Nice moments caught in Chile

Little cat in the desert



Vicuna showing of his behind..





Woman selling lama meat in the Atacama desert

Sleepy dog in Valparaíso

How we got to Pucón - in the lake district of Chile

Goodmorning Pucón, after a nerve-wracking transfer out of the desert (the taxi bus showed up half an hour late and that does not feel to good when they already have this mañana attitude) a flight back to Santiago, a taxi to the bus station and the nightbus to Pucón, we have used almost every means of transport there is to get to this destination. You loose track of time in this manner of traveling. Is that why people do this? Anyway, Pucón looks lovely, at 06.30 in the morning. Very green and lots of lakes. Cold though......I am a bit envious of the temperatures in my own country. I did not expect it to be this cold over here, to be honest. But we can always hit Argentina faster to climb up to where the sun will wait for us, if the weather gets to ugly....We might be climbing a Vulcano out here, or rent some bikes to get some excercise. Keep you posted about this. Enjoy Queens Day tomorrow for all you Dutchies.

Desert Storm

Desert Storm

Me trying to look though and Ellen caught it on picture......

Ellen and me just before the sunset in the "Valle de la Luna"

This is our last day in the desert. We fly back to Santiago tonight. From there we´ll go to Pucón with the night bus. I have been quite ill these days which overshadowed the trips a little bit, but I still went, sniffing and snorting. Everything was really beatiful, especially the sunset in the Valle de la Luna, (Moonvalley). The colours changed every second and it took my breath away. Next day saltplanes and flamingo´s; i will not bother you with details of the flamingo´s we have spotted, because they all look the same to be honest except for some colour differences. But a beautiful and graceful bird it is and it does not really matter if has a Chilean nose or a Peruvian wing..

Me being very cold at the geysers
The next night we had to wake up 03.30 in the morning to go to the geysers del Tatio. This is a phenomenon that one cannot miss eventhough all the circumstances seem quite unattractive. Waking up at 03.30 in the morning in the dessert means extreme cold! The geysers are situated at 4.320 m above sea level, which means in automn -8 d C. We were wearing 9 layers of clothes to survive. I did not drop into a geyser hole, which was quite possible, 85 d C. Photo´s will be on site soon, like that can witness our drop dead gorgeous moments in the desert.

Bienvenido al desierto - Atacama

From Santiago we took a flight into the desert in the north of Chile. Wake up call at 04.30 in the night...Horror but worth it. We are in San Pedro de Atacama now, which is a town that thrives solemly on tourism. It is like a very small Las Vegas, Indian style. Out of nothing they founded this tourist place with nothing else than hostels, bars, restaurants etc. Very small, the roads are not paved, sand and more sand, the buildings are small and white with roofs of clay. It is well done though, spotless for a sandbox and it looks a bit like a village made for a movie scene. They have looked good at what a tourist desires and provided for this. Well done. In places like this you will find a lot of backpackers that never seem to leave. In the evening it gets very cold but the restaurants have those big ovens with fire and it all looks very cosey. We are going to Valle de la Luna today, tomorrow we will see flamingos and saltplains. The last day here we have to wake up at 04.00 to see the geysers and it will be 10 degrees below 0. Why am I doing this, you wonder? I wonder too, but apparantly it is such a spectacle that one cannot miss...You have to watch out not to step on a geyser. At least that will be warm..too warm probably. Most of you know that my co-ordination lacks some balance at times. And right now I am a bit feverish as well so I hope I keep my footsoles in place.

Valparaiso - city of colours

Writing from Valparaiso. The second day in Santiago did not blow us away either. The old part of town honored its name by being mainly old instead of authentic. The difference between up-town and down-town was sad to see. Man in the four wheel drive and man without legs.
We sent to sleep quite early and we hit another record in the night.(in Santiago still).There was an earthquake that made 6.2 on the Richter scale and we slept right through it. No worries, they told us that in Chile you have to start worrying when there aren´t any. As long as I sleep through it, I will not worry about anything :-)

Valparaiso is a small town by the ocean with a large industrial port. In earlier days the town thrived on its strategic position. Large ships in the harbour, quite impressive. If you look for more picturesque places you have to visit the "Cerro´s". The town has a few hills (cerro) and here you will find lovely buildings. The city has well presevered the colonial architecture as it has its interesting early industrial infrastructures, such as the numerous ‘elevators’ on the steep hillsides. They are used to get to the hills. So did we to reach this colourful part.

Well, we are going back to Santiago today to catch a plane in the middle of the night to go to the Atacama desert. We can do with a bit of warmth before the freezing cold of Pagatonië will do us in.
Geysers, flamingo´s, Moon valley coming up...

Santiago de Chili

Grounded: we arrived safe and sound at destination number 1 (Amsterdam-Zürich-Sao Paulo-Santiago de Chili in 24 hours). It went well, I guess. They overfed us completely on the plane, we rolled out of the airport with our bags intact. Nothing lost or broken. The taxi was where it should be, hostal was for real, with every backpackers detail in place. We strolled through the city today, so deprived of sleep, that we ended up taking the same route twice in the subway without getting where we wanted to be, because we forgot what we had to do in the part of town we just left. It is not a very beautiful town so far. We did not see the touristic scenery yet, just from under the ground and that is not very special. However, we do know the part that we could have dismissed, very well and that counts for something. Tomorrow fresh new start going to the authentic part. After that Valparaìso, and the Atacama desert.
As for the records: There is no country in the world that counts 4500 km by length and is that small (not more than 200 km wide) at the same time. The Atacama is the driest desert on earth. And we are just starting...Keep counting

April 2007 - On the road again

Trippin' again. After a year of absence a new trip has been planned and therefore this blog is "active" again. Hooray....I hope you will enjoy reading the stories. This time I will go with a friend, Ellen. We will visit the beautiful countries of Chili, Argentina, Uruguay and Brasil. As we were preparing ourselves by reading and googeling a lot, we found out that it will be all about extremities. Lowest city on the globe, lowest train on earth, highest this...largest that and more. So I will keep you informed about every geographic milestone. We are flying today, in fact..I have to leave as we speak, but I did not want to leave without a little note of the why and the where. We mainly go for nature and cultural purposes, learning tango in Buenos Aires and watching whales mating on the "Peninsula Valdes". But we will also visit a "Wereld Natuur Fonds" location in Brasil (Pantanal) and we will visit an orphanage in Brasil at the end of the journey. Here we will try to provide for whatever they need in a short time. This is what I can tell you all for now. I hope you will stay in touch in the meantime, I know I wil really enjoy reading your comments whilst being far away. XX M