October 30th was spent on a very comfortable bus heading to Salta in Argentina. I watched "The Motorcycle Diaries", which made me want to go back to the beginning of the trip and start all over again. Salta is known for wine, horse riding, hiking etc, and the usual colonial buildings in town (although not a huge number due to earthquakes). We spent the Wednesday wandering around town with Eva, a German girl from the hostel who was on the same bus as us the day b...

Up at 3:30am for a trip to the Geiser del Tatio, a 'field' of geysers high in the mountains a couple of hours outside San Pedro. Not a great start as the minibus crawled along at a snail's pace, at this rate we wouldn't be there until evening. The rest of the group consisted of firey Spanish and S American folk and so they soon made their feelings clear. Initially explaining that the bus have mechanical problems, the driver relented and put his foot down. Vamos!!...

And so to country number 5 of 6, Chile. After a slightly eventful border crossing where the Chilean representative of the transfer company was unwilling to let us on the onward bus or explain why this was, we arrived into a hot and sunny San Pedro de Atacama. It was nice to be back in the heat, and also back at a sensible altitude (only 2,407m!). After an overdue hot shower we headed into town to check out what to do. The town itself is pretty small and looks l...

We didn't spend the night in Uyuni, but the hamlet of Villamar doesn't seem to achieve Google Maps validation. So, up at 4am to get well onto the salt flats before dawn. Except our jeep really had given up the ghost by this point and we were spread out across the other three jeeps. Luckily Fabrice and I were the slowest to get ready (well, I was) and so we ended up in the jeep of the people we knew. Simon and Caitlin were split into the other two and endured muc...

Day 3. Lakes, deserts, rock formations, mountains, volcanos, lava fields and salt flats. And loads more flamingos. For me personally I think Day 3 was the most stunning from a landscape point of view. Racing across open desert leaving clouds of dust in our wake, clambering around on rock and lava formations, crossing the first of the salt flats, the list goes on. Absolutely incredible. Day 3 was also when our jeep really began to feel the strain, there was a fa...