Keith's travelogue

Dear All,

Welcome to 2006, I hope all your NY resolutions are still intact.

Despite Joy´s little message about me living the wanderer´s life, nothing could be further from the truth. It is evident from my writings, if you have been reading my blogs, that the travelling I have been undertaking is not a wander at all, but quite the opposite. It is pretty much a fixed itinerary and is moving at a fairly fast pace, partly because South America is such a large place. So at times the travel is quite hard, and it is certainly no picnic or walk in the park as implied by ¨wander¨.

Such hard travelling it has been then, with the last sections of the trip from Macchu Pichu to Uyuni, and then from Uyuni down to La Serena in Chile - about 500km north of Santiago.

After leaving Macchu Pichu I returned to Cusco for some R&R to recuperate after the walk. The legs held up just fine as I spent some time in cafes and Heladerias (ice cream shops). Then it was on to the bus and off to Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca. There I visited the Uros Islands which are floating beds of reeds constructed by the local indigneous people to get away fromm the war-like tribes that existed over the last 1000 to 500 years, including the Inca people.

They´ve been living on them ever since. It was quite touristy and a little gimmicky. It was also a lesson that no matter where you go, people will adopt any technology that makles their life easier. So many of the reed huts on the islands had solar panels on the roofs. These charged batteries for the lights to be used at night, since fires from kero or other light sources had been a major source of deaths and dnager in years gone by.

After that it was on to La Paz to join the first of my two overland truck tours, this one is down to Santiago. The truck and people on it has been travelling pretty much the same route, so we were able to compare notes and settle in for the journy south to Uyuni. The passengers are a mix of Aussies and Kiwis and a couple of Scots and a Swede for good measure.

After Christmas at Uyuni where we had a lovely Xmas lunch and played Secret Santa (each having to buy gifts for the game) we were off top the mining city of Potosi, worlds highest city, and the source of most of the Spanish wealth in their colonial periods due to the presence of a huge hill which they turned into a silver mine. During the colonial period(1530 to 1825) the Spanish used Indian and African slaves to get the silver. Some 8 million were estimated to have died in that period alone.

The mines still operate today with miners joining into co-operatives to work the ore veins by hand. Conditions have apparently improved, but probably not much. We went on a mine tour after purchasing some gifts for the miners. Presents included dynamite, crackers, coca leaves, and cigarettes. It was interesting to say the least, and the hill is now down in size from 5200m to 4700m, such is the amount of ore that has been taken away for processing.

After Potosi it was back to Uyuni for a trip across the world´s largest salt lake the Salar de Uynui and then south via back roads to Chile. The Salar is a massive expanse of salt and water that was thought once to be part of the Pacific Ocean. It forms a place where the normal rules of presective and distance seem not to apply. When there is water, as when we crossed, the horizon dispappers, and the separation of the land , water and sky becomes impossible. The water reflects the sky so you cannot determine where the horizon is, and there are no roads, so the drivers go on compass bearings.

We drove across the lake and stopped at Fish Island. It is home to cactuses that only flower once every 100 years, and then die. Some where in flower when wee arrived (it is the rainy season now. Then it was off again into the wild blue yonder. Fortunately the drivers knew what they were doing and we arrived the other side safely. There we saw fossilised coral reefs around the edges that lend weight to this view of it once being part of the Pacific. But it is hard to remember that when you are tehre at over 4000m above sea level. It left me thinking about the powerful tectonic forces at play that can move such a large area of solid rock over 4km into the air.

After the lake, it was then two days driving across the high volcanic plains. We drove on rough roads or fine sand, and stayed at very basic hostels, with no running water or hot showers. Amazingly, a couple of blankets was all it took to keep the beds warm at night. Such is the wonder of the adobe mud brick housing used here, which aborbs the very hot day sun, and gives the heat back at night. But apparently it gets extremely cold during the winter (June August) with sub-zero temparatures the norm.

The plains were very dry with little plant, animal or insect life, as they were created out of Volcanic ash. Every direction you looked, there were snow covered mountins that were volcanos, but only one that was active. It was puffing away sedatey and looking very innocent and innocuous. The snow we saw was very fresh, and more appeared each day. It is now the rainy season when they get the snowfall, so there was quite a nip in the air at night and in the morning, when the winds blew.

Eventually we reached the Bolivian border, via a high altitude geyser field, and then on to Chile. What followed was a New Years` Eve party in San Pedro de Atacama, an oasis of civilisation even though the showers were not hot and water was only available for two hours a night!. After that, it was then two very, very long days driving down the Panamerican Highway, through the Atacama desert all the way, the world´s driest, until we hit the coast at La Serena.

We started driving around 10am on New Years day after rising from the ashes of the New Years Eve party (it is customary to have NY midnight bonfires apparently) and drove till it was nearly dark (around 8pm). That night we camped on the sandy desert with the Milky Way above, pure magic. Then we were up at 5am, for a another drive of 700km or so until we reached La Serena. Fortunately, the Panamerican Hway we joined near the Chile border is very good, so apart from the heat we didn´t have any problems with the truck.

Unfortunately the cold ocean current that goes all the way up the South American coast from Antartica to the Equator means that there is a morning cloud/fog cover, and the water is pretty rough so the swimming isn´t great. But La Serena is very civilised compared to the wild desert country we had just travelled through, and La Serena is a little like paradise. After more than a month at high altitude, to be able to breathe deeply of the fresh, salty sea air was a strange but welcome experience.

Well, that´s quite a story for two weeks update. All that travelling makes me now somewhere south of the latitude of Brisbane, and we are headed further south to Santiago, which is about the same latitude as Sydney.

More next week!
Regards,
Keith