perito moreno glacier

Yet another border crossing took us to leafy El Calafate in Argentina, the nearest town to the mesmerising Perito Moreno Glacier. The face or ‘terminus’ of this massive glacier is 5kms long, reaching about eight stories high above the lake below. One of only three advancing glaciers in Patagonia, it is a spectacular sight to see enormous chunks of ice, larger than a house, ‘calf’ into the lake below.

We were dropped here in the morning and wondered just how on earth to fill in five hours staring at a wall of ice, yet by the time we had to go we weren’t even remotely ready. This was one of those agape in the face of nature experiences – from the vastness of the scale of this advancing, frozen river to the intenseness of the blues of the glacier, your eyes would dance over every crevice and get drawn into the inching, anticipatory drama of it all.

perito moreno glacier

perito moreno glacier

Apart from strolling the leafy main street and kicking back in cruisy cafes with whiskey-laced coffee, there’s not a lot else to do in El Calafate, so we head off the next day to El Chaltén, about three hours north and the jumping point for the Monte Fitz Roy mountain range.

When we arrived in El Chaltén everything was clouded over, with only the briefest fleeting glimpse of the imposing Monte Fitz Roy that looms over this small, sprawling town. But after spending the day stocking up on a mishmash of edibility from the well-raided stories, we set off for the mountains, greeted with some of the most sensational weather Patagonia has deigned to offer. A crisp, sunny day saw us take off for Piedras Blancas Glacier, a relatively straightforward stroll. We set up camp by the river then wound our way around the lake, stomping over the moraine until perched high over the glacier. The view back down the valley was superb, gazing over a rippled lake hosting icebergs drifting away from the glacier from which they have recently escaped.

piedras blancas glacier

home sweet home

metamorphosis

Heading back to town the next day we stocked up again, grabbing what random items the tiny supermarket still had in stock and enjoying a good night’s rest. The next day we struck out for Monte Fitz Roy itself. These bold granite towers strike up near vertically for the sky, dominating the landscape. Our campsite at Poincenot was about an hour below the lake that sits at the base of the towers, but the steep trek was amply rewarded with an up-close look at these awesome natural wonders.

en route to monte fitz roy

monte fitz roy

The next day, despite crisp blue skies rendering it appealing enough to the eye, was the most difficult walking we have ever done. The plan was to head all the way down the main valley and up into a side valley, trekking to a lake sitting right on the edge of the ice-field, but the howling Patagonian wind had other ideas. The relentless gale literally lifted each of us off our feet at one time or another and made the simplest tasks seem Herculean. Rock-hopping river crossings became fraught with the likelihood of being picked up and dropped in the icy water, streaming straight off the nearby glacier. Every fought-for step was an invitation to give up and turn around.

purrdy but brisk

After battling along one slow step at a time, unable to hear what anybody was saying even if they were directly alongside, we finally reached a stretch of the valley that offered if not shelter at least a slight diminution in the ferocity of the 100km/h+ winds.

While not necessarily what we would have chosen for the day, it did make our eventual warm welcome at Refugio Los Troncos at the top of the side-valley all the sweeter. With a crackling fire and warm company, it was the perfect reward for a gruelling day that more than once almost saw us turn back.

eventime

The next morning Serena and Ben headed further up the valley to a large glacier-fed lake, Sally somewhat sensibly conserving her energy and soaking up some sun over a book in the charming green surrounds. We eventually set off again for the campsite we had stayed in earlier, with one more trip back up to the Monte Fitz Roy lakes the next morning before heading back to town on the fourth day, weary but all agreeing it was definitely the trek of Patagonia thus far.

monte fitz roy

At this time of year the single daily bus out of town fills up days ahead. We had managed to book our ticket back to El Calafate on the day we arrived in town and thought nothing more of it, so were a tad bemused to hop on the bus and find that our tickets for seats 45 and 46 were not going to be all that useful on a bus with only 44 seats. The next available bus wasn’t going to leave for a number of days, so it was a certain relief to find that two other passengers hadn’t turned up by the time the bus was ready to roll.

Arriving back in El Calafate meant it was time to make an all-too-soon farewell to Sally. We’re not entirely sure what she thought of the five weeks spent with the hobos overall, but suspect that on balance there were just enough high points in there to just pip the low points. She seems to be talking to us again, so we’ll run with that assumption.

On the last day of our Fitz Roy trek, Serena had discovered she could hardly move her right shoulder. The situation didn’t improve at all in El Calafate, but we decided to press on with the only plan that made sense to our perhaps diminished sensible-meters – heading back to Puerto Natales, loading up our packs with all our gear and enough food for 10 days and striking out for the full Torres Del Paine Grand Circuit.

torres del paine

Leaving Punta Arenas behind, we headed up to Puerto Natales, a grim little town with its back strangely turned upon a beautiful lake. It was very much a service town that existed for what was in the area rather than for itself, the launching pad for treks into the (relatively) nearby Torres Del Paine National Park. Sally headed off on the first day for a glacier-snooping boat ride while we organised our next trek, a two-day hike into the park. This would be a but a mere taster of the nine-day trek for which we would return in just over a week’s time.

Although our arrival in the park the next day was greeted by bright blue skies, kissed here and there by the odd skimming ball of cloud, we were delivered a rather brutal welcome by the notorious Patagonian winds. The reputation of this relentless, eviscerating wind preceded it, but it is not until you hit the trail, leaning into it with a full backpack, your eyes streaming with tears and barely able to put one foot in front of the other (even with walking poles) that you begin to understand just what a force it is. It’s very coy in photographs, but an unmistakeable presence in the scoured flesh.

torres del paine

Yet as the ranger who cheerfully pointed us onto our path remarked, if you weren’t here for the full, windy experience you shouldn’t really be in Patagonia. As the day progressed, and the distant Mordoresque towers to which Sally had pointed and expressed her relief at not having to reach loomed ever larger, it dawned that perhaps that is exactly where she was being led. And of course it was, but travelling across fairly flat terrain we were making reasonable headway, despite the entire journey requiring us to fight against that vicious headwind.

A small hill to which a few brave trees somehow cluched provided a welcome lunch shelter, before we dropped over the other side and away from the winding river, towards the amazingly turquoise lakes. The sun was still out and the glacial melt had an astonishing glow, a stunning scene that helped you forget your aches and pains.

the turquoise lakes of torres del paine

The wind dropped a little in the evening, allowing us to set up our tent. After a good camp-stove feed we turned in for the night, only to be woken again and again by the constantly howling wind, now returned with extra fury. Emerging in the morning we discovered it had been so strong that a pole on Sally’s new low-profile tent had been severely bent.

We set off early the next morning for the Valle de Frances, striking out for the narrow cleft carved between the soaring mountains that loom either side like dour sentinels. The trail skirted around a few more jaw-dropping lakes, the wind whipping up swirling spouts of water that travelled far beyond their wave-lapped edges. We finally rounded the final peak and plunged into the valley, a steep groove behind the main rocky towers that give Torres Del Paine its name.

a trekking we will go

As we climbed higher we gained more of a sense of the true grandeur of this landscape, witnessing the slow crumble of ancient glaciers into the river that courses down the steep ravine. From the very top we could see countless miles, gazing out across the distant lowlands across which we had trekked the previous day and beyond to the mountainous, snow-capped ranges to the south.

torres del paine

We would have loved to linger, but needed to get back to our campsite in time to catch the catamaran that was to bounce its way across the lake to meet up with our bus back to town. It was a teasing little taster of a part of the world like no other and we were eagerly anticipating out imminent return, albeit with a new respect for all mother nature could throw our way with seeming ease.

patagonia dreaming

The bus ride north out of Ushuaia began spectacularly, winding through sky-brushing, snow-crested mountains then skirting a handful of dazzling emerald lakes. A couple of hours into the journey, however, we were well and truly immersed in the famed Patagonian emptiness, a numbing bleakness that spreads for hundreds of miles in every direction. Our experience of Patagonia to date had been only one side of the coin, a taste of her extremities. We were now beginning to appreciate the other defining trait; vast tracts of obliterating nothingness.

It’s a nothingness unlike any other – the small tokens of un-nothing (the odd llama, the rare waterway) serving to highlight just how empty and featureless these endless expanses really are. This isn’t the ‘nothing’ of the trip along the Hume Highway or even the Australian interior, it’s an emptiness more pure, refined yet – perhaps because of this – difficult to define.

Australia’s empty spaces hum with their own discernable rhythm; in the thrall of a still, cicada-soundtracked summer’s day, you can slow your mind and attune your senses bit by bit to unpack what is really there. The drab, interminable golden plains of childhood Sydney-Melbourne road-trips begin to take on their own minutely shifting shapes and tones, an atmosphere that subtly alters as you encounter anew the small noble hills with their rocky outcrops, rust-seized windmills listing yet intact, witch-finger phantoms of rain-starved gums; a muted-palette tableaux cheekily streaked with the sulphurous flash of screeching cockatoos.

In Patagonia there is no sense these rhythms would ever take hold, no matter how patient the wait. The boundless sky overhead is oddly disconnected from the plains below, the atmosphere ungraspably thin. The light is not the bleaching white-light of home, nor the gauzy, pastel-smearing daub of say the French south, where your memory conjures softly swaying fields of lavender you likely never saw. It is lost somewhere in-between, a suspended-reality stage light lacking the brutal honesty of the former and the timeless romantic whimsy of the latter.

Even the road, paved as it left the coast and mountains but giving way to a dusty unsealed thread, seems unsure of itself, quietly doubtful of its own tenuous existence. The Welsh and Scottish farmers who arrived here in the late 1800s with their ragged flocks of sheep and new-life dreams must have been both strangely at home and somewhat ill at ease. The brutal white winters and sense of isolation echo the furthest reaches of the Scottish Highlands, but here at the other extreme of the world there is no real sense of an end to it, you might as well be on the moon. Civilisation is not simply miles away but seems, even in the space of a day-long bus journey, to evaporate as a concept.

Yet bit by bit, mile by imperceptible mile, you do get through and it turns out there is another side after all. But the experience does creep under the skin. The journey makes the eventual arrival in Punta Arenas, a long-faded port town in the deep south of Chile, all the more unsettling. Punta Arenas has that forlorn, wrong side of the tracks feel you find on the outer fringes of certain North American towns. It hadn’t been snowing, yet recalling the town once departed, the mind can’t help but picture pockets of dirty, slushy snow sitting in neglected corners, out of the reach of the sun’s feeble fingers.

punta arenas

punta arenas

We arrived to find everything was closed for the first afternoon and evening due to it being New Year’s Eve. After trailing around for an hour or so trying to find somewhere to eat that wasn’t either closed or already booked out, we finally find a friendly, old-fashioned diner. Cheerfully well fed on seafood and pasta, we headed down to the foreshore for the fireworks display, requisite ooh and aahs accompanying, but it seems we all still had our hearts back in Ushuaia.

Thankfully this didn’t last too long, as the next day we headed off to Seno Otway to see a local colony of pingüinos. Having only encountered fairy penguins until that point, the much larger Magallanic penguins were quite a sight. Fairly oblivious to our presence, they went about their penguin business, waddling across windswept grasslands, diving for fishy snacks and body-surfing on the small breakers purely for the fun of it.

los pingüinos

penny and pedro

polly and pablo

We spent the following day back in Punta Arenas, the town still eerily quiet in this holiday period. It did have a charm in a way. The central plaza, without which no self-respecting South American town with a population greater than three would be seen, was fringed by grand colonial buildings from an era when the town was still an important port. But away from the centre, down towards the jetsam-strewn crushed-shell beaches, the building style was what you would expect of this kind of far-flung, salt-scoured outpost – lots of corrugated iron and worn wooden structures once painted in bold colours, now in various stages of decay. It was a long way from our first taste of Chile, the desert-locked San Pedro de Atacama – now more than 3000km to the north.

punta arenas

punta arenas

punta arenas

punta arenas

ushuaia

We snatched about one hour’s sleep before heading off for our dawn flight to Ushuaia in Tierra del Fuego, the southernmost city in the world.

A frontier town on the very southern tip of Argentina, jutting out into the icy Beagle Channel, Ushuaia certainly felt like a far-flung outpost of civilisation. There was an atmosphere unlike anywhere else we had ever been and it’s hard to put a finger on anything specific as to why it had such a special feel.

The fact that it was still quite light well after midnight, the slushy swirling currents of the Beagle Channel and the knowledge that Antarctica was now only 1000km away must have all added to the end-of-the-world sensation, along with the fact we were rugged up in all our layers despite being here in the middle of summer.

midnight

We celebrated Christmas for a second time on Christmas Day itself with a visit to a ‘tenedor libre’ (literally a ‘free fork’, but ultimately all-you-can-eat Argentina style). As one might expect we rather disgraced ourselves, not helped by the vast selection of ice cream flavours we were forced to self-scoop.

xmas nibbles

xmas cheer

The following day saw us up bright and early to take to the water, a lovely boat ride out into the gorgeous Beagle Channel. From the channel we were afforded our best view yet of the surrounding landscape and realised why it felt quite so isolated – with the water to our front we were cut off from behind by an imposing mountain range, reaching almost to the water’s edge.

land ahoy

Our boat took us out past lounging and lolling colonies of cormorants and sea lions, big, fat blubbery folk piling themselves up on top of each other for warmth. A walk around one of the blustery islands and a choppy ride back as a storm loomed followed, before it was time to procure supplies for the first of our treks with Sally, a four-day ‘practice’ hike through the mountains and valleys behind Ushuaia.

lolling

the lighthouse at the end of the world

We set off cheerfully the next morning, pretty sure we are on the right track despite a little confusion over where the walk may begin. The valley setting was spectacular – lush green meadows, a wide babbling brook and ice-capped mountains on both sides, but the going proved more than a little sloshy underfoot. As the day went on and we peeled off into a side valley, we reached the first of the promised glaciers after a slushy trudge through snow.

aslushing we will go

atop

From here the options involved heading most of the way back down into the valley and up into another side valley for the evening’s campsite, or trying our luck on a cross-country ‘short-cut’ that would take us more directly there.

We opted for the latter, settling on what seemed the most likely direction. After another hour or so, passing up and over a ridge that afforded spectacular views out over the channel, we reached a deep drift of snow stretching right across where we suspect the path should be.

Ben dropped his pack and went off to explore whether there was a way down into the valley from here that wouldn’t involve tracking back, reporting back in about 40 minutes that he had found the way.

Retracing his steps, however, we took a slightly different way down through the thick trees and reached a path that seemed to be too minor for the one we were seeking, so we turned right in the hope that it would meet the ‘main’ path. An hour or so later we finally reached a fork, only to realise it was the one we were at earlier in the day when we decided to go to the glacier rather than simply head straight up to camp.

By now it was about 9pm (still quite light thanks to being so far south and only days past the solstice) but we had to decide between trying to set up camp down on the boggy flats or to turn on our heel and head up the way we had just come down.

We opted for the latter and discovered that the camp was only about 20 minutes past where we had first joined the path, but of course in the other direction. The ‘minor’ path turned out to be the main one after all, this just obviously wasn’t a very well-travelled hike.

lady and the tramper

Tramping through the boggy terrain that surrounded the lake near where we were to look for our pitch, we were too exhausted to even try and miss the puddles. Hungry, soggy-footed and tired, we finally reached the lake, only to realise the whole area was absolutely soaked, and on a steep incline.

By this stage it had begun snowing, the day that had started bright and blue now rather white and gloomy. But after some fraught scouting we finally found a spot beneath some trees that was flat enough and dry enough for us to pitch. We had brought two tents along, but only had the energy to set up one, the three of us all climbing in after dinner and sleeping very soundly.

It would be lovely if that had been the toughest day of the walk, but it was really just the warm up. The quite delightful powdery snow that greeted us in the morning turned into more of a freezing sleet and rain through the day. Trudging to the next campsite, we were absolutely drenched to the bone, with similar trouble finding somewhere to set up our tent – the only places we could find that were not under inches of water were beneath some decidedly sketchy looking old trees, with far too many fallen branches around to have us feeling very safe in this wind-scoured valley.

This was the point at which we also discovered that the path we were following was now officially closed. Given we had been planning to loop all the way around the back of the mountains and back to town from the other end, this meant we had two options. We could either turn back the next morning, or have a bit of an explore around the area, see how far we could get down the path and then return to the same camp that night. This meant we would at least avoid having to pack up a wet and muddy tent and carry it all day, but I think we would have all quite happily carried heavier packs as a trade-off for it to stop raining. Rain is no big deal by itself, but when the temperature is struggling to reach about 2 or 3 degrees, it doesn’t exactly add to the fun.

We opted to stay out and explore, winding our way through some pretty glades and crossing back and forth over the stream, looping back to camp before nightfall. Getting us through all this was the much-discussed return visit to the ‘tenedor libre’ that would be our reward – just how juicy the food would be and bets as to who would be able to try the most help-yourself ice-cream.

rio

On day four the weather improved just enough that we were able to walk back to town a little more cheerfully. Finally back in the warm embrace of our hostel, with every thoroughly saturated item of clothing and our tent hanging across our room to dry, we could kind of understand Sally’s wonder at just what people saw in hiking. Assuring her that this was not exactly a great example, that we too would probably not have gone out if we had known the weather was going to be quite so feral, she still didn’t seem entirely convinced.

kind of makes it worth it

We had originally planned to stay in Ushuaia two more nights, seeing in the end of the year at the end of the world, but the paucity of buses out of town meant we had to actually leave on the morning of December 31, sadly dragging ourselves away while the hostel was already bouncing into cheerful, all-you-can-eat-and-drink party mode.

la recoleta

Arriving in Buenos Aires early in the morning, we headed to our hostel in San Telmo, a neighbourhood with a great vibe ­­– 1890s Paris meets 1940s Brooklyn. We were let in by the sleepy, muddle-headed but friendly co-owner of the hostel – getting sense out of anyone in this district is impossible before 10 or 11 in the morning as the city life revolves around late evening, rendering mornings a veritable graveyard.

Taking our cue from our surroundings we endeavoured to kick back a notch or two, enjoying a slow breakfast, many cups of coffee and finally dropping our bags in our room before heading out for a day jam packed with Buenos Aires delights.

In typical form, our first forays involved substantial amounts of walking. BA has a brilliant, if at times confusing, public transport system where trips cost about 25 cents each. But to properly orientate yourself, nothing beats walking. We started off down the long, quirky La Defensa, full of funky design stores, antique stores inviting you to step back into BA’s Euro-flavoured past, and the odd smattering of dirty, arts-driven graffiti.

BA is a city of contrasts. At times it is almost Parisian, with its cobblestones, old tram tracks still visible, huge 19^th century buildings and glamorous cafés. But cross over to the newly (re)developed wharf district of Puerto Madero and you will see enticing glass and steel structures that are up there with the best of the world’s latest architectural designs.

Our morning was spent sightseeing in a rather haphazard way. Our goal for the day was to buy another tent to see us through the raging winds of Patagonia. Along the way we would divert down side streets, cross through parks and venture past monuments such as El Obilisco, a 67 metre high obelisk plonked in the middle of 18 lanes of traffic (it was built in 1936 to commemorate the 400^th anniversary of the founding of the city).

Another favourite ‘find’ of the day was the Congreso Nacional. A neoclassical building whose white stone has turned to dirty grey it had a grandiose fountain at the front whose raging horses and ornate opulence clearly referenced Rome’s Trevi Fountain.

congreso nacional

By now we were quite ready to get off our feet, and what better way to recuperate than to plonk ourselves down in some outside cafe chairs, surrounded by grand, tall trees and somehow able to ignore BA’s ceaseless traffic. Thanks to the many Italian migrants in Argentina, finding a delicious cafe is simple and you can rely upon decent coffee and hope for a tempting cake or pastry. We were tempted to buy one of the huge panatones lining the counter, but as Christmas was only going to be Ben, Sally and Serena, we instead ordered a light lunch, Ben popping back into the cafe several times to top up with ‘just one more little treat’.

Our tent hunting turned out to be far less successful than our sightseeing. We could find plenty of super cheap tents, a good range of super sturdy but outrageously heavy tents, yet nothing like what we were after. We eventually settled for an ugly red number, managed to talk the owner into allowing us to set it up in the store and promptly discovered it was missing parts. Yes we were pleased we hadn’t bought the tent, taken it to Patagonia and discovered out on the windswept, snowing, summer campsite that our tent wouldn’t stay up, but it left us wondering whether we could squeeze three people into our existing two person tent, or whether our $30 Barbeques Galore tent bought 12 years ago would survive some of the world’s most outrageous weather. But of course there was no more time for tent shopping, we had to race to the markets to buy that night’s dinner and scoot back to the hostel, hoping we would managed to arrive back before Sally.

We did manage to get back before Sallly, just. The night was spent catching up over a long meal accompanied by a bottle of Argentine wine. With Sally having just crossed the Pacific and not quite in a partying frame, BA’s night time delights would have to wait until later to be discovered.

The next morning, the three of us set off to explore the city, dropping by the excellent Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Recoleta. A somewhat quirky mix of paintings, we discovered a few fun Impressionist works, a scattering of Goyas, photos that showed both the old and new of Buenos Aires and some playful contemporary works by local artists. Although we could have spent several more hours there, hunger drew us out.

museo nacional de bellas artes

museo nacional de bellas artes

We found ourselves scouring the streets of Recoleta for restaurants. In true sightseer fashion we were ravenous and struggling to agree on somewhere with which we were all happy. Finally a small corner pizza joint, with only a few spare tables, beckoned. We discovered the best empanadas of the trip (though to be fair, not a shadow on the wonderful street snacks of saltenas to which we had became addicted in Peru and Bolivia). Ordering first one then another carafe of wine and an ambitiously wide selection of empanadas we munched on, considering the relative merits of blue cheese and onion versus the standard beef empanada. Although the various vegetarian versions stacked up well, the juicy, spicy beef empanada won the day.

empanadarama

We moved on, not wanting to miss a visit to the nearby Cementerio de la Recoleta. The cemetery is a warren of small pathways, occasionally turning into narrow ‘streets’ with rows of mausoleums making this one of the most significant highrise cemeteries in the world. The monuments ranged from the fading and decrepit through to the sparkling and ostentatious. For some you looked through cracked windows, seeing through the layers of spiderwebs to coffins that had slipped and opened their lids. Others had gleaming bronze plaques, richly coloured, stained glass windows, and sturdily lock doors staunchly protecting the illustrious inhabitants – a veritable who was who of Argentine history.

cementerio de la recoleta

cementerio de la recoleta

Other than the many tourists and tour guides, the only other living regulars to the cemetery were the teeming cats. You could not turn a corner without discovering yet another cat … possibly a friendly black and white one, perhaps a scary and scowling tortoiseshell tiger wearing its battle scars with a proud, defiant air.

gato de la cementerio

For history buffs the cemetery provides a fascinating memento of the illustrious families of Buenos Aires. Anyone who was anyone would fight for their right to finish up in the cities most desirable resting place. Eva Peróns grave is one of the most popular to visit, but there are many important people from BA’s colourful past including generals, politicians and religious figures.

cementerio de la recoleta

cementerio de la recoleta

However the living delights of Buenos Aires tempted us away and so we went out into the noisy, green, bright streets of Recoleta. This time we were exploring the wide boulevards, window shopping amongst the clothes stores, wine shops and restaurants. The restaurant we had chosen didn’t open until 8.30pm, too late for us as we had a tango show to see, so we settled for a streetside cafe/restaurant and Sally had her first fix of the renowned Argentine steak.

We had booked a table at Cafe Tortoni for that evening’s tango show. A small ensemble of live musicians were warming up as we got there. We placed our order, wine being cheaper than water (well, almost), something you’d never see in Australia. With a long tradition of tango, Tortoni’s appears to be a reasonable compromise between true tango and something accessible to tourists.

cafe tortoni

While tango is of course about the dancing, it is very much about story-telling. This story is not particularly complex – boys fighting for girls.

tango

mas tango

Exploring the streets the next day, we were treated to another taste of the tango life. A busy pedestrian mall was the stage for an impromptu lunchtime show that did little to dent BA’s reputation for effervescent street life.

street tango

street tango

Feliz Navidad

South Americans are party people. They have an almost utter disregard for normal business hours, understanding that first and foremost life is to be lived and if this means staying up until 4 in the morning, that’s just fine. They get away with it by being liberal with the dancing but restrained with their drinking – although nearly always with a drink in their hand, finances mean they sit on one or two drinks across the evening.

We had already warmed to the young, friendly, helpful people running the Sandanzas hostel. The place felt more like a large share house, with people always around to share a coffee or pass round a mate or to join you on that day’s adventure. The owners had decided to get everyone together to celebrate Christmas (Navidad in Spanish). We were bitterly disappointed that we would be missing out – our flight out was scheduled for early Christmas Day. So it was to our joy that we discovered Christmas celebrations in Argentina tend to actually take place on the evening of the 24^th with plenty of food, drink and endless fireworks.

Dinner kicked off about 10pm, everyone throwing in a helping hand to produce the laden table. The food was perfect, fresh and interesting, with many different types of salads, dips, pastries, fruit and so much food that it became a blur of yummy dishes. There was plenty of wine and we had fun chatting to the diverse range of people at our table. By the time we were fed and exhausted by conversation the music was turned up and the room turned into a dancing venue, with people forming a conga line that twisted and twirled its way around the room.

Midnight hit and we were deafened by fireworks. For those who venture out on the streets it is necessary to dodge the missiles, and doctors from Argentina tell us they hate that time of year and all the injuries it brings. We were content to watch from the safety of the hostel – hearing far more than we saw but being too content and comfortable to venture out. Besides which there was talking to be talked and dances to be danced. We finally quit the party long before it was over – heading in at 3.30am to grab a short nap before getting up at 4.30am for our trip further south once more. We were heading about as far south as it is actually possible to travel before hitting Antarctica: the far-flung outpost of Ushuaia.

valles calchaquíes

Our trip from Salta to Cafayate took us through beautiful, lush green country that soon gave way to the remarkable Valles Calchaquíes, a desert-like river canyon carving a multi-hued path through the mountainous desert between the two towns. On arrival in Cafayate we bumped into Peter and Sue from our Spanish school in Quito, joining them and their decidedly crazy overland tour group in hiring bikes and riding out for a late afternoon visit to the outlying bodegas (wineries). While it was fun hanging out with a larger group for a few hours, it didn’t exactly sell us on the idea of hopping aboard their bus and spending every hour of every day with the same randomly cobbled group. Somehow they seemed to be holding it together, but there were horror stories about the other half of their group.

On bikes with good brakes but no helmets, shonky gears and mismatched sizes (mismatched to the rider that is) we made our way in a decidedly Von Trapp family fashion, smiling as we wove our bikes through the sunshine and mottled shadows cast by large, languid and leafy trees. Some of the bikes wove more than others: two younger riders had quickly downed a bottle of red as we set off to get them into the wine tasting mood.

Hearing how the last few weeks of their trip had been going, through places whose names they couldn’t quite recall or match up and discovering Peter and Sue hadn’t been using any Spanish as everyone tended to defer to the one member of the group with a decent handle on it, our independent travel somehow seemed easier than their group experience. Perhaps we had become mobile hermits now that we were nine months into our travels, but the almost shock-and-awe style swoop through the bodegas was fun as a once-off but definitely didn’t appeal.

The next morning we again hired some bikes and rode out of town to the base of the nearby mountain range to a river and waterfall – hard work cycling uphill over a sandy unpaved road, made more manageable by snacking on our best pastries since France, delicious treats from ‘Flor del Valle’. We embarked on the long, scrambling walk up the Rio Colorado, crossing back and forth over the cascading water. Ben went for a swim in a small pool over lunch, floating in the cooling embrace of the fresh stream and staring at the clouds puffing overhead. The deep canyons and chilling cold water were decidedly Kakadu-like with sheltered pools in which you could float whilst gazing up past the huge cliffs to the blue and white sky above.

b

The downhill walk and ride were much easier heading back towards town. It turns out that riding hired mountain bikes uphill along sandy roads in the height of summer is pretty exhausting, but downhill was not so bad. Our route back into town was rather roundabout as we swapped directedness for tastiness: finishing our day with another bodega visit – or two as it turned out. Throw in a visit to a chevre-making operation on the edge of town, a chat to the goats followed by a taste of their cheeselicious wares, and one is left considering that life could perhaps be worse.

cabra

niño cabra

cabra chorus-line

Cafayate is best known for its dry-weather loving Torrontés white wines, crisp and aromatic, but the find of our visit was a delicious Don David chardonnay. This was the night of perhaps the barbecue of our lives, ridiculously thick steaks selected with the help of the friendly butcher then cooked to perfection over coals on the gigantic rooftop barbecue, enjoying the views out over town to the grapevines from which our wine had been made and to the looming mountains beyond.

parilla time

from the rooftop

We were supposed to leave the next day but couldn’t bear doing so, having found one of our favourite places in a long time. The fact it was a small friendly town surrounded on all sides by wineries of course had little to do with it. We made our way back up into the Valles Calchaquíes, exploring  on foot the landscape we had only been able to glimpse as the bus sped through on our journey from Salta. The stunning, layered landscape of Quebrada de Cafayate featured carved out formations in super-rich colours from various mineral deposits – reds, yellows, oranges, greens and purples, either in layers or in various patterned, wavy formations. It was one of the strangest landscapes we had ever come across, yet another unforgettable South American natural formation that had to be seen to be believed.

quebrada de cafayate

dos ranas

quebrada de cafayate

a mineral rainbow

garganta del diablo

After a few hours of exploring the folds and rain-carved features, including a towering natural amphitheatre and Garganta del Diablo, we hopped back onto the mini-bus. Driving back towards the hostel we noted the previously bone-dry river bed was now a frothing, surging brown beast. We rounded another bend and found the road was abruptly cut off by a powerful flash-flood, the causeway now a torrential river tumbling trees and giant boulders in its wake. We hadn’t felt a lick of rain ourselves, but had seen a fairly amazing amount of lightning in the distant mountains an hour or so earlier, where rain had clearly been bucketing down and now had nowhere else to go.

inundación

braving the waters

our turn to cross

After almost an hour of watching the floodwaters race by, a few brave/crazy trucks tried the crossing. Changing from our mini-van to a small bus we too made the crossing, the water still coming up well over the wheels, arriving back to the hostel just before 9pm, more than ready to try some more of the finest local fare.

Staying another day was tempting, but BA beckoned. We were still about 1400km away though, so decided to travel via Cordoba, a mere 700km trip. This was the second ‘Cordoba’ of our journey, having already visited her Andalucían namesake, and there were indeed a few echoes of Europe here. Of all the South American countries, Argentina is the one in which we most keenly feel a kind of European air. The architecture, food, people and outlook on life all have a certain familiarity that is a blend of Spanish, Italian and something uniquely Argentine as well.

Cordoba felt like the kind of small city that would be ideal to live in for a while but that you weren’t necessarily able to get beneath its skin straight away. Our first night was spent catching some good live music in a friendly little space, while the next day we wandered the town and saw some reasonable art in a great old colonial mansion turned gallery.

cordoba

We had seen there was due to be a free concert on that evening that sounded quite good so planned our day around making sure we got there. Thus it was a little disappointing to line up and then once we reached the door to be told that while it was free, you still actually had to have already come by tickets, which we had not. A lovely, matronly woman overheard our plight and came forward with a couple of tickets she had spare. We found ourselves seated right near her and her grandchildren and found out her son was singing that night, not merely as part of the choir but was actually singing solo as well.

The next day was another wandering day, with a visit to the grand Museo Superior de Bellas Artes Evita, a neoclassical Beaux-Arts museum with some interesting work. This visit was soon superseded on the enjoyment front, however, as we headed back towards the centre of town. We saw someone emerge from an ice-cream parlour with a huge tub of ice-cream and proceed to lift the lid and get straight into it. The look of anticipation and then delight was enough of a sales pitch for us, so we headed in and made our own selection. What followed was the best ice-cream we’ve ever eaten outside Rome and the beginning of a love affair with Argentine ice-cream. Cheap, delicious and no doubt highly nutritious.

museo superior de bellas artes evita

a reasonable mendozan tipple

Given we were in a student town where pizza and beer appeared to account for 95% of the local diet (the remaining 5% being the ice-cream), we joined the chattering young folk for the same before walking over to the bus station to catch our last overnight bus for some time, hitting the road for Buenos Aires. We settled back with our on-board meal and some Argentine red, falling one number short of winning a full bottle in rapid-fire Spanish Bus Bingo (“ochenta y ocho – dos señoras gordas!“). We were all set for snoozing when the stormy weather outside decided to make its way inside, rain pouring through the roof and all over Serena. Luckily there was one spare seat left on the otherwise full bus so we were able to settle in for a relatively dry ride to BA.

san pedro de atacama

We knew we had been spent a long time in the ‘developing countries’ of Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia when the sight of a paved road, lane markings and warning signs on tight curves seemed an indulgent novelty. Passing from the bumpy not-really-a-road-at-all experience of Bolivia to the smooth black tarmac of Chile, we realised just how accustomed we had become to being in countries where any form of public infrastructure was an unexpected bonus.

Winding down from the freezing heights of the Bolivian plateau to the vast, open, toasty Atacama Desert, we were struck by the beauty of this desolate landscape. Spread over 100,000 sqkm in northern Chile, the Atacama Desert is the driest place on the planet – there are weather stations here that have never detected rain and valleys that have been dry for at least 120,000 years.

feeling a little dry

Pretty sure we could safely plan a few activities that wouldn’t be washed out, we took to exploring the area around this quirky, chilled-out desert oasis town. We began with an afternoon trip to the hauntingly beautiful Mars-like Death Valley, moving onto the dramatic salt caves of the Valle de la Luna (valley of the moon), finishing with sunset over the incredible landscape, watching from an enormous, wonderfully wind-sculpted sand dune.

valle de la luna

sunset serena

The next afternoon saw us return to the towering sand dunes of the Death Valley, this time with sandboards in tow. For the next two hours we trudged up the dunes and sent ourselves hurtling off the edge with our waxed boards, invariably tumbling into the sand which found its way into every square inch of our clothes, body and hair.

the long walk up...

...and down she goes

getting the hang of it

That night saw a trip out of town to the desert observatory of kooky French astronomer Alain Maury. Due to Atacama’s high altitude (2400m), dry air and isolation (hence lack of light pollution), it is considered one of the best places in the world for astronomical observations. The heavens were certainly putting on a show for us that night, with no moon in sight and not even the merest hint of a cloud.

With the naked eye we could see stars almost at ground level, but the real show was to follow when after a brief but entertaining talk, we were let loose on Maury’s extensive collection of powerful telescopes. They had been set to focus on various night-sky highlights, from the rings of Jupiter to spectacular strings of nebulae. All this was topped off with a fool-proof lesson in using the night sky to ensure a lucky night with the ladies, followed by a disgracefully delicious hot chocolate, and we were thoroughly won over by the joys of Atacama in particular and Chile in general.

muchas estrellas

But it was already time to make the first of our countless Chile-Argentina border crossings and re-crossings, setting off for the northern Argentine town of Salta. While most of our long journeys thus far had been via night buses, the San Pedro de Atacama to Salta trip is purported to be one of the world’s most spectacular so we settled in for a day-time trip.

Climbing back up the steep, barren slope we had descended from Bolivia, it didn’t take long to see why this was a journey through which one really should not sleep. Climbing high into the heart of the Andes, the otherworldly red, pink and blinding white colour-schemes of the last day of our Bolivian salt plain adventure had returned, with mineral streaked rocks, strangely glowing marshes and pink flamingos making each corner reveal something entirely new, all with a blemish-free azure sky as a backdrop. We climbed and climbed for hours, before finally levelling out and then beginning the descent down the other side of the mountains, our first taste of Argentina.

the windy road to salta

It is hard to even explain exactly what it is, but there is something about Chile that feels long and narrow and stretched, hemmed in by sea on one side and mountain on the other, while Argentina feels remarkably different. As we crossed the mountains and began our gradual, winding descent, the landscape felt immensely open, almost never-ending.

broody argentina

Dwarfed by neighbouring Brazil on a map of South America, Argentina is nevertheless an enormous country – at 2.77 million square kilometres, it is the eighth-largest country in the world. It also has the highest point above sea level in South America, the Southern Hemisphere and the Western Hemisphere (Cerro Aconcagua at 6962m and the lowest at Laguna del Carbón (105m below sea level).

So as soon as we were gazing out over her vast plains, we get a sense of this size, of the emptiness and the extra breathing space. The trip continued for some time, passing into wonderful canyons of beautifully coloured rock before finally opening into lush farmland that could almost be rural France. We finally pull into Salta, a pleasant, small city with a lovely square at its centre. Despite arriving on a Sunday evening, there were plenty of people everywhere, enjoying the warm but not steamy weather.

We soon had our first taste of Argentine time, with families out strolling at 10pm on a Sunday night, not to walk off their dinner but actually on their way to a meal. After a nibble of our own we were pleased to discover that the museums and galleries scattered around town were all still open and would be until at least midnight.

salta

After strolling around town through the next day we had a night in with others in the small house-like hostel we had landed in, treated to the first of our many gourds of ‘yerba mate’ by a friendly Argentine lass. This somewhat bitter green leaf tea is not simply a drink in Argentina, but a way of life. Not a day would go by that you would not see people on the bus, in a store, in a park or simply walking down the street with the silver straw between their lips and a thermos of hot water in hand.

While Salta was more than nice enough to have spent a little longer, we were now on a tighter timeline, with just over a week before we were due in Buenos Aires to meet up with Sally, Ben’s sister. So we said farewell to Salta and boarded the bus to the heart of the northern wine country, Cafayate (pronounced Cafajjjatay in Argentine Spanish, a whole new linguistic beast for us to attempt to tame).

locomotive cemetery

Our love of overnight buses in South America does not really extend to Bolivia. Looking at a map of the road from La Paz to Uyuni, one could be forgiven for assuming you’re on a major north-south highway and will roll along in slumbery bliss. But waking up before dawn as the bus bumpily ground its way along a track even the hardiest of goats would avoid at all costs, it became clear this wasn’t the case. The crunching of gears and roaring of the overworked motor on this glorified school bus cast-off was perhaps the only reason we couldn’t hear the chattering of teeth and rattling of boned of those who had not taken a sleeping bag or blanket on board, subzero air passing in from the plateau as though the windows weren’t there.

Upon arrival, it didn’t take long to realise the town of Uyuni itself wasn’t somewhere that needed all that much of our time. We had originally planned on using the day to organise a trip out into the salt-plains the next day, but discovered that provided we were willing to take off without dragging our heels we had arrived in time to head out that very morning.

And so began our three-day journey via Landcruiser through the incredible, vast and other-worldly landscapes of south-west Bolivia. Our first stop was not far out of town, a graveyard of abandoned trains rusting away under the baking desert sky.

toot toot

The dusty golden terrain soon gave way to the salty edges of the Salar de Uyuni, a remarkable, smooth plain of blinding white as far as the eye could see. There were no longer any roads or even tracks, simply faint tyre marks that led us onwards to the horizon.

salt-bound

aflutter

Just before lunchtime we reached Isla Incahuasi, an ‘island’ looming incongruously from the otherwise flat terrain. Here a rocky path took us past towering cacti that are all hundreds of years old, the oldest chalking up more than 1200 years.

isla incahuasi

isla incahuasi

After lunch we swung around to the south and stopped for some time to mess around on the salar, before heading to our accommodation for the night in a building made almost entirely from salt.

ñandu

there was an old woman...

weight of the world

The next morning’s drive finally took us off the edge of the salt plain, the blushed, mineral colours of the rock and mountains quite intense after so much white, all against a stunningly blue sky. We stopped at a lagoon for our first up-close encounter with pink flamingos, just about the only sign of life up here.

a moment to reflect

flamencos

Having spent long enough driving ancient fall-apart cars and knowing all the hallmarks of trouble, we were fully aware our Landcruiser was on its last legs, our increasingly grumpy driver nursing it along from place to place.

landcruiser feeling a little poorly

This meant there wasn’t much time for rock scrambling over the weather-worn rocks around the Árbol de Piedra (stone tree), but that was soon forgotten as we ended the day at the beautiful, red Laguna Colarada, with its strange green and yellow streaks and local colony of windswept alpacas.

woolly

olivia b

and another

Our third day, however, was the most visually arresting, which was just as well given the 4am start. But the dark, early take-off was more than made up for by the incredible Sol de Mañana Geyser Basin. The geysers are 4850m high, bubbling like crazy with thick sulphurous mud and enveloping us in clouds of stinky steam. It was beautiful in the early morning light although still bitterly cold. Thawing recovery was soon at hand though at the wonderful Termas de Polques, a small hot spring pool where we stripped down in freezing conditions and plunged into the best bath of our lives.

steamy dawn

burbling

bath time

From here we passed above the 5000m mark for only the second time on our trip before dropping down to the Laguna Verde, a green lake at 4400 metres sitting beneath the monumentally imposing Volcan Licancabur (5960m).

volcan licancabur

Another hour of driving delivered us to the border, where we sadly bid farewell to Bolivia and got our first taste of Chile in the strange but delightful desert outpost that is San Pedro de Atacama.

After the tranquil, beautiful Isla Del Sol and magical atmosphere of Lake Titicaca, anywhere was going to inevitably suffer in comparison. Yet La Paz was certainly one of the more vibrantly appealing cities of our South American time to date, although reminded us that it is the natural beauty of the continent rather than the hectic, complex cities that we enjoy the most.

la paz

At 3660m La Paz is the world’s highest capital city, with 2.3 million inhabitants, many indigenous (Bolivia has the highest proportion of indigenous South Americans on the continent, estimated at about 55%). And indeed in many ways La Paz is like a massively overgrown village, the only capital in which we have seen so many people still wearing traditional cultural dress.

la paz helado

The city has sprawled through, up and over a deep canyon, with the more affluent areas, unusually, downtown. Climbing up the steep canyon walls are thousands of makeshift brick homes, housing many of the rural poor who have come to the city in search of opportunities beyond subsistence living. Looking across at these near-vertical slums, they call to mind Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado’s incredible images from the 1980s of workers in the Serra Pelada gold mine of Brazil, an unstable, poverty-stricken clambering simply to survive.

la paz

We were treated to a snail-paced city tour thanks to our bus into town arriving just in time to be caught up in a huge street demonstration, supporters of one of the political parties vying for election that weekend marching slowly up the road from La Paz to El Alto.

Once we finally made it, much of our time in La Paz was spent soaking up the streets, nibbling on the delicious salteñas (savoury pastries, like a juicy empanada) and looking for a tent for our forthcoming Patagonian expedition. We wandered through the old colonial streets and the centre of town, also visiting the witch’s markets – resisting the dried llama foetuses, but scoring an ultra-warm alpaca wool beanie and gloves.

colonial streets

While waiting for a traditional folk music peña to begin one night, we stumbled upon a tiny little bar come performance space next door and spend the evening drinking a surprisingly pleasant bottle of Bolivian red, entertained by two young solo guitarists. They would take it in turns to perform a bracket of three or four songs, the first playing some enjoyable original numbers while the other performed popular traditional songs, the small audience joining in and singing what were obviously the shared songs of Bolivian life, singing with far more aplomb than I think we would find at home.

Around 5pm on our final day in La Paz, Ben realised what the date was and mentioned to Serena that perhaps some form of occasion-marking may be in order – given that it was our fifth wedding anniversary. It’s not so much that we had forgotten it was coming as we had lost track of the dates along the way. Heading to a nice looking café/bar in which we had enjoyed a coffee the day prior, we took our time choosing an appropriately celebratory drink. Champagne? A cocktail? Finally deciding on a couple of cocktails and placing our order, the waitress informed us that due to the forthcoming weekend presidential elections, nobody was allowed to serve any alcoholic drinks as of noon that day. So over a passionfruit juice and a Sprite, we toasted five years.

Downhill madness

In search of another adrenalin-releasing thrill (Serena), and having heard it was a scenically spectacular ride (Benjamin), we found ourselves climbing high out of La Paz into the surrounding mountain range and hopping onto mountain bikes, careering down The World’s Most Dangerous Road. Now before parents get the wrong idea, the road’s description is quite a misnomer – there is nothing particularly dangerous about the road at all. The sheer drop off the side is, however, a long, long way down.

We raced across steep cliffs, many corners littered with crosses marking the point where one of the scores of drivers to have plunged off the edge had perished.  Whether or not there is something in our blood that makes ‘sensible’ out of the question or simply by coincidence, five of our group of eleven are Australian and turn out to be the five who lead the way, intent on racing past each other as we slip and slide over the rocky road and through gravel-rich corners.

None of us are mountain bikers, but with full-faced helmets, gloves and thick pants we’re ready to take it on… racing down behind our guide who has done this trip hundreds of times already. If he was still in good shape after all that time, surely the eleven of us would be fine to do the trip once unscathed?

a clearly terrified serena

The day starts with a light breakfast in a La Paz cafe, the 6.30am coffee a welcome wake-up call and enough to get us all talking. Within an hour we’re climbing out of the van and onto our bikes: snazzy numbers with full suspension – not so good if you’re planning on riding uphill but perfect for the 64 kilometre downhill ride we’re about to make. We begin at La Cumbre, our barren, windswept starting point 4640 metres above sea level. From here we will be thrilling our way down 3345 metres to the humid jungles of Yolosa far, far below. At this height, early in the morning, we put on every layer we’ve brought: long pants, shirts, fleeces and some of us are sporting alpaca beanies. But with our daggy orange vests, helmets and biking gloves we’re hardly about to make any successful fashion statements.

serena plots her course

After a safety briefing and some biking basics we head off on the easy part of the ride, the asphalt section which packs in some sweet bends to glide around, going faster and faster as our confidence builds and we become part of our bikes. This part takes us past harsh, rocky mountain top, some still covered with snow despite the fact that we’re heading into summer. Ribbons of cloud wrap around the top and rise up from the valleys, but for the most part the view here is incredible: clear vistas of steep, rocky mountains tumbling into deep V-shaped valleys.

plunging cloudward

We pass through the police drug check point, and soon we’re on the beginning of the Death Road proper: a narrow, dirt road that until the end of 2006 was the main road between La Paz and Coroico, linking the heights of La Paz (3660 metres) with the much lower, warmer, humid jungle of the Yungas. Nowadays, after a new road was built on the other side of the valley, it’s solely the province of mountain biking tourists and the odd taxi ferrying curious tourists who have decided mountain bikes are not for them.

into the jungle

On a mountain bike the tight curves and narrow road are easily navigated, though the number of bloody scabs and bruises we’ve seen on other travellers as we got nearer to Bolivia was testament to the need to take a certain level of care and we heard tell of one guy who recently bailed from his bike as it plunged down one of the 600 metre drops while he was left sprawled on the gravel road. On a car, minibus, bus, or camión (imagine a cattle truck packed with people instead of cattle and you get the general idea) the trip must have been truly frightening, particularly meeting someone coming the other way.

don't look down...

Given the Bolivian driving attitude – drink driving, and purposely driving into someone during a right of way dispute – coupled with the narrow, barrier-less and often slippery road, it is no surprise that there were an appalling number of deaths. Bolivia eventually received a US$120 million loan from the Inter-American Development Bank for the new road after it concluded that in terms of fatalities (200-300 per year) it really was The World’s Most Dangerous Road.

round the bend

On the first few curves, we take it all fairly slowly and cautiously. None of us want to end up sprawled across the rocky, dirt road… or worse still, spilling over one of its steep cliff edges. But fairly soon we’ve learnt how to handle our bikes: speeding out of curves, giving a bit of extra speed to counteract the odd slip and slide as the tires catch on rocks or get caught in some deep gravel.

the final stretch

We ride through waterfalls, plough across a shallow river and plunge into the cloud we have seen from above. It gets hotter and hotter as we go and we strip down layer after layer. After about four hours of riding down, down, down, we’ve finally reached the bottom of the ride, Yolosa at 1295 metres, where we kick back and enjoy a well-earned beer.

After that we hit a nearby hotel where we dip in the pool before fuelling up over a buffet lunch. At 3.30pm our group climbs back in the van. Everyone else is heading back to La Paz, but we have decided we’re ready for some jungle chill-out time, so climb into a taxi with seven other locals and take a far shorter, more dangerous trip (another crazy driver), to the nearby jungle town of Coroico.

the balcony view for which we had to settle

A sleepy town perched on a ridge over the snaking river and jungle below, the languid pace here is a long way from that of bustling, chaotic La Paz. The lush, humid fecundity is our first jungle hit since Tena in Ecuador almost three months earlier, so we decide to do what everyone else seems to be doing – nothing much at all. Our visit coincided with Bolivia’s national election, which popular incumbent president Evo Morales was expected to win in a landslide.

coroico

Morales is particularly popular around this area, the one-time coca leaf farmer and first indigenous Bolivian to hold the presidency being a champion of the poorer classes and rural populations. Everywhere we turned Evo’s black, blue and white colours were fluttering and the only other real contender, Manfred, was always facing an insurmountable battle.

Barely an hour after voting closed the result seemed assured, at least that’s what we gathered from the mass of people taking to the town’s small streets and the impromptu marching band banging away while fire crackers were set off one after another as we watched celebrations take over the tiny town square.

Dragging ourselves back up the mountain pass to La Paz a couple of days later, we dropped by Commedie del l’arte for a delicious yet obscenely oversized French meal, barely able to make our way home afterwards, both ruing and savouring our gluttony. The next day we polished off a few last sights and in the evening hopped on our overnight bus for Uyuni, blissfully sleeping through the worst of the rocky, bumpy cross-country goat track that leads to this frontier town on the edge of the Salar de Uyuni, the world’s largest salt plain.

niña titicaca

Finally leaving Cusco, after sneaking in a full-day rafting trip but being thwarted by too much rain and dangerous conditions for our proposed three-day river journey, we set out for our final Peruvian destination, the town of Puno. Once again the trip itself was half the adventure, the bus taking us higher and higher into the Andes, with breathtakingly evocative landscapes gliding by the window the entire way. Our journey up towards the pass followed a snaking river that threaded its way along a valley floor, with only the hardiest grasses and scrub growing at these inhospitable heights.

Like many South American towns, Puno itself is not easy on the eye – it seems to have grown too hastily and yet nothing is ever quite finished – but the lakeside setting is spectacular and draws the gaze away towards the area’s natural beauty.

It’s difficult to say what sets Lake Titicaca apart from other lakes, yet when you see it, you can’t help but feel it. With 1125km of shore it’s by no means a puddle and at an altitude of 3812m (12,500 feet), there is a top-of-the-world sensation that lends it a rarefied air, it feels somehow pure, untouched. It is also lit by an intense clear sunlight by day, and skirted by dark and impressively stroppy storms each afternoon we are there. On our first afternoon we took a paddle around the edge of the lake on an out-of-control fibreglass swan, then enjoyed some fresh trout cooked by the lake’s edge, sheltering under a tarp from the storm. Spanish practice came in the form of Los Simpsons episodes on the hotel television, with the first tasting of our two kilograms of mangos also featuring in the evening’s entertainment.

We were up early the next morning to take a small boat to the island of Taquile, travelling over with some nurses visiting the tiny island to perform health checks. The steep trail from the boat dock to the top of the island would normally be a cinch, but at this altitude even the Peruvians are taking their time. Add to this the bags and coolers containing equipment and a week of supplies we are carrying for the nurses, which all seem to weigh at least three times what they really must, and we happily pause when they do, taking plenty of opportunities to drink in the amazing views back across the lake.

the top of the path at last...

local traffic

taquile folk - donning our favourite woolly hats of the trip

kids in a candy shop

We enjoy a delicious trout lunch cooked by a local family in the island’s communal cooking space, with wonderful views out across the other side of the island towards Bolivia. We return from Taquile late in the afternoon via the Uros, a bizarre group of about 40 artificial islands built entirely from floating reeds. These islands are constructed from the plentiful ‘totora’ reeds, constantly replaced from above as they slowly rot away from beneath, and it is a very strange sensation to walk upon them.

titicaca dreaming

uros floating islands

The islands vary from quite large and supporting a handful of families to barely large enough to hold three or four reed huts and it was on one of these smaller ones we stopped. A single family lived here, spread across four small huts. Though the local languages are Quechua and Aymara, the two teenage sisters we met were able to discuss life on the island in passable Spanish, while selling us tourist-friendly trinkets. Although it was stunningly beautiful, we wondered what it must be like to be so exposed to the elements in a place where nights and winters are brutally cold.

uros floating islander

The next morning it was time to farewell Puno and Peru and strike out for Bolivia. But this was not to be the end of our stay on Titicaca as we were aiming for Isla del Sol on the Bolivian side of the lake, the ‘Island of the Sun’.

Isla Del Sol

Isla Del Sol holds a special place in local mythology, considered to be the place where Manco Capac, the first Inca, emerged. Manco was the son of Inti, the Sun god. It also happens to be a remarkably beautiful island, large enough for a couple of days rambling. Most people who make it this far only visit as a day-trip from the rather unedifying shoreline town of Copacabana, but the few who stay longer are treated to a wonderful experience.

Jumping off the bus at midday in Copacabana, we wandered past rows of empty but attractive hotels. We’re in Bolivia in low season and the town has an empty, honky tonk, tumbleweed feeling… as though we’re here a long time after the party is over.

We make our way to the harbour, buy tickets for the 1.30pm boat and choose the busiest of beachside shack restaurants. The trucha a la Diablo (trout to the devil) tastes fantastic and we finish with a much needed warming tea con canela (with cinnamon). We lug our heavy gear to the small boat and cram ourselves in, along with close to 40 other tourists.

We strike up a conversation with the two people in front of us, Morgan from New Zealand and Ariadne from Barcelona, who have been living together in London before this trip. Although unplanned, they end up in the same hotel as us, along with an interesting Moroccan/US couple, a Brazilian guy and girl from Singapore and our evening is spent chatting for hours and hours and hours – an easy and interesting conversation that reminds us how nice it would be to be surrounded by our friends instead of these rare, snatched moments of connection beyond chitchat and destination tips. But before we can share our long evening conversation, there is an afternoon to pass.

isla del sol

Our boat takes almost two hours, a slow, gentle chug past mountains that spill into the grey-blue waters of Lake Titicaca. The immensity of the lake, the otherworldliness of being up so high, the shortness of breath as we seek oxygen in this rarefied atmosphere, all contribute to making Titicaca unique. A vast stillness spreads throughout and the beauty touches us deeply.

Off the boat and we don our backpacks again, gritting our teeth against what we know will be an unpleasant walk. A steep stone staircase twists up and up, out of the small boat harbour and to the top of the string of homes far above us. We know we are too heavily loaded for this walk, and the elevation will further bugger us, but we are determined to make our own way up and not take the lazy option of paying one of the young local boys to carry our things for us.

The trip up turns out not to be quite as bad as we expect, and Ben ducks into a few hotels on the way up before we spill over the crest of the island and discover the sublime Inti Kala hostal. It is the most spectacular accommodation of our trip to date, a room with a view sweeping across the lake and neighbouring islands to the distant shore, for the princely sum of $4 a night for a double room. While a rewarding destination in its own right, Bolivia’s gentleness on the hip-pocket is a bonus for any budget traveller, particularly when $60 Italian camp-site fees were still fresh enough in the memory.

cerveza o'clock

We reward ourselves with several beers on the hotel terrace, chattering away to the other guests as we watch the sun melt with glorious deep orange and indigo hues into the lake. When night is finally upon us, we go no further than the hotel restaurant, where we have yet more fish, rice and salad. The conversation rambles on and as some of the other guests return they join our group and we talk and talk about experiences in our lives, our values, our aspirations, discovering again that many people are travelling here as part of a transition period in their lives, often making quite big, fairly scary changes.

isla de sunset

After staying up far too late discussing life, the universe and everything with this lovely group of people, we hit our bed from where we could see the brilliantly lustrous moon spread its beam across the shimmering lake, thinking life can perhaps get worse than this. We sleep with the curtains open, not wanting to shut out the view, though when we wake in the morning we can see nothing until we have wiped away the steamy condensation that has formed on the windows – it is just as well we are not trying to camp out in the thin, cold air.

We rise early and start the long walk to the other end of the island. Somehow, what seems to be a clear path going to the summit of the hill suddenly evaporates to nothingness, and we bush-bash our way across small fields with their small, tough bushes and piles of sheep and donkey dung. We eventually get back on track, and are joined by a local dog, who decides it has no more pressing commitment for the day than to lead us on our merry way.

our perro chaperone

The walk skims along the ridge, so we have stunning views to either side, out beyond the island to the delightfully clear lake. At the end we meet the others from the hotel. They are just about to catch the boat back to Copacabana, whilst we elect to hang around and explore the beach and ruins, opting for the slow walk home. They are refreshed from a deeply chilling dip in the lake, but their enthusiasm fails to warm us into taking the plunge in these icy waters.

bay of cows (well at least one)

Instead we have a long lunch at the end of a decrepit jetty, our friendly dog waiting patiently on the sand for us, watching a stray cow idly amble along the sandy beach. We finish off with an explore of the nearby ruins, amusing ourselves with ducking through the tiny doorways and following the labyrinthine tunnels, leading us this way and that. On our way out we come across a gaggle of op-shop dressed kids in their early 20s, who have mistakenly taken the wrong turn from the harbour, mixing up their north and south and ending up at the wrong end of the island. They are less than pleased at the realisation that they have 3-4 hours more walking in front of them, though like us they have picked up a friendly local dog who is guiding them cheerfully (albeit ineffectively) on their way. We get chatting and find out they are ex-Melbourne High kids, living in Brunswick and from the same year as a good family friend. We chalk this up as one of the more unusual ‘small-world’ meetings of our trip to date and leave them to explore the ruins.

the long and winding road

titicaca burro

We enjoy another stunning sunset, though this time without our friends from the night before as they have all headed onwards, either up to Peru or down to La Paz. We wish we could stay here for days yet, spending our time walking, writing and boating about, but we too are on a mission to be in Buenos Aires by Christmas and are off to La Paz the following day. With rumours of road closures and boat blockades we don’t want to cut our timing too fine, as we’re fully aware that what should be a five hour journey could end up taking days.

But the lake hasn’t finished with us yet and we woke during the night to the most ferocious electrical storm either of us has ever seen. The rain lashed the large bay windows and the booming thunder cracked virtually in time with the flashes of lightning, rumbling through the room. The centre of the storm seemed to be hovering over the island, the electricity in the air setting our hairs on end. We probably couldn’t have slept on even if we had wanted, but the dazzling light show was too humblingly spectacular to ignore.

It isn’t difficult to see how Pachamama, a benevolent “mother nature” (in Aymara and Quechua ‘mama’ = mother and ‘pacha’ = world or land), came to be worshipped in this part of the world. The extremes of nature we have encountered have left such deep, lasting impressions on us both and often defy description – it can be overwhelming grasping for ways to try and get it across and we invariably fall short. We are once again left wondering what it will be like to be back in a normal life, not waking up to new and remarkable experiences like this day after day, but vow to consider that when the time comes and for now simply ensure we enjoy every moment.