South America: Bolivia, Chile, Peru

While we spend most of our time in those two countries, the place where we stepped on the South American soil was actually Santiago, Chile, where we spent a day before catching a plane to La Paz. Santiago seems to be a nice city with more-or-less expected Spanish colonial architecture. The smog in the city is horrendous though - visibility on a clear sunny day was two-three hundred metres.

A relatively short (compared to a 14-hour slog from Australia) flight Santiago-La Paz, and we are in Bolivia. La Paz airport is located above 4,000 metres (13,300 feet) and as a consequence is full of people in various stages of respiratory distress. La Paz is a naturally scenic city, but I found it too noisy and in-your-face: non-stop traffic (drivers seem to permanently keep one hand on a horn), pollution, crowds. So we quickly did the mandatory tourist program and got on an overnight bus for Uyuni.

Uyuni is a tiny town the north-west corner of Bolivia. The place is a strong contender for the title of the middle of nowhere - it is situated in the middle of a high altitude desert covered by salt flats, volcanoes, and lakes of all colours of the rainbow. This is also an area of unbelievable natural beauty. The pictures just cannot fully reproduce the feeling of scale and space of the place.

Five or six hours on a local bus took us to Potosi, supposedly the highest city in the world. As I wanted to climb a 6,000 metre peak in Peru, I used Potosi to do acclimatisation to higher altitudes. I hiked to 5,000 metres without problems, apart from wounded pride - when I reached the saddle I was aiming for, I found there a bunch of llamas and their shit, a shepherd (a woman in her 80s), and two dogs - hardly a picture one associates with climbing to what would be considered a very respectable altitude in Europe or North America ;-)

The next stop was Copacabana, lake Titicaca. Copacabana itself is not particularly interesting - a mandatory cathedral, a few narrow cobblestone streets, and a mixture of locals and semi-naturalised westerners selling crafts. So I packed my backpack and hiked along the peninsula towards Isla del Sol, took a boat across, and spent the next day hiking around the island. The views speak for themselves ;-)

I liked Bolivia a lot. It has an unsophisticated, unspoilt feeling to it. Travelling there is easy (if uncomfortable at times), the nature is beautiful, and people are friendly, even with my limited Spanish. It is also very cheap - we were travelling on around 20-25 AUD a day, and that was not because we were trying to save money - it was just difficult to spend more.

Cusco, Peru was our next city. It is located at lower altitude (only 3,300 metres ;-) and was a welcome break from the cold nights and thin air of Bolivia. Cusco is a pleasant city of many churches, cathedrals, and monasteries, and it made an enjoyable break from a rougher style of travelling in Bolivia. It is also a gateway to Machu Pichu.

I will not write about Machu Pichu as I do not know how to. It is an amazing place, and descriptions, pictures and films do not do it justice - it is impossible to represent the scale and the feel of the place. Just go there and see it for yourselves. I only regret that I did not see it a few years earlier, when it was not as regulated as it is today and did not have as many tourists.

From Cusco we went to Arequipa, which for me was the base for a climb to Chachani, a 6075 metre (20,000 feet) peak dominating the city skyline. Chachani is not technically difficult, but the altitude made it physically quite demanding (it was cold there too, -15 at the base camp). All in all, quite a bit of work for views from the top ;-) We also went to Colca canyon - the deepest (3000 metres) canyon in the world.

The last stop in Peru was in Cordillera Blanca, a mountain range some 400 km south of Lima. Cordillera Blanca are the steepest mountains I have seen, raising 3-4 kilometres above the valleys. Unfortunately, the weather was unseasonably volatile and I could not do the hike through the mountains, but even day trips there go through rather magnificent scenery.

Our flight out of Peru left from Lima, so we had to spend two days there. I really did not like the place. Lima is a big, noisy, and dirty city full of hassling street sellers (selling anything and everything, including "Mens Health" magazine in Russian - I should have asked how many copies the guy sold). I was glad to get out of there.

After Lima, Valparaiso (a port in Chile near Santiago) was a welcome change. It had everything Lima did not - unusual architecture, clean air, quiet streets. It also had an earthquake while we were there - not a strong one, just enough to spill some tea and get one thinking about where to run ;-) Valparaiso was also half-way home culturally - Chile appears to be a lot more western than Bolivia and Peru, with all the familiar trappings of the western lifestyle, such as supermarkets, cars, shop windows, and advertisements.

And for those hardy souls who still want to look at more pictures, here is a bunch of portraits.