Tuesday, 30 September 2014

Across The Evening Sky, All the Birds Are Leaving...


One last look around the Happy House. ..

After eight months, eight countries, dozens of beautiful, bonkers, clever or crazy friends, hundreds of adventures, thousands of good times and a million happy memories, tonight we're leaving this dreamland of South America on a flight to New Zealand.

It's sad to look back over our shoulders into the sunset of such a huge continent - I've always been a hostage to nostalgia - but we think we've done it justice on our travels and herewith.

If you've followed the blog so far, I hope you'll agree.

I won't itemise our itinerary or recap our snaps for your bored displeasure, but for our benefit, one piece of prose to conjure some imagery, to help us look back along a road well-travelled.

If it's all about the journey and less about the destination, our story so far should be told through our many transports of delight...

Mountain biking through valleys and vineyards, white water rafting down canyons, taking jumbo jets over oceans and light aircraft over deserts at dawn.


Taking tea on Inca Railways, clanking up Chilean funiculars and swooping down several swish telefericos.

The Santiago underground and the Rio metro system, luxury international buses and underpowered three-wheeled tuc-tucs.


Horseback trail-riding, sandboarding in the Atacama, a fleet of clapped-out taxicabs, paddling our own canoes.

Long, lazy days on Amazonian cargo boats and Peruvian reed rafts, power boating under the Iguazu Falls, transporter ferries across the Magellan Straits.


Braving the Sao Paolo subway at rush hour with full pack, or buying empanadas on cramped colectivos.


Rusting locomotives sleepily going nowhere, bouncing along in dusty 4x4s to lunar landscapes and riding taxi mopeds to pre-Incan ruins.

Hiking through miles and miles and miles of jungle, desert, city streets, swamps, beaches, glaciers, winding trails, mountains and valleys in our Salomons, flipflops and borrowed wellies.


And best of all, being conveyed cross-country in a converted Mercedes truck called Carmen...


And between all that, who knows where the time goes?

Wednesday, 24 September 2014

Let Me Sleep And Dream Of Sheep

From Chile to Argentina and back again.

Sheared: The long and winding road
East from San Pedro to Salta and Mendoza, then west to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Getting closer to the finish line.


Salta by starlight

SALTA was nice. They had their very own cable car, and a nice country ramble took us back down to town.

Another town, another cable car
It was a big pilgrimage weekend when we arrived. People dragging man-size crucifixes up the road from miles around, flags and hankies waving and hundreds of thousands of folks filtering through the town square for the main event - carrying the Virgin of Milagro around town on a big bed of roses.


She once stopped an earthquake happening, so now gets an annual 'thank you' from the populace.

Everyone´s got one

Spot the virgin
Jesus saves, Messi scores on the rebound.
From the bell tower there was some seriously heavy and repetitive campanology prior to the procession. If Angus Young had walked on in an Argentina shirt playing Back in Black I wouldn't have been in the least surprised.


On the road again

MENDOZA saw us cycling through the vineyards with English John and Alex from Germany. Think Harry Enfield's Jurgen, but funnier.

Before...
... after
Three vineyards, nine small-ish tasting glasses of wine, a shared picnic and a very hot day on the bikes. Lovely.

Up...
...over...
... and out

An amazing bus trip and border crossing over the snowy and precarious Andes brought us to VALPARAISO, almost back to where we started in February.



It was strange to feel 'seasoned' enough travellers to not be overawed this time 'round, but we were both a bit emotional when we arrived.




It's been a long trip so far and, looking back at the diary, a lifetime's worth of experiences have come and gone.



Still, a steak dinner and a bottle of red wine cheered us up.

My Little Virgins

And now VINA DEL MAR. A very nice beach town but, hey, another beach town... Kim's been out and about, but I'm just in listening to the Newcastle match.

I´m ready to leave South America now. Back to Santiago on Friday, where we're re-booked in at the Happy House 'til next Wednesday.

Two-thirds of our year gone. New Zealand beckons...



Monday, 15 September 2014

They Shimmer, Like Mirrors


Three days travelling across the blistering salt flats of Uyuni and past freezing lagoons in the Atacama desert brought us to the border betwen Bolivia and Chile.



We started off from Uyuni town with our Quechuan guide Obet, tucked in the back of a 4x4 with Mike and Abbie from England and Morten and Isobel from Berlin.

Obet and the Toyota Landcruiser

First up was the train cemetery, the end of the line for a peacefully rusting collection of 19th century steam locomotives, many made in Sheffield and shipped here for the Bolivian mining industry.




On to a local salt-making business for a tour of the packing plant, gift shop and lunch - chicken salad and possibly the best apple crumble I've ever tasted, even without custard!

Packin´salt

Mike overdoes the apple crumble

How many little beds?
It's all tentatively eaten due to the amount of stomach troubles we've had lately, but we're all on the road to recovery.

The salt flats themselves are vast and surreal. Difficult not to believe they are ice, but the heat of the day helps focus the mind.






The youngsters spend time taking clever perspective-bending photos, then it's on to Isla Pescado (fish island), another surreal phenomenon - fresh water underground and cacti and birdlife in a desert of salt.


A prickly pair

We spend the night in a chilly (but seriously not as cold as some made out) and very basic hostel, where alcohol was taken and friends were made.




Not so ´pretty´now...

Up bright and early, we pass red ore lagoons, blue lagoons, pink flamingos and green, arsenic-laced lagoons.





We see Dali-esque stone trees and rocks, steamy guysers and hot mud spouting from little volcanoes in the earth at our feet at 4,900 metres.


The moon rose spectacularly and most romantically over the mountains as we arrived at our second hostel.

A little colder, so more alcohol was taken. Kim tested the hot springs next door, while I tested the bed springs.


A cold start

At dawn, on and on over miles of sand and dust to the border, we decanted dusty and breathless into a minibus.


An hour later and several thousand metres lower, we arrived in San Pedro De Atacama, where I left two old friends behind. One was my trusty panama, now folded and beaten into submission. Can you guess what the other one was?



Loads and loads of Uyuni, Atacama, Cacti, Geysers and San Pedro here ....