Update

Ah, so what have we been up to recently? Well, we´ve made the decision not to do any more of Brazil. It´s a huge country and we simply don´t have the time to cover it. But we´ve promised that Brazil is the next place we go when we come back to South America. So we managed to spend all of our remaining reais from Rio at Iguassu Falls.

After leaving Iguazu (Spanish spelling) we took a 23 hour bus ride to Tucuman, which is considered the birthplace of Argentina, as that is where they declared independence from Spain. A night there and then we went to Salta, a very nice little town. We spent 3 days there. And after that, we finally left Argentina for the last time, after hopping back and forth between Argentina and Antartica, Brazil, Uruguay and Chile. I think we hit every border crossing Argentina has to offer!

We debated whether to go straight to Bolivia or back over the Chilean border and then to Bolivia. Southern Bolivia didn´t look too appealing so we went to San Pedro in the Atacama Desert in northern Chile. A very small little town, but there´s lots to see in the area. We skipped the geyser trip at 4 in the morning, but did do a tour of the surrounding countryside. Apparently NASA does some testing there, as the landscape is similar to the moon.

From San Pedro we booked a 3 day/2 night tour up to Uyuni in Bolivia, which is where we are now. Along the way we saw some beautiful colored lakes full of colorful flamingos. But the highlight was seeing the Salar de Uyuni, which is the largest salt flat in the world (if you´re interested, Utah is #2 and the salt flat in the Atacama Desert outside San Pedro is #3). We´ll upload some great pics when we get a good connection (which might be a while in Bolivia), but the salt flat is just immense and blindingly white. An amazing sight. We´ve shared a 4x4 for the trip with two other nice British couples, so it has been a very good experience.

Both in San Pedro and over the past 2 nights, the night sky is simply amazing. More stars than we´ve ever seen. This part of the world has the perfect conditions for star gazing: 1) very little population = very little light pollution 2) the dry air of the desert is much better than humid conditions and 3) the high altitude (we´ve been at 3,000 to 4,700 meters for the last 4 days) is also beneficial. Almost all of the major international mega-telescopes are located in the Andes mountains in northern Chile as the conditions are the best.

We´ll be in Bolivia for the next 2 weeks or so before heading to Peru. We´re getting a bit sad that we now have less than 10 weeks to go in South America before heading to the US. I know, I know, boo hoo for us!