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@theoverlanders
Wine Tasting, Chile Wine tasting at Clos Apalta Winery was a lovely day out. The winery, easily one of the best in South America let alone Chile, has a natural gravity based wine cellar built 25 metres underground. The day was topped off by lunch at a neighbouring winery called Vina Montes. Delicious!
Pucon, Chile Pucon is a great place if you love the outdoors. We hadn't had a chance to go for a hike since Peru so we really enjoyed spending two days exploring Huerquehue National Park and Villarrica National Park. The weather was perfect therefore we could see Villarrica Volcano towering over the town of Pucon.
Peninsula Valdes, Argentina
Península Valdés is home to the endangered southern right whale as well as orcas, elephant seals and southern sea lions. Unfortunately it was the wrong time of year to see Orcas but we came at the perfect time to see southern right whales! At one point we saw roughly 20 whales displaying and bashing their tails on top of the water to attract females. A local we spoke to said if you’re lucky you can see up to 80 whales all at once!
On the way to Peninsula Valdes we also drove past a replica of world’s largest dinosaur which was found in northwest Argentina (discussed in a previous post). It was about 40 metres long and 20 metres tall and weighed 77 tonnes! It absolutely dwarfed ours and our friend’s Delicas!
Bosques Petrificados de Jaramillo National Park, Argentina The petrified tree forest was a really special place. 'Bosques Petrificados de Jaramillo National Park' is the second largest petrified tree forest in the world, the trees are 150 million years old. Some of the remains are up to 2 metres in diameter and 30 metres in length and belonged to trees that were 100 meters tall. It reminded us that the human race is still so new in the history of the earth. We learnt about how the trees fell and became petrified, in a nutshell - volcanoes in the Andes erupted and covered the forest in ash, the weather was so extreme and the winds so strong they caused the trees to fall. The ash created an air tight seal therefore the wood does not decompose, however mineral rich water entered the trees and replaced the organic structure with silica and other minerals, thus creating petrified wood. We found this fascinating and we were humbled (and a little scared) to learn of the earth's natural cycle of extreme weather conditions and the trail of destruction it leaves in it wake.
The road to Ushuaia The road to Ushuaia through Punta Arenas Chile and Tierra Del Fuego was a bit cold and dull at times but we also got to see some King Penguins and a Shipwreck along the way! We love wildlife so we really enjoyed watching the penguin colony. You can see part of the sea is frozen which just shows how cold it can get there!
Perito Moreno Glacier, Argentina This glacier is not to be missed when visiting Patagonia. It is 250 km2 and is 30 km in length which is hard to grasp when you see it. It is also one of the most active glaciers in the world moving up to 2 metres a day. We watched huge chucks of ice calving from its front, it was hard to visualise just how big the chucks were but we guessed the size of a truck, maybe bigger!
Cueva de las Manos, Argentina The Cave of Hands was definitely a highlight in Argentina. The name speaks for itself but it is essentially a lot of negative prints of hands in a series of caves stretching for 100s of meters. There are also painted scenes of hunting and various other depictions. Each set of hands and animals tells a story, they were drawn by the hunter-gatherer communities 13,000 - 9,000 years ago. We were absolutely blown away by how old these painting were and one of them has 6 fingers! I also had to add the dinosaur footprint we found and the view from one of our campsites. The world's largest dinosaur (a herbivore) and the largest carnivore were both found in northwest Argentina. The largest dinosaur was about 40 metres long and 20 metres tall and weighed 77 tonnes! That's about 14 african elephants...WOW! The picture of the footprint is not the same dinosaur but it is still at least 240 millions old! We loved trying to imagine the dinosaur running through mud and creating the footprint right in front of us. Crazy!
The Routa 5, Chile The Routa 5 (The Pan-American Highway) from Atacama Desert to Santiago has so many great stops along the way. Atacama Desert has the world's oldest mummies, the oldest mummy recovered in Atacama Desert is dated 7020 BC, which is 2,000 years BEFORE the first Egyptian mummy. Atacama Desert is 105,000kms2, so we drove through it for a long time! It is the driest non-polar desert on Earth and so to be honest there sometimes isn't much to see except dry open plains as far as the eye can see, so when we saw the "La Mano del Desierto" (The Hand of the Desert) poking out of the sand just a few hundred metres from the highway it was a big surprise! We also found some geoglyphs - which are images drawn into the landscape, some on a grand scale! The age of the images range from 600 - 1500AD. San Pedro de Atacama is also a great place to visit, it is a hot spot for hippies and tourists looking for adventure. We saw some great views and a salt lake, unfortunately the geysers and hot springs which are famous in the area were closed due to the recent heavy snow.
Chacaltaya mountain involved hiking straight up through snow to get to its peak. The top has stunning views, we were lucky to have a sunny day and we could see La Paz and the whole of the Cordillera Real (Real Mountain Range) in all its glory. Its elevation is mere 5,421 meters, about the same height of Everest base camp. Not to brag or anything!
Chacaltaya mountain involved hiking straight up through snow to get to its peak. The top has stunning views, we were lucky to have a sunny day and we could see La Paz and the whole of the Cordillera Real (Real Mountain Range) in all its glory. Its elevation is mere 5,421 meters, about the same height of Everest base camp. Not to brag or anything!
Uyuni Salt Flats (Salar de Uyuni) Salar de Uyuni in Bolivia is the world’s largest salt flat. It’s the legacy of a prehistoric lake that went dry, leaving behind a desert of nearly 11,000 square kilometres. It is at an elevation of 3,656 meters above sea level therefore it gets VERY cold at night! In the height of summer it can reach as low as -25 degrees. Luckily we came prepared with lots of firewood, marshmallows and beer/wine! Driving through the salt flats felt like being on another planet, just an open expanse of flat white salt and no limitations on where to explore! It was an amazingly beautiful place.
Laguna Colorada (Bolivia) was...FREEZING! However, it was one of the most beautiful places I've ever seen and so it was worth the two day drive (from Uyuni) through corrugated roads, sand, snow and mud! It snowed the last two nights and we were lucky to get out when we did as a snow storm hit after which many roads were closed. When you are at 4,600 metres above sea level in the freezing cold in southern Bolivia the last thing you expect to see are flamingos, but there are hundreds! There are also plenty of llamas and vicunas
Colca Canyon is one of the deepest canyons in the world (twice as deep as the Grand Canyon in the US). We spent two (cold) nights camping near 'Cruz Del Condor' the best place to see wild Condors. The lookout was very busy in the mornings as it was the best time to see Condors soaring overhead however after lunchtime we had the place to ourselves. In the afternoon they flew over our car travelling to and from their nests, it was an amazing experience! Not to mention the drive to the canyon which went up to an altitude of 4,960m and was spotted with volcanoes. Almost like a lunar landscape. It felt like we were on the moon!
Rainbow Mountain Rainbow mountain was one of the most beautiful places I've seen on our entire trip. The trail head starts at 4,400 metres with a peak of 5,200 metres. I found the hike very hard as about 70% of the hike was up hill and at that altitude I struggled. James however bounded up the hill to get to the top before the other tourists arrived to take the best photos. We were lucky we were able to camp at the trail head, unlike the other tourists that got up in the middle of the night to take to 3.5 hour bus ride from Cusco. We set off at 6:00am to beat them to the top and thankfully we did as when we started to descend at around 10:00am there were at least a hundred tourists walking or taking donkeys up (slackers!). The photos are not edited in any way, the colours were so bright our brains were trying to tell us it was a trick!
Machu Picchu The famous Machu Picchu. At first a wasn't all that excited to visit Machu Picchu as we have slowly learnt to appreciate places with very few tourists and tend to avoid places with too many gringos, like ourselves. But we knew we'd regret it if we didn't visit and we'll probably never get the opportunity again. On the day we went there were of course lots of people but it really didn't matter as it was such a wonderful place to visit. The architecture is so impressive, we marvelled at how they built it without metal tools or machinery. There are two main ways you can access Machu Picchu, one is by walking the Inca Trail or the other is by train to the nearby town and then a bus... we didn't do either. We camped at the hydro-electrical plant and hiked 11kms along the the railway lines (one way) which was 31kms in total including walking around Machu Picchu (its huge and not flat!). It was a long and tiring day, but we had a fantastic time!
Nascar Lines + Huacachina Nazcar Lines The Nazcar Lines is a must see when visiting Peru. Although it is possible to see some figures from a viewing platform, the flight over Nazcar is really something special (except for the motion sickness!). It is astonishing when you see just how big some of the figures are (up to 370 metres long!) and how the Incas made them so symmetrical. Not all are figures and some of the triangles which are just as amazing are up to 3km long! Huacachina Huacachina is a small oasis surrounded by sand dunes. The town itself is nothing special to visit but we were taken onto the sand dunes in a dune buggy and tried our skill at sand boarding. It was a lot of fun!
Puya Raimondii When we decided to take a detour from the main roads to visit the Puya Raimondii plants I wondered whether it would be worth the hassle, fortunately I was not disappointed. The plants are related to the pineapple family. They can grow up to 10 metres in height and can live for 100 years. It blossoms over 8000 flowers on its 'corn' shaped head but only flowers once in its lifetime, after which it dies. Again, we were the only people to visit these amazing plants and we didn't see a anyone when we took the hike to get up close to them. We camped at the trail head which was a lovely and peaceful nights sleep.