It would have been a shame to have come to Chile without a visit to an astonomical observatory: it's one of very few countries in the world suitable for modern-day, ground-based observatories (i.e. it has the right altitude and low levels of light pollution). It's the main reason we chose to head down the coast […]

After the excitement of the various deserts and salt flats we visited in Bolivia and Northern Chile, it was time for a break by the seaside. We'd decided to break our journey south to Santiago – from where we'll be flying to Easter Island at the end of September – in a couple of places: […]

On Wednesday – our last day in San Pedro de Atacama – we celebrated our second son's 11th birthday (I can't believe how time flies) with an outing to El Valle de Marte (Mars Valley) to give sandboarding a try. It was really a magical location for any activity. After the sandboarding tour operator's bus […]

We arrived on Saturday in San Pedro de Atacama by bus from Bolivia (the transfer was included in our tour of the Uyuni area). Interestingly the customs and immigration process wasn't performed at the border: we had to stop and "be processed" on arrival in San Pedro. After that we endeavoured to find our Airbnb […]

Our trip up to Bolivia was long but interesting. We started off taking an overnight bus from Salta up to La Quiaca (both of which are in Argentina). We arrived at about 7am, at which point we carried our luggage across into Bolivia and had our passports stamped. We were then in La Quiaca's sister […]

Our second side-trip from Salta (the first being the one up to Tilcara) was more southwards: we headed 200km along the amazing Route 68 to visit the town of Cafayate. Cafayate is well known for its winemaking, especially from the local Torrontés grape that only grows at altitude. It also has some of the most […]

We thought the Cuestra de Lipán and the Salines Grandes were the best that this side of Salta had to offer: they were pretty spectacular, after all. We decided to visit the Pucará de Tilcara – a re-built, 12th century, pre-Incan settlement – and a village called Humahuaca thinking they'd be easy, gentle visits for […]

Since the last post, we took a daytime bus – lasting about 4 hours – from Tucumán up to Salta. This was actually quite nice, although at one point we sped past a traffic accident where I happened to look down into a burnt out car and saw the remains of the driver still in […]

I wasn't expecting very much from either Córdoba or Tucumán. They were originally just waypoints on the path to Salta and beyond. This is pretty much exactly what Córdoba ended up being: it's a big, fairly unexceptional (in our view, anyway) city. For sure there are things we might have visited that would have improved […]