25.8.2009 Tuesday, Recoleta & La Boca, Buenos Aires

Soundtrack of my life Under Pressure Freddie Mercury, Roger Taylor, John Deacon, Brian May & David Bowie

Beware of dancing businessmen carrying attache cases and laughing all the way to the bank?

The Recoleta cemetery is a town within a town where the high and mighty gather for their last peaceful sleep.

Soon it will be adios, Buenos Aires. This city is grandiose and chaotic, spectacularly rich and dirt poor, exactly like real cities are. Sadly, didn't get a chance to attend a tango class. Another life, another time.

24.8.2009 Monday, Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay

You could easily mistake the historic quarter of Colonia del Sacramento for Suomenlinna, and besides, almost everything else in this mellow town is very much like Finland in the seventies. With the emerging cellulose industry, the geopolitical position next to a powerful, capricious nation having vastly larger population and resources, and the careful tiptoeing along the lines of neutrality, the similarities may not stop there. I shed a tear or two for the innocence long gone in Finland and about to be lost in Uruguay.

22.8.2009 Saturday, Retiro, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Place of Angus cattle worship, I suppose.

Me and me buddies hangin' round at the Plaza de las Naciones Unidas. And I'm telling ya, they're good listeners!

21.8.2009 Friday, Palermo Viejo, Buenos Aires, Argentina

Back in Buenos Aires, the circle is complete. Palermo Viejo is the bastard child of Greenwich Village and Montmartre, full of lively bars, packed restaurants and edgy fashion shops. And nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

20.8.2009 Thursday, Cataratas del Iguazu, Argentina

Spent six or seven hours by walking around the various falls of Iguazu. Not too bad.

19.8.2009 Wednesday, Foz do Iguacu, Brazil

Soundtrack of my life Aqualera do Brasil Ary Barroso

I love the smell of new country points in the morning! Foz de Iguacu, the Brasilian contribution to the triple border area, is a big and sophisticated town with a remarkably good selection of Havaianas and cachaca. The latter was priced at approximately 2 EUR/litre in supermarkets and less than 1 EUR/litre at the gas station. The award for the most beautiful set of banknotes on the continent also goes to Brazil.

18.8.2009 Tuesday, Ciudad del Este, Paraguay

On Monday we took one hell of a cross-continental twenty-three-hour bus trip, ending up at the triple border of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay. Surprisingly enough, the journey was nowhere nearly as painful as your average ten-hour flight (or make that two-hour, assuming TSA is involved), largely because of those spectacular lie-flat seats, being the norm rather than the exception in Argentinian long distance buses. We spent the night in Argentina and moved on to check out the knockoff salesman's paradise, Ciudad del Este in Paraguay. This bustling border town and tax-free heaven is packed with counterfeit electronics, DVDs, shoes, lingerie, and, allegedly, smugglers. I'm sorry to say that we didn't really have the stamina to shop much. Instead, we had some good ole down-to-earth Paraguayan food and cold beer in a truckers' cafe.

16.8.2009 Sunday, Salta, Argentina

Salta is the largest town in Northern Argentina, and a lovely one at that. It is not quite as cosmopolitan as Buenos Aires, but it is by far more picturesque than Mendoza.

We visited the antique-ridden night market on Balcarce and dined in a wonderful restaurant nearby. The pork chops were good, the malbec tip from the Porsche fan waiter was spot on, but what really drove me postal were the tomatoes. Most of my life I had thought that my childhood memories of tomatoes being sweet, juicy, aromatic and delicious were just a nostalgic delusion, colored by time. In Argentina, I found out this was not the case. The Argentinian tomatoes still taste the same, and better, much unlike the supermarket tomatoes in western countries. May Veijo Monsanto be threefold cursed.

15.8.2009 Saturday, Quebrada de Humahuaca, Argentina

Next stop: Quebrada de Humahuaca, a psychedelically colored mountain valley in northern Argentina. Erosion of the ravine has revealed wildly alternating layers of various minerals with different colors. The result makes you suspect your sanity when you first see a glimpse of the canyon from the corner of your eye.

On a mountaintop next to the lovely little township of Tilcara there is a 12th century fortification of Omaguaca Indians, partially renovated, partially invaded by a massive forest of cacti. Thousands of Omaguacas used to live here before the Incas took over their kingdom just before the Spaniards arrived. The winding streets were deserted except for one friendly dog. With the 360 degree view to Quebrada around the stronghold, plentiful water from the river below, and the strategic position on top of the steep hill, I can imagine worse places to spend one's life.

14.8.2009 Friday, Villazon, Bolivia/Argentina border

The border formalities when leaving Bolivia were short and sweet, but entering Argentina 100 meters further took us almost three hours. And I don't really think it was because they were ardently searching for fugitives (such as these dudes whose photos decorated the window of the border station). It seemed more as if the gentleman checking the passports was really determined to beat his Solitaire high score.

13.8.2009 Thursday, Ruta 602, Bolivia

We spent two days mostly by passing through the dusty Bolivian countryside in local buses, full up to the brim with people, babies, sheep and cargo. The early morning bus departed while it was still frosty and the bus was absolutely freezing. There was a 4 inch by 4 inch hole in the body of the bus right next to the seat; we fixed it with duct tape. The scenery was as lovely as ever. We were not very far from where Butch Cassidy and Sundance Kid met their last destiny.

At times, the highway 602 was not so much of a road as a carefully selected route along dried out riverbeds and through some tight canyons. The narrowest spot in the crack pictured below was approximately 2.6 meters in width, while the width of our bus was 2.5 meters or so. The bus driver speeded through the canyon at about 80 km per hour. I would have screamed, but not a sound came out of my mouth.

Many upscale places in Bolivia - for example Mitru, the best hotel in Tupiza - had furniture all made out of cactus. The shapes and the texture were very appealing, but I didn't even dare dream of taking any of this stuff back home through the Australian quarantine.

12.8.2009 Wednesday, Uyuni Salar, Bolivia

The climax of the safari was the salt plain, Salar de Uyuni: a vast flatland of blinding white with mirages in the distance. The most memorable moment was the visit to a salt brick mining site. The bricks, used to build more salt hotels, are drilled from the six-inch-thick layer of salt, and piled in vertical columns to fully dry out. If there ever was a perfect opportunity to feel like Godzilla in Tokyo, this was it.

The shores of the flatland and the infamous Isla Pescado were dotted with magnificent cacti.

The Bolivians also harvest the salt for cooking and similar traditional purposes, drying it first like a stack of hay. Beneath the layer of salt, the salars harbour a more valuable commodity that might make Bolivians (or at least their hacienda owners and politicians) very rich one day: the largest deposit of lithium on this planet, desperately needed for the batteries of those billions of electric cars the middle-class Chinese and Indians will be driving 20-30 years from now. There is even a rumour that the French might finance boring a tunnel beneath the Andes to connect this landlocked country to the Pacific and an endless armada of dry bulk ships. A travel companion of ours, Philippe, was a Frenchman, so I asked him what he thought of the idea. He strongly encouraged me to take any such rumour with a grain of salt.

11.8.2009 Tuesday, Altiplano, Bolivia

The three-day jeep safari on Altiplano (or, Uyuni Salar, as it is usually called) was all inclusive, but that didn't exactly spell out luxurious. None of the hotels in the region had electricity or heating, so the indoor temperature fell below zero in the night, and five woollen blankets were barely enough to prevent hypothermia. The jeeps were straight from the Mad Max movies - ours seldom started without all of us pushing it first, and lost a tyre every now and then. Furthermore, from what I've heard and read of other Uyuni Salar travel agencies, this is the norm, not the exception. Welcome to Bolivia!

The region we were crossing may be one of the most inhospitable on this planet, but it was by no means devoid of life. Flocks of flamingos inhabited the shallow salt-water lagoons, suspicious vicunas patrolled on their shores, and we spotted the occasional viscacha, fox and condor.

Tonight's accommodation was in a salt hotel. The building and all its furniture were made of salt, while the floor was covered by a two-inch layer of rock salt. Remarkably, there was even a shower in a booth outside, with approximately 30 seconds worth of hot water for everyone who was willing to pay 10 BOBs for it.

10.8.2009 Monday, Altiplano, Bolivia

The early morning in Bolivia was chilling. I've never been that cold in my life, not even in Australian houses during midwinter nights. The combination of four-plus-kilometer altitude and howling wind was ruthless, but the Bolivian scenery with puffing volcanoes and crispy saltwater lagoons was sensational.

In the afternoon, the temperature rose to 17 C or so, and some brave souls found courage to take a dip in aguas termales.

The highest waypoint of the day was the geyser region at 5000 meters. I'm not quite sure what was banned by this sign, but apparently it wasn't working...

9.8.2009 Sunday, Atacama Desert, Chile

Altiplano, the vast desert in Northern Chile and neighbouring Bolivia, is the largest high plateau on Earth after Tibet. After the astonishing morning flight over the Andes, we started our acclimatisation in San Pedro de Atacama, a tiny oasis in this arid landscape and a mere 2400 meters above sea level.

The sunset from the viewing platform over Moon Valley was not half bad, but we were expecting to see even more stunning scenery in days to come.

7.8.2009 Friday, Valle Nevado, Chile

On the fourth day of skiing, we got unlucky with the rental gear. No worries - happiness is a Burton demo tent!

5.8.2009 Wednesday, El Colorado, Chile

Another early morning rise in Santiago, another local skiing center checked. Skiing in El Colorado was even better than in Valle Nevado, but the downside was that, unlike the day before, the Ski Total bus didn't go straight to the skiing center from Santiago. Instead, the bus picked up dozen or so people from half a dozen hotels, and practically every one of them was late...Santiago may well be the most civilized capital in South America, but, oh well, the leopard never really changes its spots.

4.8.2009 Tuesday, Valle Nevado, Chile

Santiago is surrounded by several skiing centers within a day trip, Valle Nevado being perhaps the best known of them. Unfortunately, there was no powder on the slopes, but the combination of abundant sunshine, high altitude (highest lift at 3800 meters) and dry air magically prevent the slopes from turning into an ice skate rink. My eighties skiing gear was very retro!

3.8.2009 Monday, Valparaiso, Chile

Valparaiso is a port town an hour's drive from Santiago consisting of cute old wooden villas and Italianate stone buildings sprinkled on steep hills. Being winter as it was, the coast was covered in fog, making the containership terminal all the more industro-romantic.

2.8.2009 Sunday, Ruta 60, Chile

South American long distance buses are much like transvestites in that they come in two flavours: regular and executive. The lie-flat leather seats of the CATA Internacional Ejecutivo were easily better than those in Qantas business class, the steward never once spilled any sparkling wine, and the sky was clear. In combination, this made the seven hour journey across the Andes along the serpentine roads quite enjoyable.