Before leaving Uyuni, Dave visited the ‘train cemetery’ in Uyuni – a graveyard of tens of steam locos imported from the UK. Great fun! From Uyuni, we drove to Potosí, once the largest city in the world thanks to a silver mining boom. It is now a city of steep hills (being located on the foothills of the mountains being […]
The Salar de Uyuni is the largest continuous high salt desert in the world, with an area of 10,582 km² (4,085 sq mi ) – about half the size of Wales. It is located at about 3,650 m above sea level in southwestern Bolivia. It is on every overlanders itinerary and we were really looking forward to spending a few […]
The Laguna Route – an overlander’s right of passage. This 302km off-road adventure starts at the Bolivian Border, Paso Fronterizo Hito Cajón and goes all the way to Uyuni, although there are patches of tarmac towards the end. It’s not for the faint hearted. The entire route is above 4000m, is very cold at this time of year, and is […]
Around mid-August, MAN told us there had been a cock up in Germany and our order was delayed until early September. This was unfortunate and so we used our extra time to explore northern Argentina before heading back into Chile to collect our parts. From Salta we headed to San Salvador de Jujuy on the very narrow and twisty Route […]
Having said good bye to Ivan at Belén, we journeyed north on the famous Ruta Nacional 40 towards the wine producing area of Cafayate. On the way we spend the night at the Quilmes ruins, an ancient settlement set on a hillside with fortifications higher on the hill. We stopped next at a roadside distillery (Francine tried one or two […]
We first met Ivan, an intrepid Spanish Overlander, a year back in Buenos Aries, we were both waiting for our trucks to arrive, ours from South Africa, Ivan’s from Panama and we met for a meal in one of the city’s great cafes. We went our separate ways but met again recently, at San Antonio de Cobres, with our vehicles, […]
There we were, driving merrily along a ‘ripio’ dirt track from the Salinas Grandes salt pan to San Antonio de los Cobres, in the middle of nowhere, when there was an almighty noise from underneath Big Bertha. We stopped quickly, expecting a puncture. But no, it was something much worse, the front propshaft, along with the transfer case output shaft, […]
Returning from the UK at the end of May we spent the first few weeks at MAN in Santiago getting a few issues fixed for Big Bertha. Whist there, we were invited to an asado by Mauricio and Patricia whom we met at Puerto Tranquiol earlier in the year. We had a lovely meal with the family. Leaving our friends at […]
The Atacama Desert starts around 500km north of Santiago. Because of the low population, low light pollution, high mountain peaks and very low atmospheric moisture, it is an ideal location for optical telescopes. We were lucky enough to visit two – the Gemini telescope operated by Noirlab and El Silla operated by the European Southern Observatory. These were daytime technical […]
We were very lucky to have been able to camp in the centre of Mendoza next to the train station. From here we explored the city using the comprehensive bus and tram network. After a couple of days we decided to start heading towards the Cristo Redentor pass over the central Andes and into Santiago. Dave being Dave decided to […]