The Maddness of Mendoza

Mendoza.

Massive Mountains

Malbec

Museums featuring Jorge the ALIVE giant turtle

Middle Aged party people and snow. We love it here. It´s so mucho frio that it has been on the news, and our very helpful lonely planet told us that it never snowed in the actual town only the mountains. Oh really, so we were dreaming today were we? I think we may die in Patagonia.

YUM. We´ve drank our weight in red wine and chucked our clothes and filled the backpacks up with dubious red bottles instead. We´re drunks and we like it.

Whoosh, Guuush and other watery sounds

It´s bloody amazing, and you would drown. Iguazazazazazzau was cool; the Argentinian side and the Brazilian. Round, round get around, we get around.









The hostel wasn´t bad either:

We haven´t slept in a bed for 2 nights, nor been indoors except for on the Mendoza, Vino Tinto serving, Whiskey supping party bus. To celebrate the arrival at the Red Wine capital of Argentina we have already downed a bottle of Malbec and ate steak in sunshine. Bueno.

Were not crying at all

Buenos Aires, land of tango, football and madonna, apparently.

Its a big, nice, very European feeling city, more so than anywhere in Oz or New Zealand, the steak is not bad either.

However, all good things must end and this evening we are heading off to iguazu falls, on a big bus. In fact a lot of our time in Argentina is going to be spent on big buses, but they do give you whiskey so cant be all bad.

Salty Nutters

Some great pictures of our 3 day trip over the Andes and the Uyrini Salt Flats-featuring us, finally.

The Chile/Bolivian border, breakfast.

Crazy Fisherman Island in the middle of the Salt flats

HELLO, we´re down here.

Cool group and "Super Jeep"

Salt Hotels are odd

Crazy wind eroded rocks at 5000metres

Sunrise, it was early and chilly on that salt.

The highest Capital city in the world...

Is La Paz.

And this is the view (a 6000m high mountain) from our very nice hotel which we have treated ourselves to after the trauma of the past few days. From here we are thinking of taking a trip to Lake Titticaca, which shares it´s border with Peru. Then maybe flying from the 4000m airport to Argentina. Peru might get left for another trip-it´s just so crazy out here.

3 Days on top of the Andes

What a trip. From San Pedro in Chile across what was apparently the border to Bolivia in a 4x4 with 3 others, racing over the crazy churning volcanos at 4-5000 metres high. Speeding across the highest plain of the Andes possible, altitude sickness is an interesting feeling. The geysers, toxic lakes, enormous eroded shaped rocks, bright red lakes feeding thousands of flamingoes and lamas. Most unbeliveably, the Worlds largest salt flat. Wow. We are hoping to get more pictures from the people on our trip as very sadly our camera and all our pictures has gone walkies in Sucre, upsetting.

Oop north

We´ve been in Chile for a week now and have got as far north as we are going to get - a place called Iquique. This is a bit of a crazy country, we´ve been travelling by bus through the Atacama desert - places here haven´t had any rain for over 50 years. In places the sea literally turns into mountains with no flat land and it is empty of people. We´ve been to three towns La Serena, which was lovely and quite old. We did a day trip from there up to the Elqui Valley in a jeep driven by a crazy Swiss guy called Daniel - we saw a dam (where we ate cactus), lots of grape, avacado and god knows what else fields. Jules ate humitados, don´t ask I don´t know, and we visted a pisco distillery - Pisco being Chile´s national drink. Oh and we went to an observatory and had a look at the moon - obviously. Good day.

Copiapo was the next stop, nothing much to it really and now we are in Iquique, which is a beach and casino town. Again not that much to it though.