Tupiza

After the excitement of the Salt Flats we caught our first South American train, complete with Grease Lightening soundtrack, to Tupiza. This is the home of Wild West, where Butch Cassidy and the Sun Dance Kid met their end. So what better way for us to explore the Wild West than on horse back, jeep and foot through red canons and dusty scenery.

I should warn the more sensitive that Matt bought some ridiculous comic trousers and decided that he should wear them for horse riding. Cue Matt the circus freak....

Calling all Gringos....

We were accompanied to the Salt Flats by Colin and Linn who we met on the Salt Flats and seem to be following us (or the other way around, a matter of constant discussion) to Tupiza and beyond. With them and in the search of a suitable St.Paddy's Day venue (Colin is after all Irish), we met Jose, a rather dubious man who tried in vain to teach us to dance and earn our money, oh fun times!

Salt Flats- Bolivia ( hope this is clear Sam)

From San Pedro, which was at 2,400m we crossed into Bolivia and went up to 4,900m in the space of a few hours. We were the lucky ones in the group and only got out of breath when we forgot the altitude and had to sprint up hills to find a nearest bush (a bathroom in Bolivia).

Gatorade- a horrific energy drink which was supposed to help altitude sickness. I think it made us feel worse than we would normally feel.

The scenery in Bolivia is amazing and it is fast become our favourite country in terms of beauty and amazingness. We were also pretty lucky as we were with an amazing group of people for our tour and we seemed to pick a good company, no breakdowns or drunken drivers for us! 'Cordillera' were really reliable and our guide Ruben was immense.

Our tour took us through Altipano Lagunas, Geysers, thermal springs, rock valleys which inspired Dali's painting and finally ended up at the Salt Flats. Matt had managed to time something well and we arrived as the Salt Flats had an inch or two of water on them which made them reflect everything, basically creating the largest mirror in the world. Cue ridiculous poses!

 Thermal Springs, good times!

Altipano Laguna

Matt playing in the desert

Matt thinking he is invincible.

The water is naturally red and the flamingos are pretty damn cool.

Giant Rabbit called a Vischaca.

Llamas

Matt under the thumb.

Matt nearly killing Harriet.

San Pedro de Atacama

After enjoying rather too much wine Matt and I crossed back into Chile and went to the driest place on earth. There are parts of this desert that have never had rain and it is the best place in the world to see the stars as there are only an average of 40 cloudy days a year.

We spent a couple of days in this village/town which had no street lights and seemed to exist solely for tourists. We made use of the many tourist opportunities and went on an excursion to the Valle de la Luna (moon valley). This area is used by NASA for research and stuff so its pretty cool. We also had to crawl/climb/scramble through parts of the Valley on part of the trip, luckily out of a group of 8, one person had a torch. I very proudly pulled out our head torch turned it on and discovered that the batteries were dead, no fear, I tried using it anyway and only bashed into the ceiling a few times. We stayed long enough in the Valle for Matt to get another hundred sunset photos and watch the colour of mountains change to pink as the sun disappeared.

We also went on a star gazing tour which was very cool, I can now identify several constellations, including Leo. Only issue was the freezing cold of the desert and the fact that we took the SLR camera along and we were told that' point and shot cameras' work better on the telescopes, imagine Matt's face if you please.

Mendoza- saying goodbye to Argentina in style!

For our final stop in Argentina we arrived in Mendoza for the annual wine festival and celebration. Good Timing!

We witnessed some very cool parades of Gauchos, dancers, a portable asado (on the back of a truck), fruit throwing floats (Harriet got hit by a peach) but the best of all were the potential Queens. There were 18 candidates and after much inspection of posters and cardboard cutouts, Matt declared that Dinana II had to win.   It was very sad when Gabriella from Godroy Cruz won in her place. We think some money must have been involved somewhere.

We couldn't have gone to Mendoza without going on a wine tour. We hired bikes from Mr. Hugo who is quite a dude, who poured half pint glasses of wine and kept re-filling them for us, cue disaster. Our wine tour was very amusing as we made it to two wineries, one beer garden and a liquor distellery. 75% Absinthe makes for an interesting day when Tom Ingrey drinks it like it is mouth wash. (Sorry Tom, had to be done!)

After Mendoza we crossed through the Andes to get to Santiago, this involved going up to 3,500 ish metres and then down again via 26 hair pin bends, brilliant fun!

Pinguinos

Well after discovering that we had missed seeing Orcas by one measly day we tried very hard to maintain our excitement of seeing penguins. We went to Punta Tombo to find Penguins where there is the largest colony of Penguins outside Antarctica. It was beyond weird to see Penguins sunbathing, it felt like they were on their summer holidays or something.

The Penguins were pretty damn cute and there were thousands of them, I had imagined them all crowded on the beach fighting for room but instead they spread themselves in land, despite having to return to the sea to feed.

Yes my hair needs a shear!

Also we think the owners of the land must have decided to diversify as there were also loads of Alpacas?/Guanaco?/Llamas? - we don't understand the difference.

Silver Service in Bariloche.

It's a small world after all. On the other side of the world not only do we bump into Natalie and Tom but we find the equivalent of the 'Happy Man'. Huge plus, Bariloche was HOT, shocking but pleasantly surprising!

On a crazy day of cycling around many, many, many hills we found some very exciting places. We found the 'Happy Man' (Argentina Style) plus a lake to swim in. Unfortunately we hadn't realised there would be the opportunity to swim so didn't have swimming stuff. This failed to stop the boys though, Matt and Tom seem to lead each other astray somewhat. In the end the boys were greatly entertaining people as they worked out routines to jump into the lake in some kind of choreographed manoeuvre.

Chiloe - Yes it's in Chile, no it's not a spelling mistake!

Well after all the hard work that we had done in Torres del Paine it seemed only fair that we had a relaxing weekend at the seaside. We worked our way up from Puerto Natale to a point 30 hours and some 1100 km further north (having to travel through Argentina to get there due to a lack of roads in Chile!). We spent a few days chilling in a little island off Chile called Chiloe, where the sea food was amazing. Houses are built on stilts in the water and vultures mix with sea gulls on the beach. We both ate ridiculous amounts of fish including the local speacility of Curanto a sea fish and meat stew with corn bread. Also tried Congrio a big eel like fish which tastes amazing! YUM YUM

 On the way back into Argentina we also discovered the reason that Starbucks has yet to have broken South America!