. 

One day, we rented mountain bikes and went to see both the Death and Moon Valleys, some impressive rocky landscapes, as you can see on the following picture.

 Death Valley (1)

 Death Valley (2)

We started biking at 9:30am and came back at 7:30pm. A whole day biking in the driest place on earth, under a burning sun. You can imagine how tired we were when we went to bed, but at least we felt asleep loaded with great memories.

On the following day, we went to a tour to visit other beautiful places in the middle of the desert. It was mainly a set of stunning lagoons, the first one being deep and salty enough to let you float as if you were in the dead sea, and the last one, where we enjoyed some pisco sour watching the sunset, was basically a very vast and thin layer of extremely salty water, of a stunning changing colour, as you can see on the following pictures.

 Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (1)
 

Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (2)

  Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (3)

Salty lagoons in San Pedro de Atacama desert (4)

Next stop on our route was Salta, on the north west corner of Argentina. After about two months out of the country, I was finally back. It felt so good to be once again in Argentina that I am even tempted to say it felt good to be "back home"...

Salta

After having changed our dollars on the black market as usual, we visited the town and we (Duncan, Dan, Carl and myself) organised a traditional asado (barbecue) with some great Malbec, before heading to Manu Chao's concert. The concert itself was ok, except that I got robbed by some pickpocket gang who had quite cleverly thought that such a big crowd full of backpackers would be an easy target. Luckily I only had my wallet with me, with no credit card and wasn't carrying a lot of cash. The fun part of this story was when I ended up at the police station, negotiating with the officer so that he would take my testimony. At first he clearly refused to cooperate and to do his job (probably a question of showing some nice statistics to the minister at the end of the year, or perhaps he simply wanted to go home early...), but when I started to shout angrily at him in Spanish, he understood I would not leave before getting an official document... which I manage to get in the end!

Another good memory (because, overall, getting robbed there will remain a funny memory) was the night we spent at Loki Salta, one of the many Loki hostels in South America, but which was surprisingly located very far from the city centre. Because of a special deal they were offering (basically, you could stay there for free, they still make their money on drinks and food they sell at the bar), we met there so many persons we had been traveling with at some point over the last few months, including a large group of Dutch girls and, of course, many Israeli we had met in Bolivia.

At that time, I had realised that I needed some change. Despite the fact that the area between Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina had offered me some of the most beautiful landscapes I have seen in my life, I was getting a bit bored of dry mountains... So I decided to change my plans and booked a flight to Bariloche, in the Argentinian lake district, at the north west border of Patagonia, a place considered as Argentina's top skiing destination in winter and a great place in summer for people who enjoy mountains and gorgeous lakes.

Ruta de los Sietes Lagos, between Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes

Bariloche (1)

Bariloche (2)  

 Bariloche (3)

Bariloche (4)

Natural park near El Bolson

I stayed around Bariloche for six days, visiting San Martin de los Andes and the charming hippie village of El Bolson. Literally, the city was self-proclamed non-nuclear zone fifteen or twenty years ago and they hold a market every other day, where a crowd of old hippie, white rasta and pseudo bohemian wander around looking at ethical home-made products, eco-friendly wooden educational games, sipping some organic fruit juice and occasionally sharing a joint. Weird medicinal plants shop juxtaposed with the pharmacy complete the picture of this laid-back town, surrounded by beautiful mountains, lakes, and clouds of weed.

After that, I took a night bus to cross Argentina all the way east to the Atlantic coast, in order to see the Peninsula Valdes, a world heritage natural site mostly known for its very unique wildlife. I got there early enough to catch a tour to the Peninsula. It was the end of the whale season so I didn't get the chance to see any of them, but I did see sea lions, sea elephants, pinguins, a tapir, more lamas, and some strange animals I had never heard of. Unluckily no killer whales, even if it usually a good spot to watch them. 

Unfortunately, due to some technical issues, I cannot post any photos yet about it...

The sea lions and elephants where probably the funniest. We saw some sea lions aggressively fighting for a female, whereas sea elephants spend their days literally doing nothing. Unlike sea lions, who go hunting for fish everyday and sleep on the shore, sea elephants live at a very different pace. Because they go hunting for food quite far and deep in the sea, they spend four months eating and living in the sea and then come back on the beach for two months and spend their day chilling in the sun, sometimes going for a swim when they feel like it. Life's hard, really.

From there, I went back to Buenos Aires, where I was staying for a week or so at a friend's place, mainly recovering from the forty four hours I had spent in busses in just four days, and then simply meeting some friends, eating even more beef, going to pool parties... Life's hard, really. The city was also living its hottest summer in a century, with a lasting heatwave causing massive disruption and electricity and water shortages, even sometimes for a few days in a row for the worst afflicted areas of the city.

I also spent a weekend in Punta del Este, Uruguay, staying at a friend of friend's place. This guy basically retired and he now spends half of the year playing golf in Punta, and the rest of the time in France. Life's hard, really. I have rarely met anyone as warm and welcoming as him, and really had a lot of fun over those 48 hours. He showed me around Punta, from the beautiful villas up north in Jose Ignacio to the old town where the Rio de la Plata meets the Atlantic, from the more Bohemian bars of La Barra, a place that probably looks like Ibiza twenty years ago, to Punta's famous casino... and I must say that I was very positively surprised by what I discovered. Punta is kind of a mix between Miami and Saint Tropez, but in South America. Real estate is booming, but except a few uggly towers with too many storeys located in the centre, they managed to build classy and not too glossy buildings, and even some amazing ones, like the one in which Zinedine Zidane bought a flat (a whole floor with its private infinity pool, to be more precise). Money (and probably not always of the cleanest kind) pours in from everywhere, but mostly from rich Argentinians who want to invest some of their wealth abroad, in a more stable environment than Argentina's economic mess. Therefore, the whole thing looks like a massive bubble, especially because Uruguayans (like in many other South american countries) live on credit. But unless Argentina suddenly turns into a stable and business-friendly country, the bubble could keep on inflating much more... 

Anyway, from a purely touristic perspective, over the summer Punta becomes full of Porteños, who live just across the rio, and rich Brazilians fly in with their private jets to be there on Christmas and NYE. Punta becomes the place to be for a few weeks, and I can now understand why.

Again, no photos to show you from Punta for the moment...

Finally, just before Christmas, my parents and my sister Claire came to visit me. We spent a week in and around Buenos Aires, spending a day in Colonial del Sacramento, Uruguay, and one for a lunch outside of the city centre with some friends. My cousins also came to BA right after Christmas, so it was really cool being all there together on the other side of the planet.

We spent NYE in Montevideo, a city that literally shuts down for two days at that time (every Uruguayan seems to have left for Punta!) and then went on traveling to the northeast of Argentina. We visited some of the famous Jesuit missions located between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, saw the biggest barrage in the world in terms of electricity production, built on a river in between Paraguay and Brazil and of course, concluded this fantastic trip with two days at the Iguazu falls. We first saw this magical scenery from the Brazilian side, stopping at an exotic birds park where we saw many colourful toucans and parrots, and finally spent our last day on the Argentinian side of the waterfalls, from where you can better experience both the power of the waterfalls and the sense of entering a lost world of wild forest and unreal waterfalls.

I'll leave it there! 

To tell the truth, I'm writing these few lines from a beautiful restaurant in the South of Thailand, facing the sea, so... I was a bit late and still have quite a bit to catch up! 

Kiss love peace dear reader!

El Riton