San Pedro de Atacama, Chile

Early in the morning I took a bus in Salta which brought me over the 4400m high Paso Jama to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. The scenery during the bus ride was spectacular: colorful mountains (red, green, grey, and brown rocks at once), salt lakes, and volcanoes. Since you will see a lot of these things in this and the probably also the following posts, let me skip the wonderful pictures and descend from the pass and it's impressive volcanoes

down to San Pedro de Atacama, a picturesque oasis in the dry and hot Atacama dessert surrounded by snowcapped 6000m high volcanoes:

San Pedro de Atacama is just a spectacular place which seems to be out of this world. Not only the surrounding scenery is incredible, also the town itself is charming. Narrow and picturesque streets, blinding white adobe houses, a nice main plaza

a beautiful church with white adobe walls and a roof made of cactii,

and a colorful handcrafts market.

To make it short, San Pedro de Atacama is truly a small paradise in the Atacama dessert, a wonderful place. Unfortunately, I was not only the only one to discover this. There are quite many tourists strolling through the streets of San Pedro. However, if you stay off the main track you will discover wonderful views, such as the following one:

I met lots of travellers in the bus and, once we arrived, we also met a Chilean guy who owns sort of a hostel. So altogether we took over his entire house with 12 people. Our Chilean friend (sorry, I forgot his name) was a former bodyguard and so we had lots of fun practicing martial arts in his backyard.

As usual, we had a truly epic asado together with some locals and lots of beer and vine. A great first evening in beautiful San Pedro de Atacama.

The next day I got up early (without a hangover), strolled through the streets of San Pedro, and rented a bike - a really good one with disc brakes, suspension, and all the equipment you need to have fun.

Together with some friends from the hostel I cycled through the Valle de Muerte (death valley), a bizarre landscape of sand dunes, narrow gorges, sand and salt rocks (seriously!). On the pic below you can see Kathy, Nick, Jack, and Michelle cycling through this crazy scenery.

Oh yeah, and the best of it were the sandboards that we took with us :) A group of travelling buddies, sandboards, and mountainbikes... what more do you need for a perfect day in the Atacama dessert?

We made it to the end of the valley, where some pretty high sand dunes awaited us. Seems like fun, right Jack?

And it was fun although sandboarding is not as easy as I expected, not related to snowboarding at all... Well, goin' straight down wasn't hard ;)

Here Nick, our Utah local, shows how it's being done. Yeah!

After we were exhausted from hiking up the sand dunes we left the Valle de Muerte and headed North and hiked up a hill high above a fertile valley - the dessert was just on the backside of these rocks.

We found some old Inca ruins there. We strolled through the remains of an apparently larger village and had a nice view on the Atacma dessert, the oasis of San Pedro, and the volcanoes in the background.

On the backside of the hill with all the ruins we found the following mystical arch and some stone carvings. I guess at least the arch doesn't date back to the Incas, right?

We followed the narrow gorge behind the arch and entered a large cave system which has apparently a couple of kilometers of tunnels. From now on it was getting narrow and I was the only one who brought a torch...

But luckily we had five cameras with flash lights illuminating the narrow tunnels of the cave, right Kathy and Michelle?

We had a fun time in the cave until lots of boulders blocked our way, the tunnels were getting narrower, and the climbing inside the cave harder. So we decided to head back into the blazing sunlight of the Atacama dessert.

The others decided to head back to the hostel, take a shower, and regenerate from the long exhausting day. I thought that the time is till sufficient for some biking and exploring the area. So I crossed a range of salt mountains, the Cordillera de Sal, and took the road leading to Calama. How much fun cycling in the Atacama dessert is, you can't imagine it :)

I returned to the top of the Cordillera de Sal just in the right time to see the sunset high above the bizzare Valle de la Luna (moon valley), whose weird salt ridges indeed look like I imagine the moon:

Every travel guide book says that a sunset above the Valle de la Luna is one of the best views of all of Chile - it's right. Another sunset of the category "unimaginable beautiful"!

I stayed on top of the Cordillera del Sal until the last sun light faded away from the Valle de la Luna and the volcanoes marking the boarder to Argentina and Bolivia.

I had to cycle back to San Pedro in the darkness but this sunset was truly worth it. Back in San Pedro I met my friends and we went out for a delicious dinner with superb Chilean Cabernet Sauvignon. A great way to complete a fantastic day :)

I could have stayed another three or four days in San Pedro cyling through the Atacama dessert and it's beautiful landscape, but I was somehow attracted by the wild, beautiful, and undeveloped country on the backside of the volcanoes - Bolivia. Apparently the Salar de Uyuni, the biggest and highest salt flat in the world, should be one of the highlights of Latin America. That's why I and Jack decided to leave Chile behind us and take off on a three day offroad trip to Bolivia. This trip will lead us through the most spectacular scenery I have ever seen.

I hope you are all looking forward to the next post!

Florian

Salta and Around, Argentina

Hello and welcome to F.L.O.-TV!

This time we are broadcasting live and direct from hot and humid Salta in Nortwestern Argentina!

After being sick of the party life in Mendoza, I got on the next overnight bus heading North, which hopefully brings me back to my beloved mountains. Well, the first scenery I saw when I woke up on the bus was the following: Yungas (subtropical jungle) and farmland in the valleys and snowcovered 6000 m high mountains at the horizon. Yeah, looks very promising!

I got off the bus in Salta, a picturesque colonial town which reminds of the famous towns in the sierra in Mexico. The main difference is that it is not located in a high altitude dessert, but in a subtropical valley.

Let me show you around town: Fine colonial buildings from outside

and inside,

during the day

and at night:

Those of you who have already been to Central America (probably with me) will be reminded of beautiful places such as Zacatecas, Guanajato, Oaxaca, San Christobal De Las Casas, or Antigua. You can also find the colorful markets here that make the mentioned places so charming:

There's great food at the markets, such as empandas, humitas, tamales, etc. The first night in Salta I joined a BBQ which organized by my hostel staff. Let me just give you the facts: lomo (finest filtes) as much as you can eat, 2 bread, and one salad per person for roughly five Euros. Isn't that crazy, I mean not only this incredible cheap steaks (in Germany I would have paid 100 Euros for the all the meat I ate) but also the meat to non-meat ratio in the BBQ. I will miss Argentina ;(

Besides being a stunningly beautiful colonial town, Salta also offers spectacular nature right out of town. Together with a Canadian couple I hired a small car and a local guide that showed us the way to a town called Cachi and also all the highlights on the way. When you leave Salta's valley, you quickly end up in narrow subtropical gorges, the yungas.

Then the road climbs a little, the valley opens up, and the scenery gets a little arider.

As usual when you get higher up, condors are circling above your head. I took the opportunity to ask our guide (Esteban) what condors are really capable of doing. I heard so many rumours about condors killing people, horses etc. Fact is that condors can easily kill and carry away little goats and sheeps, but Esteban has never heard of children being attacked by a condor...

At the following picture you can see me standing high above the valley (at 3300 m) and also the road leading up there. Isn't it a charming place? Another sweet mountain bike route ;)

The following picture is taken inside a small road chapel. Do you see the cigarettes? No, it's not litter! Back in the days the natives always started ceremonies with tobacco and they still do it today, just a little different ;)

The road climbed higher up to the altiplano, a dessert-like environment inhabited by guanacos, llamas, and wild donkeys. When hiking around there you should be especially careful with the donkeys, they apparently kill more people than snakes do... it doesn't seem to be a very heroic death to be killed by a donkey :) As you can see, the scenery is spectacular up there: dry dessert, rocks in all colors, and high snow-capped mountains in the background.

Just the drive itself was a lot of fun, since Esteban brought his Argentinian reggae collection :) It almost felt like being on a road trip with friends. Check out our reggae mobile cruising through the altiplano:

The vegetation up there, if there is any, is dominated by cardones - cactus-like plants. Although cardones look like cacti, they are in fact not sponges (as the latter) but related to trees.

Cardones do not grow as in the typical wild west movies, where there is a single cardon or cactus standing at the horizon. There are in fact entire forests of them. I took some time walking around the Parque Nacional Los Cardones, have a look at the loco scenery:

What a freaky scenery with the cardones and the snow-capped 6000 m high Cachi Mountains in the background, isn't it? If you examine the next picture thoroughly you will find exactly four "West Coast Signs", where are they? If you want a hint, then zoom to my hands ;)

We moved on and found quite nice shots near the road, such as llama warnings

and of course magnificient sceneries:

Finally we arrived at Cachi, a small but beautiful town whose name means "salt" in Quechua (the ancient Inca languaga). In Cachi, all the old colonial houses around the main plaza are painted in white or in pastel colors, which sets the town in perfect harmony and accord with its surrounding and the blue skies.

What can you find in Cachi? Lots of artwork, handcrafts, stones carved by the Incas etc. Quick question: what was the Incas' favourite animal? For the answer take a look at the stone carving:

A llama, isn't it? Or what do you say, oll' pal?

To make it short, Cachi is a beautiful small Andean town set against picturesque mountains. A perfect place to hang out and enjoy the harmony of architecture and nature.

And of course to enjoy Cachi's famous local product - chilli:

There is also some hiking around Salta's yungas down in the valley. But believe me it is tropically hot and humid down there:

I hiked up Salta's local mountain, Cerro San Bernardo. Take a close look at the next picture, can you see the spiders everywhere?

No? Well, then you might need another closer picture. Can you see them now?

These spiders are literally everywhere and almost reach the size of my hand. Spooky isn't it? Apparently there are also some really dangerous snakes around here. Luckily, I didn't meet any of them ;)

I just stayed a short time in Salta since the place I actually want to go is on the Chilean side of the mountains - the Atacama dessert. Nevertheless, Salta was a cool and relaxing stop on my route, where I found a picturesque city in an even more beautiful surrounding.

Since my last post I somehow like to finish my posts with a small pig. I don't know why, I it was next to the road and it was kind of cute ;)

Stay posted and ¡Hasta luego, muchachos!

Flo