Increasing volumes of water

Queridos visitantes!

After two days of surfing we needed some rest, so we decided to get some good sleep in the overnight bus to San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro is the oasis town of the famous Atacama desert, where tourists outnumber locals 3 to 1.

Vicunas and flamingos
Our main reason to go here was to do some sandboarding & stargazing. But since these activities are at night we had some daylight hours to fill. We spend these hours by watching several desert-sand&-rock formations. This sounds extremely boring, but was the opposite! The emptyness and the otherworldy color combinations, make this landscape something we've never seen before. We hope our pictures give you an impression (and special thanks to the vicunas, flamingos and fox for standing at the right place).

Sandboarding, Saltfloating and Stargazing
During the last weeks Loes was dreaming about sandboarding every night, so it could only be a disappointment...
...but it wasn't! Sandboarding would be our new evening activity if it would be available in Holland!! We went for the nighttour which was set up as a party, with a dune illuminated and loud music. The only difference between sand- and snowboarding is that with sandboarding you have to walk uphill yourself :)

And that's why we went to relax our muscles in the local Dead sea the next day. They say this small lake contains even more salt than the Dead sea. We didn't try to dive down, but it would've been impossible. It is a very weird sensation to lift your arms and legs out of the water without sinking.

Unfortunately the stargazing/astronomy tour wasn't as good as the sandboarding. The Atacama desert is the best place in the world to watch the sky, because the humidity is low, it is at 2300m and has very little light polution. You can see as much as 8000 stars here, compared to 4000 in a regular sky (Amsterdam even less ;)). Our guide was drunk and was clearly fed up with doing tours, but nevertheless we saw two other galaxies and learned where to find the Taurus constellation.

Party and pena
After watching the preparations for many religious festivities, we finally experienced the real local party in San Pedro! To make the virgin Guadalupe happy, the locals dressed up as polar bears and pandas (in 35 degrees!!). And together with the gorilla they danced all night :) there was so much repetition in the dance that Loes was able to join in the end.
The next morning we took the scenic 12-hour bus to Salta, Argentina. Our main activity was to experience the pena (penando in Spanish ;)), the local fado/levenslied. The experience included dancing (something like a slow flamenco) and luckily the locals appreciated our efforts ;)

Horses and hondjes
Everywhere in Argentina you can do horseriding, so we decided to give it a try. The galloping was exhilarating (and a bit scary) but apart from that the best part of the horseriding&bbq were the puppies :):):):) unfortunately (fortunately according to Erno) our bags didn't have space to bring one...

A lot of water!
In Salta the air was filled with butterflies, which means (according to the locals) that rain is coming. And rain was coming! But we're still surprised that the butterflies in Salta can predict the rain in Iguazu (2000km to the east).
Because of this rainwater the famous Iguazu falls were at its most impressive, which also meant that part of the trails were flooded. We're still impressed by the amount of water (there was a new fall around every corner!) and Erno is still trying to calculate the flow...

Tomorrow it's time to go to Brazil (the Pantanal and Bonito), where we will try to find the Capibaras!! (And maybe some anacondas and jaguars ;))

Merry Christmas and a happy ano nuevo!

Luz & Erno

Ps. The price (a useless souvenir) goes to Mieke.
Of course we went to the local IKEA to search for a lamp which we saw in a restaurant.
The lamp was sold out so we didn't need to send it home at the post office.
The beach looked like a garbage belt, so we didn't need to visit the true one.
And we are glad to see that everyone knows we never visit musea ;)