Different places, different activities

In the past weeks I’ve been in several countries and have seen very divers landscapes. Of course this goes hand in hand with different habits and different kinds of adventures. Although South-America seems to have less impact on me than Asia, there are still way too many little things to put in a blog. Therefor I’ll focus on the most striking bits and the things I’ve done.

While still in Santiago I visited the beachy Valparaíso and Viña del Mar, the city of Mendoza in Argentina, La Serena in Chile, San Pedro de Atacama, Uyuni in Bolivia and La Paz. Valpo and Viña were quite touristic but if you walk around on your own instead of taking an overpriced tour, it’s great. On the beach of Viña I met two guys who spontaneously invited me over for some homecooked food.
Mendoza was my first visit to another country in South-America and I was very curious what would be different. After mostly vegetarian food in Santiago I was really happy with the delicious meat in Argentina. The plancha (barbequed food) and the Maltinese peceno were really good and people say the choripan (chorizo in bread) is very good too. Staying in Andres’ home (couchsurfing) was a really fun experience and his friend Fabio took me climbing one of the region’s mountains.
Because there was no bus between San Juan in Argentina and La Serena in Chile, I went from Mendoza right back to Santiago and further on to La Serena. With lots of Italian influences its buildings and sculptures were wonderful to see the sun go down on. In this town I stayed at Alvaro’s place and got to enjoy some meals with him and with some of his friends. The city is known for its surfing, but the waves were too high for me, so I focused on walking the beach and visiting the towns zoo. Here I saw my first llama and guanaco!
A long but easy bus ride from La Serena I arrived in San Pedro de Atacama, the one in the driest desert in the world. It was more touristy than any other town I had been in and I ended up in my first hostel of this trip. Although it didn’t improve my Spanish, it was nice to have other people to go on adventures with. Since surfing in La Serena didn’t work out, I was extra psyched to go sandboarding and we even got to combine that with a sunset over Valle de la Luna (and pisco sour for those who do drink).
From San Pedro there was a tour that had been in my planning for months: the three day tour to Uyuni, including the biggest whitest salt flat of all times. With a bunch of great people I met in San Pedro we crosesd the border to Bolivia, saw lagunes, geysers, flamingo’s, vulcano’s, desert (parts?), llama’s, vicuña’s and some interesting hostels… Even knowing the outcome of the Netherlands-Argentina football game, I’d say it was worth joining this group and watching the last games in the next town.
In Uyuni the group split and I got to hop on the first bus to La Paz with two Australian brothers. They are tons of fun to hang around with and they seemed to enjoy my Spanish translating skills. In La Paz we finally found some showers again and in the high city with mostly bare brick buildings there was a lot to do. Many of the party people from our hostel rode the Death Road and I, after a nice city tour, opted to do some repelling off of the 15th flour of a hotel, dressed as Santa.

As I write this, I’m in Copacabana, and have a room with view over Lake Titicaca. What I’m going to do here is something you’ll get to read in the next blog. Until then!