Some pictures from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile
http://new.photos.yahoo.com/shemeshsun

Sylvia in La Paz

Here we are in Peru!
Peru is similar to Bolivia, but more developed and they really know how to make advantage of the many tourists that come here, by making special tourist prices or trying to rip you off, which is quite annoying.
In the meantime I'm learning more about bargaining than in the whole last year at work...
Especially Cuzco is a very touristic place. It's said to be the most beautiful city of South America, and with it's wooden balconies, narrow streets and beautiful square, I can quite imagine that.
In the meantime, Cuzco being so much visited leads to people trying to sell you all kinds of stuff.
Around Cuzco we visited some Inca ruins and now...we're on our way to Macchu Pichu!
Today we bumped into the 2 French people that were with us on the Uyuni tour in Bolivia, the touristic world is small again, as everyone visits the same places, you keep on bumping into the same people.
Not too successfully yet, as today we waited the whole day for a bus....that, upon arrival, was full....so...we will have to wait for mañana to get on the next bus....

I left you, when we arrived in Uyuni...
In Uyuni we took a tour to visit the salt flakes (the BIGGEST in the world) and that was quite impressive. We were 6 people in a jeep (2 french, 1 danish and 3 dutchies) crossing this immense salt flake during 3 days. Apart from a lot of salt (we even slept in a salt hotel, completely made of salt, including the beds), we saw an island of cactuses, stones in strange forms, lagoons of all kind of colours (purple, yellow, red), lama's (vicuñas, alpacas, lamas) and flamingos. This whole tour was quite an adventure, as we had heard many stories about cars breaking down, but we were lucky as our car only broke down one time.

From the Uyuni tour they dropped us of in San Pedro de Atacama, in Chile.
San Pedro is a little cute village, very touristic and very expensive after Bolivia. In San Pedro we stayed at a youth hostel, meeting quite some Chilean tourists.
We visited the Moon valley, very beautiful and mountainbiked through the region visiting some inka sites on the way.
We didn't stay too long, as most of the sites we already had seen during the uyuni tour. From san pedro we took a nightbus to Arica, from which we wanted to visit the park Putre. It turned out to be quite a hassle to get there, and that the sites would be like what we already had seen.
As we were at the border of Peru...temptation was big and we decided to cross it, going to Arequipa. We visited Arequipa and it's Cañon del Colca, where we got up at 4 o'clock to see condors, and after waiting for hours with other crazy tourists like us....we saw 3 condors, very far away...

Time is flying and....since my last message...we passed 3 countries!
So here we are in Peru! Yes, Peru, you read it well, it was not really planned, but as we were in the north of Chili Arequipa was only supposed to be 7h away, and here we are now!
But I'll try to be more chronological. Before going to Bolivia we visited a very small village (Yave) in the north of Argentina. All houses were made of mud and it looked very gray and poor. Just don't know why all the guides recommended it, there was an old church... From there we went on to Bolivia, crossing the border on foot. As we had heard all kind of robbery stories about Bolivia and the border town of Villazon, we were quite stressed crossing, but it turned out to be ok. From Villazon we took a bus to Tupiza. The first impression of Bolivia was already very different from Argentina, you see mainly nativos and the women wear a funny round hat above two plaits (the typical picture of south americanguide books). The station was quite a mass with each agency screaming their destinations to find passengers (cannot get the Potosi, Potosi out of my head) and...everything being incredibly cheap.
In Tupiza we stayed at the youth hostel and went horse back riding (yes, me on a horse...) for a whole day to discover the surroundings: beautiful mountains, quebradas, goats...but also very very hot...
Next day we travelled on to Uyuni, and that was really an adventure!
It was the first time I really feared for my life as the overloaded, don't want to know how old bus rocketed along deep canyons on unpaved roads. After 5 hours we hoped to be there, but were put in another overloaded jeep (15 people in one jeep is possible, never knew that..) for another dusty 3 hours. Luckily we arrived safely in Uyuni.
Have to go now, next time more...