Wacky photos, the great Argentinian floods of 2008 and the eventful Christmas!

The train cemetary
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First of all, I hope everyone had a fantastic Christmas and got all you wanted!  I certainly had a different xmas, but I will tell you about that in a while.

Salar de Uyuni

I menti0oned in my last blog that I had visited the salt flats in Uyuni, Bolivia, and that it was perhaps the best excursion that I had done so far - well it was incredible.  The salt flats were created by Lake Titikaka, which used to be far larger than it is now, and used to cover this part of Bolivia.  As there was no rivers running into this part of the lake, it dried up over thousands of years leaving all its salt behind (Titikaka was once part of the sea).  This has resulted in the largest flats in the world covered in blinding white sand!  It looks like another planet, and there were times when you looked around you could see absolutely nothing but salt - no mountains on the horizon, no plants, nor wildlife, just a salt desert.

James and the gian half-eaten apple!
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There were a few "islands" in the salt that broke up the bleakness - the main one called "Fish Island" (Isla Pescado), called this because it´s meant to look like a fish from a distance, although I personally thought it looked like a blob of rock.  It was pretty cool none the less, because it was full of huge cacti, some being over 500 years old (or so the Spanish guide said), and we had a decent lunch there too.

After driving for about half an hour away from fish island, we were on the part of the flats that were most dense with salt - where there are over 20 meters of salt abover the surface.  This gave us the perfect opportunity to take some crazy photos!  The fact that the landscape is totally white means that perspective is lost when taking photos, and you can get some stunning pictures of people being squashed by someone else´s foot etc.  Well we had a competition between the group as to who could do teh best and most original photo!  My entry was myself standing on top of a half-eaten apple staring and pointing at some parked trucks in the distance - it didn´t win but it is a really cool photo!  The girl that won had someone diving from her tongue piercing into her mouth!

Ta-da!
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After the photoshoot we headed off teh salt flats to find our hostel, and then thought it would be a good idea to climb up a few hundred meters to get a good view of sunset.  Unfortunately once we had reached the top of the hill, there was an even bigger hill in the way of the sunset - so we climbed (very nearly fell) back down again!  The evening was spent drinking mulled wine beneath the clearest night I have ever seen - I didn´t realise there were so many stars!

We were woken up by our guide at about 4am so we could get back into the middle of the flats to see sunrise, which was the most impressive sunrise ever.  It was bloody freezing though - well into the negative degrees (slight change to the high 30s experienced during the day!) - but totally worth it.  We then headed towards a volcano that is set in the middle of the salt.  With bright red rock surrounding it, it stood out a fair bit, and was impressive enough that we just had to climb up half way to get a good view of the peak!  We were told that this would take approximately 30 minutes and was quite a gentle incline.  WRONG.  It took us about 2 hours, and was comparable to dead womans pass on the second day of the Inca Trail!  OK so maybe not quite that bad, but bad enough.

Sun setting over the second huge hill
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Once we had come back down to the flats, we encountered some bright pink flamengos around some shallow lakes.  This was the last part of the trip, which was probably as well seeing as most of us were as pink as the flamengos by this point from the blinding sunlight, and its refelection off the salt!  I even had slighty sunburnt eye-balls...  Anyway the excursion was brilliant, and felt literally out of this world.  I think you can vote for the slat flats to be one of the new 7 wonders, and I wouldn´t be surprised if it is up there.

Dawn on the salt flats
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After a night of drinking and eating fantastic pizza (we were staying in an American owned hotel!) we set off for an 11 hour drive to Sucre - Bolivia´s political capital and second largest city.  I didn´t really do much here, basically because I had a lot of organising to do and very little money (bank card stolen, credit card not working - please don´t ask!!!).  However, the city is beautifal - with almost all of the buildings covered in white-wash.  It felt very European, and definitely the nicest city I have visitied in Bolivia (which is a bit of a sh!thole in general to be honest!).

Volcano
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Salta

And so I returned to Argentina - to the 5th largest city in the country, Salta.  After the poverty experienced in Bolivia´s cities, it was nice to be in a clean, friendly city!  We were staying at a camp site with the largest swimming pool in the southern hemisphere!  Unfortunately, because it was so big, it was impossible to control chlorine levels - so they didn´t bother at all :s  The green sludge floating around, and the slimy floor, didn´t put us off and we jumped straight in!  Of course I made sure I didn´t swallow any water (kids do horrible things in swimming pools, and I´m pretty sure some adults do even more horrible things!).

The calm before the storm...
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We headed into town for the groups´ first Argentinian steaks and the night that followed was memorable.  Memorable because half the group couldn´t get a taxi back to the camp site for 3 hours because of the torrential rain!  "Oh well, I´ll just stay out until the rain stops" I thought, but it didn´t stop...  and when the last few of us decided to find our way home, when we got to the campsite we found that our tents aren´t that waterproof!  So we all endured a cramped, smelly night on the bus!

We then headed to Salta Rafting Camp for some zip-lining!  When I paid for the excursion I was expecting a few lines between trees, but oh how I was wrong!  The majority of the lines were between two sides of a 500 metre wide canyon, and you travel at speeds up to 50kmph!!!  It was great fun, and although the thought of the line snapping did cross my mind on several occasions whilst suspended 400 meters above the ground, it wasn´t as bad as it sounds.  We spent the rest of the day sat around the rafting camp playing cards and drinking beer, which was nice!

And here we come to my number one camping tip - don´t pitch up on the bottom of a hill, especially if you know there is a good chance of rain, and even more so if you are camping right by a river that is close to bursting its banks!  So I didn´t take this advice on this occasion, and woke up sleeping on a water matress, and in a lake (more like a large puddle, but for the story´sake we´ll say it was a lake!).  My camera didn´t like this too much, and I believe there is still a large amount of muddy rain water inside!

So, I am now camera-less, but I hope to be able to upload photos from the memory card when I get to Mendoza tomorrow.

Cafayate and Christmas

Where better to spend your first Christmas away from home than Cafayate - a small quiet town in North-Western Argentina - with 50 fellow Budget Tucan Tour goers?  Well, to be honest, I missed home like crazy, but it was a Christmas I will never forget!

The day started well, with a traditional Argie fry up of steak and eggs for breakfast, with champers to wash it down with.  Secret Santa followed, and I received more bubbly, a cup made from cacti and some cake!  Not a bad haul!  The problems started when people started drinking punch at 11am, and continued to drink throughout the whole day.  By people I mean the majority of people on the trip, including the tour leaders...  Now, my tour leader (or rather, ex-tour leader) is an ex-rugby pro and the biggest man in South America, and he can´t take his drink.  He completely lost it!  He was making lewd comments to the girls on the truck, he threw the roast chickens that were meant to be for dinner for the two Jewish girls on the tour over the fence, tried to throw a whole spit roast pig over the fence, had arguments (and he is extremely intimidating when arguing) with several people, started fights with several people, and eventually got arrested!  He spent the night in a cell and got chucked off the tour the next day - totally deserved.  I am quite tempted to make a formal complaint about him to be honest, because although he was a top bloke when sober, there were other times when he was drunk that he acted in a similar, but less extreme, manner.  So yeah, he tried to ruin Christmas!  It wasn`t so bad though, I still had a good day!

Boxing day was a much nicer day.  We drove to a very small campsite in the morning, and spent the afternoon lazing about in what must be the warmest river in the world!  It was like a bath in there, and contrasted extremely nicely with the ice cold beers!  It was exactly what was required, and we all felt much better after that.  We then sped off to Córdoba yesterday morning, which is another very European city, with lots of beautiful people (muchas flacas!), and I have spent the last couple of days just chilling in the city.

Tomorrow we head off to Mendoza at 6:30 (in fact I need to be up in 5 hours!) where we will be spending New Years!  I won´t be updating again this year, so I will next be in touch in 2009!  Happy new year everyone, hope you all have a great night for new years!

James x