We done quite a bit of travel during November 2005 in South America, traversing several thousand kilometres covering areas of Argentina (mostly), and parts of Chile (yes we went back briefly) and Uruguay.

In this time, we took a small 'holiday' from our travelling and caught a ferry from Buenos Aires to go to the beach in Uruguay, visiting the picturesque town of Colonia del Sacramento amongst a couple of other coastal towns and beaches of Uruguay (had to break up the Buenos Aires city life with a short holiday of sun, sea and sand). November also saw us cross the northern tip of the mountainous Patagonian regions of Chile and Argentina (in a tiny two door Fiat Uno that worked really well in second gear up steep, mountainous dirt roads and struggled in fifth to make 100 km on straight, paved roads) and we have explored the semi-arid northern regions of Argentina near San Juan, Salta and Jujuy, also far inland and close to the Andes. Some select details follow:

22 November (or thereabouts) - 3 December

We mountain biked in the impressive rocky canyons of the National Tampalana Park, near San Juan, Argentina. The canyon consisted of 50-60 metre high walls of orange-red rock and we cycled through the bottom of the corridor to admire nature´s cathedral structures and smooth canyon walls paved by a river that flowed 100 million years ago. This quiet canyon is where we heard one of the best echos you can imagine. You yell from the base of a 50 metre high smooth cylinder, naturally carved into the canyon wall by a swirling vortex of the long-ago river, straight to the opposing canyon wall where it seems another you repeats the yell two seconds later and the sound effect continues clearly four or so more times along the length of the canyon. We, of course, tried a ¨coo-eee¨ which worked really well. We broke up the quietnesss of the canyon a few times. Fortunately not too much as a little while later we were lucky enough to observe two condors gliding majestically above the canyon. These kings of the canyon have a two metre wingspan, midnight black feathers and a few white feathers forming a stripe on the bird´s underside which we observed as they glided effortlessly at the edge of the high canyon top.

We visited a second natural spectacle on the same day. A nearby national park, known as 'Valle de la Luna' (Valley of the Moon, a name dating from an important 1960s event - guess which one), has tersely featured monochrome landscapes, the visual legacies of Andean volcanic activity. Some of the rock shapes remind us of Dali´s rocks in his rock-strewn landscapes. This canyon is light in colour and other-worldy. We could imagine an episode of Dr Who being filmed here. With the daleks emerging from behind one of the rocks to confront the Doctor...

From here we travelled further north to Salta (30 hours on a couple of buses). The region of Salta is beautiful. In fact, the Argentines refer to it as ¨Salta La Linda¨ (Salta the fair). We hired a car for a few days (another Fiat Uno however this time a four door, more recent model) to drive round lush valleys, contrasted with other valleys of semi-arid cactus-spotted landscapes featuring colourful mountains in shades of pinks, blues, reds, and yellows in regions. These high altitude valleys are home to many native peoples. We saw the Salinas Grandes, immense natural salt-flats and we drove as far north with the car to a valley near Tres Cruces (Three Crosses). Amongst a number of adventures, we visited a pre-Incan ruin of stone homes, sites of worship and meeting places in the town of Tilcara, 120km north of Salta. Each drive into a different valley revealed different colours, sights and environments. It was a fantastical road trip across diverse landscapes.

On the return trip to Salta we accidently discovered the scenic way home which added a couple of hours to our journey, but it was a truly breathtaking trip through magnificent rain-forest covered mountains. The amazing thing was that from these heights we could still clearly see the sparse scrub and cactus-coated desert-scapes and multi-coloured mountains from earlier that same day. Amazing contrasts.

In total, we probably only drove around 650kms during three days, a similar distance covered by a Canberra to Melbourne drive though we can safely say that this trip beat the Hume with far more impressive and varying landscapes. To add to the interest of the car journey in Salta, we also drove over the Tropic of Capricorn and, on other occassions, drove through several fast moving clouds at high altitudes. The valleys we visited averaged altitudes of above 3000 metres, the highest peak we crossed was at 4700 metres where there was a lot of fast moving cloud and the thought of being struck by lightning. Fortunately, we came out from the clouds OK.

3-4 December
OK, one bus service was not so great. The service from Salta to Posadas, Argentina had crappy chairs, an unannounced change of buses at 3.30 am (that we would have missed if we had managed to fall asleep on the crappy chairs), no food service with the final added challenge of the second more comfortable bus breaking down four hours outside of Posadas. Fortunately, we were only stuck in the stifling morning heat for about an hour before, unbelievably, the driver´s mechanic work resulted in the smoking engine restarting. However, the bus company´s estimation of a 15 or 16 hour bus trip extended to a travel time of 20 hours. You know what the scouts say.

5 December

We´re now in Posadas, northeast Argentina and it is bucketing down. There is a tropical thunderstorm that has rivers of water flooding the gutters and roads and has given us some internet time while we delay visiting some Jesuit mission ruins closeby. Should be able to visit the ruins tomorrow as we have checked the forecast and it is sunny, 33 degrees celcius and humid around here each day for the rest of the week. This week we are planning to go to the town of Puerto Iguazu to see the Iguazu Falls and National Park for a couple of days on the Ârgentine/Brazilian border then we will go into Brazil. Our first Brazilian stop will probably be Sao Paulo.