La Paz, Bolivia

Despite all the bad things we heard about La Paz, we really enjoyed it. The food was good (except for the food poisoning), the people were friendly, and the views of the city were really breathtaking, literally! (La Paz is at 3600 m). We spent our time joined at the hip with a very lovely and friendly Australian named Megan, it was lots of fun to explore La Paz together. Especially since we didn't have to worry about her running off with our camera, we could have more pictures of the two of us.



Unfortunately while we were there carnival was cancelled due to thousands of people losing their homes in a landslide. However, the water bombs, super soakers and drive by foam shots directed at tourists still continued unabated. It wasn't as bad as Uyuni, but still very annoying especially when it is only 15oC outside.

Locals were really friendly and seemed really interested in us. Some of them were making a film and even asked us to join in. They really enjoyed watching us "dance". Others struck up a conversation with us at the bus station and asked us if we had any kids, then looked very sad when we did not.

The alpaca sweaters are a dime a dozen, the llama fetuses smell funny, and maybe one day we will come back.

San Pedro de Atacama, Chile to Uyuni Bolivia

We left Santiago on another LOOOOOOOOOOOONG bus journey, heading north to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is a tourist town with great views but a very strong sun. We rented bikes and headed out touring for the day, but had to call it quits at about 2pm as the sun was having it's way with us.
After our short stint in San Pedro, we headed for Bolivia via one of the most amazing drives we have ever done... 6 of us piled into a Toyota Land Cruiser with our driver/guide Nilfe. The tour company was called Estrella del Sur. We went up to nearly 5000m, over high passes and watched thousands of flamingos graze in the brilliantly coloured but shallow lagunas. Apparently the colours are only one of the interesting things about the lakes. They are filled with borax, sulfur and one even has arsenic!! Nilfe was shocked to see flamingos in that one, as it is usually void of life. We wondered if the flamingos liked their phytoplankton with a side of arsenic.....?

The best thermal hot springs we ever saw were located at 4300m elevation on this circuit. Shortly after the hot springs we arrived at camp, where we were treated to a hot meal and a warm bed, though we had our sleeping bags with us so we just used them.... it seemed pointless to dirty the bed when the nearest washing machine was about 200km away and water was not easy to obtain. The food was much better than we were expecting, given the reviews we read and what information we managed to obtain from other travellers.

We arrived in Uyuni after 2 long days, and had a quick stop in the train cemetery before trying to avoid being sprayed with water and foam as part of the Bolivian carnival festivities. The music was loud but our things for no listening (earplugs - we didn't know the Spanish word for earplugs, so we went to the hardware store and asked for "things for no to listen" and pointed to our ears and managed to get what we wanted) worked wonders and we were well rested for the Salar de Uyuni the next day.

The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world, and sits at an elevation of about 3800m. At this time of year there is water on the flats, and it creates a perfect mirror of the sky and surrounding mountains. When looking at objects far away from you, it looks like they are floating in the sky. An incredibly surreal landscape. We tried our hand at creative photography, using depth perception to play tricks on the camera. Some turned out great, others.... not so much, but hours of endless entertainment nonetheless. Check out the photo album for a few minutes of entertainment....

Normally we hate tours, but undoubtedly, this was the best tour we have ever been on and we enjoyed every moment of it; even when it was snowing at 5000 m, we're from Canada. The intimate group made it feel less like a tour bus and our guide was fantastic about explaining any question we had, no matter how simple, in a very in-depth and informative answer. We were amazed at how well we were able to interact with him as he did not speak English and our Spanish is far from fluent. He spoke slowly, explained words we didn't understand, and repeated things 3-4 times if necessary!

Santiago

Santiago.... a city of smog. Apparently there are mountains around Santiago.... well, we didn't really see any. At one point we thought we saw a faint outline of mountains on the horizon, but it was difficult to tell.

We walked around town a lot, going to eat sushi, ice cream, and of course the fancy dining at the fish market... where you could dine beside the locals and eat a big bowl of fish and seafood surprise for about $3-4, if you went to the beautiful places where the locals ate. The tourist traps were much more expensive.... maybe $15 for the same thing. Even though the food was good, the waiters were hassling us way too much to eat at their restaurant, and when the bill came they added on a little tourist fat or missed 4th grade addition, depending on where you ate. FYI - mariscal is raw seafood surprise and ceviche is raw fish surprise... we kind of thought mariscal was cooked by what we saw in the picture.... ;-)

We stayed in a hostel that looked like a boutique hotel on a budget. All the girls loved the place and wished that their places looked like this.... and hence, this drew the single guys to the place as well. So even though the hostel was aiming their marketing at women, it seemed to pull the men in even more so, as the single men figured there would be lots of women there.... ;-)

But all in all, one of the cleanest, brightest, and most beautiful places we have stayed at so far. It's called the Princess Insolente hostel in case you're heading to Santiago.

Pucon, Chile

We headed to Chile after 2-1/2 months in Argentina. Pucon sounded like a nice place to go with an active volcano to climb and lots of good trekking opportunities. We arrived to a torrential rain storm and a small earthquake (which we slept through!!).... seemed like a welcoming town though. All in all, kind of reminded us of Banff though. The main streets are busy as heck but the places off the beaten track are almost deserted by comparison.
We headed for Volcan Villarrica on a blue-sky Monday morning, after being in town for the rainy weekend. Apparently there is an organization named CONAF that regulates who goes up the mountain and who goes into the park for that matter, and after many people in town told us that CONAF would not let people go up the volcano without a guide, but they were not open on the weekend for us to go talk to them and show them our ACC membership, so we just decided that going early might get us in before the CONAF dudes got out of bed. Well, needless to say, it worked. We left town just after 6am (not exactly an alpine start) and rolled right into the park without seeing a CONAF person at all. We summitted just after 10am, a few minutes after a guided party that left town at 4am. The sulfur and phosphorus (I think - all I know is that it smelled like a mix of rotten eggs and lit matches) at the top were unbearable unless you stood on the windward side. Needless to say, most guided parties didn't necessarily stand on the windward side...perhaps this was the guide's way of limiting the amount of time he had to stand at the top. We got a few pics, looked down into the crater and watched as the guided groups stood on snow bridges on the leeward side of the crater and looked down in.... hmmmmm...
On the way down we saw about 300 more people coming up. What a ridiculous sight! And we never did see a CONAF person, so I don't know what that's all about.

Back to Pucon to figure out what else to do.... we headed to a beautiful waterfall, which we had to ourselves for about half the time we were there. Then the weather forecast turned perfect and there is a 6-day trek that is called the Villarrica traverse that sounded interesting, so we geared up with a bunch food and set out. The traverse was extremely beautiful, with volcanic scenery to start, followed by monkey-puzzle tree forests, followed by more volcanic plateaus, and more forest. Finally we got into the lakes and more jagged-looking peaks to finish off the trek. We ended up doing it in 4.5 days, which was a bit fast, but I don't know why you'd stretch it out to 6 days.

Then it was off to Santiago.....