San Pedro de Atacama is an oasis town in the desert. We thought we’d better start by getting up close and personal with the sand by going sandboarding:
Valle de Luna had vast moon-like landscapes, where the sand looked like snow:
We visited numerous lakes with striking colours and also floated in one with high salt content:
There was a surprising amount of wildlife for a desert, including more flamingos and an Andean fox:
Further south, pretty flowers gave the place an alpine feel:
Rainbow Valley wasn’t as brightly multi-coloured as you might expect, but was still pretty cool:
Last stop on our long driving tour was the world’s highest geyser field – luckily they let us in, despite getting there after closing!
Next we went to Salta, Argentina. The roads were quite “interesting” in parts, and after one particularly nasty section of deep soft wet sand in the middle of nowhere we had to figure out how to fix a flat! When we finally made it to the nearest town, we discovered the other road out was closed due to flooding and we overheard a hostel owner saying the road we arrived on was fine – ‘just a little sandy in one section’ – our flat tyre begs to differ!
The main attractions around Salta are the many gorgeous coloured rocks:
We’re usually pretty blasé about waterfalls, both having seen awesome waterfalls in Iceland before. However, Iguazu Falls really took our breaths away. Almost 300 waterfalls, sitting on the border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. We spent a day on the Brazil side (better panoramas) and a day on the Argentine side (closer to the action). We also made friends with a very playful puppy, who lived on our front doormat.
We spent Christmas in Ushuaia – the southern-most city in the world. It was stunning, from the plane ride in over the snow-capped mountains, to the reflections in the lakes and sea and the scenic hiking. We couldn’t resist a bit more sledding too!
Ushuaia and the nearby national park of Tierra del Fuego like to refer to themselves as “the end of the world”, with places such as “the post office at the end of the world”. There is definitely a frontier feeling about the place. But this was not the end of the road south for us, as Ushuaia was our embarkation port for our journey further south to the land beyond the end of the world…
Zoë and Joe Blogs 