Brown Water Rafting

Hello everyone and welcome to the latest post on my blog.

The last 10 days or so since I last posted has been rather hectic and that seems to be the way this trip will remain, at least for the next couple of months while i'm in South America.

I am currently in San Pedro de Atacama, a village sitting in the middle of (apparently) the dryest desert in the world, the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. The village itself is nice enough, but it's sole purpose is as a tourist destination and is thus prone to the usual problems that you encounter when that is the case - i.e. expensive and too many tour operators trying to get you to do their 'unique' tour. The desert itself once used to be a key source of income for Chile due to its valuable nitrate reserves and the presence of saltpeter (used for gunpowder), but as the technolgies that used these resources became obsolete, so did the resources and that has resulted in the desert being scattered with 'ghost towns'. San Pedro however remained. It survived due to the fact that it is situated just north of the San Pedro salt flat and is a good central place to see the desert sights. It is also a good jumping off point for excursions into Bolivia to see the much larger Uyuni Salt flats, which is what I am here to do.

San Pedro aside, since my last post I have spent time in Valparaiso in Chile and Salta and Mendoza in Argentina. Valparaiso was by far my favorite city of the trip so far. It is a beautiful city with a slightly bohemian feel that has outstanding views, architecture and character. It is not a European city in South America like Santiago (which was still great), but a truly South American experience. The city has a slight edge to it, but in many ways that benefits it, in that it means that the city itself is not swamped by tourists. It's neighbour town Vina Del Mar is home to all the beautiful beaches and 5 star hotels, but looks more like Miami than a Chilean city, and if I wanted to head to a nice beach, Vina Del Mar was only a 10 minute bus journey away.

Next stop was Mendoza, which was nice enough, but if like me you didn't want to do wine tours it's a bit boring, so I headed on to Salta. Salta is a pleasant town in Northern Argentina, with a beautiful cathedral. But what people come to Salta to do is to see the beautiful surrounding countryside and take part in the many adventure activities available. My main reason for being in Salta was to do some white water rafting in a place which was suitable for beginners in order to get some experience so that i can do some of the more extreme runs later. The rafting itself was really good fun, but due to heavy rainfall the two days prior to going, the rivers had a lot of mud washed into them so were brown (see photo) so it wasn't really 'white' water rafting. It was a great experience and i'm looking forward to doing something a little more challenging.

Anyway i'm of to do some desert hiking and will update you all on my progress soon.

Phil