Dec 2008

On the second visit to BsAs, we first stayed with Carlos in Highland Club in Del Viso, a "Country Club" reserved to rich people and their workers, protected by machine guns. And pretty strange but relaxing... Asados, pool, sun, and after the end of the world I finally shaved again...

Only Cris met a real penguin, when he was having a chat with friend beever in the street. The other penguins were in the sea for lunch...

Cristina fakes embarkment towards Antarctica.

We want to share some of the less tasty parts of the end of the world. Cause honeymoons are not just fun...
In the mix:
- Aiming for points on toilets.
- The asado in the parilla - another kind of beef cemetery. - Che showing his real face - the unfriendly nightpost of our hostel Patagonia Pais...

As we travel, we meet great people with whom we prepare birthday parties, play in the snow or just laugh about MartŽs old pants.

At the end of the world? Well, basically itŽs like everywhere else. But we enjoyed the time with Alexis and Julia from Paris (check the link on the right column) and Hanna and Gab from Berlin and the Pyrenees. Especially the dinners...

From El Calafate and Perito Moreno, we wento to see El Chaltén and Cerro Torre, the Argentinean counterpart to Chilean Torres del Paine... Unfortunately, we waited in vain for the snow and fog to stop. Only when we decided to leave, El Chaltén suddenly appeared in the sun, leaving everybody in awe.

Perito Moreno is a huge glacier in Argentinean Patagonia. Together with travelbuddies from Australia, Denmark and Italy we went to be impressed:

We tried to make Perito Moreno disappear, too - it just doesn´t seem to work. So no worries, you can still go and be stunned!

On day four, we hiked up to the actual towers. A long way, again. We started with nice weather and saw crazy woods, but once we had climbed up to the lookout, snowfall started and all we saw was... grey.

Day 3 was the longest.
Through terrible weather and a path turned into puddles and rivers, we hiked for about ten hours... along beautiful green lakes on which tornados developed. On its pebbled beach, Cris was lifted up by the wind once again...

The second day we hiked through nice weather, but against the wind, and arrived at Glaciar Grey, where Cris had to lie down in order not to be blown away by the winds of 120 k. Glaciar Grey also enabled us to see our first icebergs... :D

After Navimag, we went to hike through the unbelievable Torres del Paine (cf. the article...) - the first day led us through amazing, burned landscape.

Here we went, past Cotopaxi down South in really bad weather but with really nice people. YouŽll see some of them in Torres del Paine pics and in Ushuaia :D

We made it.
We left the Southern Cone, and entered Bolivia.
No pictures, cause the netbook is down. We´re working on it...

After a four day tour through northwestern Argentina with three guys from France (Olivier, Caro, Lea visited multi-colored mountains and steep valleys with us as well as the Argentinean Salinas Grandes) and a nice couchsurfing stay with Horacio in Salta, we took the bus to the bordertown La Quiaca.
Having arrived at 6 in the morning, we crossed the border on foot - and Cris only got a 30 day permission to stay despite her 90 day visa.
In the Bolivian bordertown Villazon, things were already very different. Most places on the so-called Altiplano Bolivia is situated on are higher than 3000 meters high, the sun is intense. Smiley people, a whole lunch for 1,50 Euros, and for the first time we could take a train.
In the evening we arrived in Tupiza, a good place to start the tour through the Salar de Uyuni from.

By chance, we met a nice Aussie couple that had found the right tour operator. They sat next to us in a bad "Italian" restaurant (one of a chain of 5 in two blocks...) when we discussed which of the several unappealing options we should take. The problem is that most drivers drink, chew coca leaves and drive. Falling asleep or being unattentive, crashes are frequent.
We went with "La Torre", our driver Juan Carlos and his mama as cook (which already gave me a good feeling ). He and his 1998 Toyota Landcruiser were in really good shape, so no worries anybody!

We went 1200 k in four days, seeing active volcanos, a lot of cacti, lamas, salt desert, lakes of different colors, sand, stones - and slept in a salt hotel last night. :D

The highlight was the sunrise in the salt flat this morning - so many colors in the calm.

Tomorrow we´ll take the bus to Potosí, the highest city in the world - our first bus ride in Bolivia, which is gonna be thrilling, too.

Looking forward to finally upload pictures again.
mart

PS: If you go somewhere close, let us know! So far there were only two messages implying a chance to meet up... :D