31-03-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door lucas

Imagine a blue blue sky, in the background some highsnowcapped  tops, and closer by some yellowreddishocrebrown meltingpot, with in the forefront some multi-coloured laguna/lago and maybe a bunch of hopping vicunas. Could this be the dali-desert? Corecto, en Bolivia, just across the border and within the Parque Nacional. Nature at its best!

Skirting the highest southamerican tops (not the Himalaya’s but still +1100m higher than the Mont Blanc) one travels from the cold deep Chilean/Argentinean south to the dry hot +400m high altiplanos of Bolivia. A feast for the eye especially in autumn and outside the high season.  Also a feast for the gourmands, with vinos from Mendoza, truchas from the rivers, rabbit or llama beef.  A feast for culture freaks , with tiny but splendid Museos  showing the rich culture of the pre-Incas, such as the  one of Belgian priest  Le Paige in San Pedro de Atacama (Ch), or the ancient mummies in San Juan (Arg), else the queer one dedicated to the Madre de la Tierra Pachamama closeby Salta (where you better don’t leave your car parked in the street, cause the thieves find your PC and more).

A first side/trip into Bolivia before Peru.

And even when the great Salinas of Uyuni were hidden under 15cm of water, the Salinas Grandes around the Atacama desert were brilliantly white, the Bolivian lagunas Colorado  or Verde pink-full of flamingo, the ancient  pukara adobe-brown,the dreamlike altiplano is hight-altitude colourful-desert-cum-volcanoes-cum-lagunas.

And (back in Chile)the geysers of El tatio magically white along with some highly multi-coloured mud basine, the Valle de la Luna ghostly brown-greyish, and the wintery Pacific Ocean blue-turquoise surrounded by yellowish-white-brown desert formations.

30-03-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door lucas

23-03-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door lucas

22-03-2011 om 03:45 geschreven door lucas

21-03-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door lucas

Don’t cry Argentina, we come back!

What a beautiful and huge country, with friendly people/indigenas and fantastic nature. From blue/turquoise glaciers, colored canyons, blindingwhite desertlike salinas, till 6000+ high mountainpeaks with majestic condors in the west, and noisy sealions/pinguins along the eastcoasts. Typical gauchos, some nice colonial towns, panflute in the north and the sensual tango from Buenos Aires till that small plaza in Salta.

With its famous Aconcagua topping the Andes and from subtropical to subantartique its +3500km span calls or some very long roads of which famous carretra40 still offers some very long kms of the lousy ripios it is known by.

Romantics will come for Evita’s legacy, or maybe for de St.Exupery who married an Argentina after his The Little Prince and before his . Or maybe to honour the soon to be Dutch Queen Maxima.

Food and wine connoisseurs will taste the parrillas/carnes, dulce de leche or its may quallity vinos (and even quality papas fritas).  Must seesinclude the Blu walls towering upto 160m high of the Perito Moreno and Upssala glaciers, the almost 7000m high Andes peak of the Aconcagua, the km wide amazing falls of Foz de Iguazu, or the lousy famous ripios of the carretera 40, some of those mini museos with maxi shows of ancient mommies, jewels or pre Inca art,the indigena pucaras,the day wide pampas and wide vistas, or those magnificent colors of the many quebradas in the north.

All along the roads you pass> small red shrines to the Difunta Divina. And worldfamous Magelhaes, , skunk, amardillo, trucha, vicuna or mereno sheep are not far away in the south, whereas in the Andes devastating rivers, condor, eagle,and splendid multicolored canyons invite for a break.

More to come from Chile and Bolivia, after the Semana Santa

ciao

20-03-2011 om 00:00 geschreven door lucas