My friend Greg and I went down to South America and wandered around for about 5 months in Chile, Bolivia, and Argentina. We visited the Central Valley, some coastal areas, wine country, over a dozen national parks, climbed in the high Andes, skied various Andean ski resorts, went to Isla Chiloe, hiked and climbed in Patagonia, Torres del Paine/Los Glaciares and the Campo de Hielo Sur, kayaked the Patagonian fjords, saw penguins and Tierra del Fuego. Travel was mainly by hitchhiking, and sometimes by local bus. There wasn’t really much of a tourist infrastructure in most regions, and we mainly stayed in hostels, private homes, ranger or shepherd huts, on farms, or camped in our tent.
In Bolivia and northern Chile, we visited the Altiplano and remote villages, the Atacama Desert, Valle de la Luna, Calama, the Salar de Uyuni (the world’s largest salt flat), and Potosi.
Cerro El Plomo in the AndesHitchhiking was our typical method of travel, along with local busesThe “official” park map that the park ranger at Reserva Nacional Altos de Lircay drew for us. He also made us sign a hand-written waiver in Spanish, stating that he didn’t have to rescue us if something bad happened to us in the park.Lost in the fog while using that mapMe in one of the parks (?) in Chile. Notice that I’m wearing snowshoes, even though there’s no snow. We found that we could more easily walk through the dense bamboo forests with snowshoes on.Atacama desertAtacama desertMe and Pedro, the guy that drove us across the Atacama and Salar de UyuniFlamingos in a lake in the Atacama regionOne of the small towns where we stayed in Bolivia, where some of Pedro’s relatives livedChilean/Bolivian border crossingSalar de Uyuni (world’s largest salt flats)Isla de los Pescadores, in the middle of the Salar de UyuniThe only things on the “Isla” were giant cacti and big rabbit-like critters called viscachasEl Tio, the Devil, in a Bolivian mine in PotosiView across the Grey Glacier to the Campo de Hielo Sur (the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, the second largest continuous ice field in the world) in Parque Nacional Torres del Paine in PatagoniaAwesome picture of the Campo de Hielo Sur from the ISS
