arica

the famous el Gringo

Ok ok it' time to write something as well as just posting fotos..

So we are in Arica in the north of Chile now doing nothing but surfing (well señor is surfing, i'm trying) and eating in hare krishna restaurants. Sometimes we read a newspaper or feed some street dogs. Regaining the energy that we lost in the altiplano

flying in iquique

The first place back at sea level again, what a relief. Iquique is squeezed between the sea and a brown mountain range, gave us a bit of a claustrophobic feeling. But its' thermic winds make it an ideal place for paragliding...such a cool thing... from the mountain on the righthandside of the last picture over the dune and the city to the beach. I was peeing my pants first but then it's just great

back in chile, san pedro de atacama

saturn

iglesia san pedro

salar on the way to chile

Back in chile, feels a bit like coming home as we spend most of our travel here.

The Paso de Jama from Purmarmaca in Argentina to San Pedro in Chile is just spectacular, fanatastic red rock formations, serpentines winding up the mountain to 4800 meters high, the road disappearing in the clouds, all white, breathless, very surreal. We saw the back half of a huge lorry in the air the front half balancing on the road, its' load was just too heavy. Made us a bit nervous to drive behind a lorry...

Then the other side all sunshine, the pure bright light of the altiplano, we passed vulcano Licanbur again, crossed salares until we reached San Pedro de Atacama.

Tourist-Gringo heaven this is. One restaurant next to the other and it was so good to eat normal food instead of the diarrhea-preventing-pizza-past-diet we were on in Bolivia.

San Pedro is an oasis in the Atacama desert, very hot during the day, freezing at night.

Cloudless nights, ideal to watch the stars, which we did under the guidance of a french astronomer and with the help of telescopes. Now proudly able to distinguish between the southern cross and orion. Highly psychedelic drugs must have been quite popular among the old astronomers though, gemini, the lion, for most of them it takes more than fantasy to see why they have that name..

leaving bolivia, tupiza

victor and martin, whom we met in Yavi, Argentina,
apparently he went shopping in Bolivia too


mattis hoffentlich auch, 2km downhill und das nach dem pferdereiten

simone, hoffe, du bist stolz auf uns!!

Tupiza, our last stop in Bolivia. Famous for its' red rock formations, canyons and wild west feel. We decided to be brave and go horseriding. To make it even more fun we did a "triathlon-tour", a jeepride first (no problem), then 2 hours horseriding through the truly wild west scenery (nobody told us to wear arseprotectors though) followed by 2km downhill on a mountainbike on an unpaved road(that was it, no sitting for 2 days ). But we really enjoyed it, Victor wanted to buy a horse straightaway!

mining in potosi, bolivia

yeah it's dynamite
el minero

This was truly an experience. Potosi is an old colonial mining city, minig in the cerro rico started in the 16th century and it seems that methods only have changed slightly since then. There is 15.ooo miners working in that mountain, everybody can dig, exploit and use dynamite as they want. They are organised in cooperativas but there is no general organisation present. The miners don't eat during the day, they only chew coca-leaves, drink 70% alcohol and fizzy drinks, smoke cigarettes. Temperatures going up high in the mine, the dust damaging the lungs permanently, we read somewhere that once 50% of a miners lung are gone he then can retire. 2000 dollars are paid to the family if someone dies. Such a hard life.

Bolivia