Argentina to Chile

We'll be back in Argentina in a couple of weeks. From Mendoza, there is a beautiful pass over the Andes into Chile, dropping down into Santiago, which we decided to take. There are comfy buses to travel on through a lot of South America, in this one we had armchairs, just three seats across. It still temporarily broke down though through overheating - a common complaint that we are finding with most of them.
A very relaxed border crossing, with the mountains all around. The only snag was that we couldn't bring a big chunk of cheese into Chile. Simon overcame this by wolfing most of it with crackers at the customs check point; the remaining gnawed edge was picked off by our bus driver out of our rubbish bag, to our amusement and disbelief.

The dramatic, wiggly descent into Chile.  In a month or so there will be skiing in this area

From Santiago, we're heading south to the Lake District, which straddles the Argentine/Chilean Andes, for some walking. before going back into Argentina and off to Buenos Aires.

Mendoza and wine tasting

We had a surprisingly good 19 hour bus journey from Salta down to Mendoza, helped by us not waking up until nearly 10am. Mendoza is a big city, but every bit as relaxed as Salta. The roads are filled with all sorts of classic cars (fiats, citroens, peugeots, fords and VWs from the 70s and 80s) pootling along, which seems to capture the mood of the place perfectly. It's a real shame that through a combination of expensive repair bills and stringent MOTs, we all too often scrap perfectly good cars in the UK before they get anywhere near classic status.

 An excited fellow customer lady in a chocolate shop told us there was a park as fine as those in England in Mendoza. She then enquired as to our origins and was even more excited when we told her we were from England. Above are the gates, serving as a grand entrance to the park 
Autumn is just beginning in Argentina. The leaves are just starting to turn golden and brown.

The Mendoza region is famed for its wine, especially the Malbec grape. There are over 1,300 bodegas, or wineries, in the area. We hired bikes for the day and set off to taste some wine. 

Our first stop was an organic family-run bodega. We had a tour around the vineyard and bodega, which was surprisingly interesting and smelt deliciously of fermenting grapes and oaky wine barrels. We also had lessons on how to taste wine. Unfortunately, they didn't open their best bottles for the occasion so we kept our slurping to a minimum. We have bought a nicer bottle.

Wine tasting at the bodega

The rest of the people pictured above were on a bus tour. Following the wine tasting, we set off along with our map in search of a lunch spot for our cheese sandwiches and a spirits distillery. We found a gravel track to the river and five minutes later, Simon's bike had a puncture. Not to be deterred, we had a lovely lunch by the river, walked our bikes to the distillery and phoned for help. The affable Alfredo, the bike hire man, came to the rescue and changed the wheel whilst we were sampling spirits.

The distillery garden

The distillery is a recent Swiss venture producing grappas, brandies and liquors for export. We had another interesting tour around the building which had been impressively designed by an architect from Buenos Aires followed by a tasting of the products. This was much more generous than the bodega, we tasted at least 6 strong spirits followed by the same amount of liquors. We tottered out of here with a bottle of dulce de leche (toffee-like) liquor and made it safely back to the hire shop. We hadn't tasted a lot of wine by wine tour standards, but we had a great day out, got a feel for the area and enjoyed being back on bikes.

Salta

Our first experience of an Argentinian town was Salta, 7 hours south of the Bolivian border. And what a lovely town it turned out to be. While Bolivia is far removed from European culture, Salta could easily be a popular Mediterranean tourist town, with beautiful squares and parks and a vibrant cafe culture.  We settled right in with some great steak and a bottle of Malbec, followed by some champagne, courtesy of a traveller friend (more affluent than ourselves). 
Salta's cathedral in the main plaza in Salta, considered to be the most beautiful in ArgentinaNoone in the coffee shops whihc line the plaza during the afternoon siesta time, but by early evening, they are full
It's lovely to see great big trees again. They have been very scarce over the last few months in the high Andes. 
Every good tourist town needs a cable car. This one, built by Swiss engineers in 1983, took us to the top of a big hill overlooking the city, complete with artificial waterfalls.
The view over Salta from the ascending cable car.

Having spent a day and a half happily relaxing into the Argentinian way of life, we went for a lovely walk in the surrounding countryside before catching a nightbus south to Mendoza.

Adios Bolivia, hola Argentina

Bolivia is a fascinating, beautiful country but trickier than any other we have encountered in South America for travelling around. There is a huge gap between the lives and culture of most Bolivians and those of tourists. We found that most people were pretty wary and unfriendly (for many, their first language isn't Spanish which doesn't help) and the main interaction with people was them seeing how much money they could get from us.  We certainly don't regret going to Bolivia but our enjoyment was definitely tainted, particularly by the bus robberies.

It was with some relief then that after a comfortable night train from Uyuni, a long queue and bag searches, we stepped into Argentina without having had anything else stolen.  

We had heard that Argentina is expensive but with lots of delicious all-you-can-eat steak deals. We hadn't heard about how beautiful it is, how friendly the people are, how relaxed it is (siestas for all from 2-5pm, evening meal at 11pm) and what good value it can be to eat and drink out. This is what we have found so far and we are very happy. Our friends Clemmy and Ed who are moving here from London in the summer have made the right choice!

Food and drink in Potosi, Bolivia

On arriving late into Potosi, we set out for a night cap. The bar was full of locals gathered in groups with mugs in hands around thermos flasks. As it was a bit chilly, we decided to join in. An hour later, we staggered, light-headed out of the bar. The thermos contained a potent mix of national super-strength spirit, singani, with hot lemon.Of these 3 yummy soft drinks, one was pineapple flavour, one was a nice, full flavoured cola, and the other a take on Irn-Bru/Kola. Potosi has its own brewery and soft drinks industry, as does La Paz. It is difficult to find a La Paz beer here. There is a nice retro feel to the designs.Tahua tahua - a tasty bit of street food - glazed and fried dough balls with sugar.
My birthday meal in a great restaurant - a converted industrial building. I tried llama for the first time and it was delicious. Tender and not too tangy meat skewered on kebabs with peppers, onions and bacon; accompanied by potatoes, vegetables and tomato. Not as good as a birthday on the farm, but it came in a close second.
Simon opted for a meat feast of steak, chorizo sausage and a black pudding sausage. A little heavy for some maybe but Simon polished it off with no difficulty.I overexcitedly blurted out to the waiter that it was my birthday. I was rewarded by a switch from cheesy love songs to 'Happy Birthday' on the stereo and a gathering of waiters and diners singing to me with this rich, tiramisu cake.

We had heard that there was a hot and filling drink made of maize, called api, to be sampled in the local market along with fried crispy dough (in the background on the photo). Simon was a big fan, I thought it was alright for a couple of sips, and would no doubt be more appreciated had we spent the morning down a mine. As we had only just got up, it was a bit heavy and cloying - drying out the inside of my mouth. 

Salt flats, red and green lakes, volcanoes and flamingoes

Bolivia has the largest salt flats in the world. The huge, prehistoric salt lake dried up but left behind an awful lot of salt. We decided to take a four day tour of the salt flats and surrounding areas of natural beauty. 

Before hitting the salt lake, we went to a little village that had geared itself up for tourism with a couple of museums and lots of salt ash trays etc. We were amongst the few people to pay to enter the museum and an enthusiastic local guide showed us around the mini-models of llamas, alpacas, and blonde barbie-style tourists enjoying their time on the salt lake. 

  

We spent the first two days on and around the huge salt lake. It's an incredible environment to be in and a lot of the time it's hard to believe that the surface isn't snow or water. The lake, the sky and mountains merge as one and the horizon becomes difficult to make out as the salt captures the reflections in its blinding surface.

With our lovely cook, Claudina and her father, our driver and guide, Benitno. They were with us for our first couple of days before we joined up with another jeep and group to head south to lagoons, volcanoes and flamingoes.

We rode around in a jeep with fellow tourist couple, Adam from Hungary and Annike from Trinidad, our guide and a cook. There are no roads on the salt flats so drivers can go wherever they want, although we were warned that if the clouds close in, you become enveloped in a white world and inexperienced drivers have got lost for hours with tour groups. Fortunately, this didn't happen to us.

There were rumours that on the day we set off, there was due to be a rock concert somewhere on the salt lake, organised by Brazilians. We didn't see or hear anything and didn't fancy setting off on the salt, which freezes at night, to try and find it. However, there were coaches and lots of jeeps heading onto the salt at the same time of us. A bizarre spectacle. Apparently, they weren't rock stars but journalists on a press trip to promote the many minerals thought to be in/under the lake, including lithium, which may be used to power cars in the future. Environmentalists are concerned that the lake will be plundered.

Coachloads of press and tourists and salt piles. Locals extract salt from the edges of the lake, drain water from it in this way, before treating it for use in Bolivia and exporting it to Brazil. Lots of tourists were unhelpfully standing on the piles to have their photos taken (as well as stripping to their pants and running around - people went to fairly extreme measures to get their perfect salt photo).

Fortunately, we soon left the crowds behind as we had opted to do a slightly different tour. We spent our first night in a hotel made of salt, which was surprisingly warm and cosy given that it looked like ice, on the edge of the salt lake next to a volcano. We had a peaceful evening wander along the salt 'shoreline' spotting llamas, a great eagle, viscachas (like rabbits, a photo of one on our Machu Picchu entry) and mysteriously, a pile of human bones and skulls arranged next to a rock. According to local legend, the moon only ever shone by the lake, the sun didn't come out. When one day it did for the first time, the people who lived here thousands of years ago in the caves all died.   The sunset reflected in the water at the edge of the lake and in the salt

The next day after walking part way up the volcano for some great views over the lake, we went to 'Fish Island', named so because of its shape, in the middle of the Salt Lake. It was covered with enormous cacti, some of them over 1000 years old. It was here that we were to meet our second group and jeep who were to be our companions for the next few days of the tour. They turned up pretty late and we thought we had been abandoned but happily not. They had booked a better tour than us and fortunately we had been slotted in with them to make up the numbers. It's all made of salt. Apart from the cactus wood.

We spent our second night in a fairly luxurious salt hotel and were treated to some dancing from local children who turned up at the hotel all dressed up. It verged on begging but we got stuck in. 

Caves near to the hotel have been turned into a museum, with pre-hispanic mummies, their pots and hunting spears and a few armadillos hanging from the roof. Apparently, there are still quite of few of them living in the area but we didn't spot any.

As we headed south from the Salt Lake the scenery was equally spectacular. The whole of the flat land in this region at one time was under water. The photo above is Simon standing on coral rock. It was hard to believe that this was once under water - it felt quite apocalyptic to imagine that all this water could just disappear.

More caves - this time filled with petrified algae. 

The six of us and our guide covered a lot of ground bouncing around in our jeep over a couple of days. The landscape was quite otherworldly with no people around, very few plants, but a fair amount of llamas and flamingoes. We were at an altitude of 3,500-5000 metres. 

Flamingoes in flight over a red lake

On our fourth and final day, we were up at 4.30am and in the jeep by 5, off to see geysers (sulphurous steam shooting out of the ground) on a volcano which are most active around sunrise.  

The geysers emitted a strong sulphurous whiff and the steam was hot, there were also a lot of bubbling cauldrons of mud. It was an incredible place to be at sunrise. After this, we dropped down to a thermal spa and although also a bit whiffy and crammed with tourists, it was amazing. I didn't get out until my feet had turned utterly pink.

Our lovely group split up at the Chilean border as Ralph and Maren, a German couple, went south, and the rest of us, William from the UK and Nico from Colombia, returned, dusty and tired, but awed by what we had seen, to Uyuni.

The Train Cemetery

"Such is life"

"Such is life", reads the graffitied message on the rusting engine. This seems quite apt, especially here in Bolivia. Dreams of a modern railway network at the core of an industrial and tecnological revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries were never materialised. Now, just outside of Uyuni lie a great line of disused carriages and engines. It stands as a constant reminder of the failure to bring riches and stability to one of Latin America's poorest and most long suffering countries. The majority of Bolivia's exports continue to be primary goods with no added value - metals, minerals and agricultural produce. Despite what it signifies, the trains do at least make a fantastic playground and an incredible sight as they stand, rusting away and slowly sinking into the desert sand.

We walked along to the train cemetery in the afternoon, long after the morning's tourists jeeps had disappeared over the Salt Flats. There was only ourselves and a few local children and families clambering over the engines and carriages.

Many of the engines were probably manufactured in the UK. No doubt we did a lot better out of it than Bolivia.

The railway is hardly used today - five trains a week, mainly filled with tourists. There is also the odd van-sized goods train, like this one - goodness knows what its purpose is or what the original railway engineers would have made of it. It seems pitiful as it rattles past the old, majestic engines lying abandoned in the desert.