El Bolsón

The 'hippie' town, as most call it, is a great little place.  We arrived Sunday, on a 2 hour bus ride from Bariloche, with, again, great surroundings the whole way.  Winding through valleys of tall, snow covered mountains and crystal blue rivers and lakes.

Awesome tree carving in the park

Might I first mention in this post, that while traveling so far, we've had some strange and 'small world' connections and coincidences...One very notable one happened again, for the 4th time while on this bus...History goes, that while we were in Panama (Boquete) to be exact, in April of this year, near the start of our trip, we met a French couple at our hostel.  Turns out they were also traveling all the way down South America, and we briefly exchanged ideas...That was that.  Then, while we were in Ecuador, 2 months later, we exchanged glances, crossing a street in the pouring rain, and I said to Danica..."Whoah, that's that couple from Panama!"  That was all at the time.  Then, on our 22 hour bus ride to Bariloche from Mendoza, him and I passed eachother at the terminal, halfway through our trip.  At that point, we both smiled and started talking about how crazy it is to do that not only once, but 3 times!  We talked a little about places we'd been in the rest stop we had, and then we continued to Bariloche.  We ended up spending almost a week there, and never saw them, until we got on the bus to El Bolsón, and they boarded about 10 minutes after us.  Finally, when we all got off at the bus terminal there, we had a good chat about it all.  Unfortunately we didn't exchange info, but judging by our ways of intersecting at random moments, I imagine we'll see them again!  Infact, I'm pretty sure of it.

As for El Bolsón, we really enjoyed it.  We found a campground called "Refugio Patagonico" not far from the bus terminal, and they had a massive yard with tons of campsites,and we were 2 of maybe 5 people there in total.  The guys running the place were super nice, and gave us a great deal to camp for a week, so we did just that.  We had a comfortable campsite with nice grass, a great fire pit and grill, and the place had wifi, which was a bonus.  The people working there gave us tons of local info on what to do in the area.  As of this point so far, Argentinos have been some of the nicest, most helpful people we've come across thus far...Not knocking any other countries, as everyone has been amazing, but these people seem extra friendly!

We spent our thanksgiving holiday there, and actually, it turned out to be 2 days in a row, because we were off a day, and thought we were celebrating it correctly...We cooked some great food on the grill, including mashed potatoes and chorizo and chicken, and sipped some delicious Mendocino Champagne to say the least.

After our week there, we decided on coming slightly south-west, almost to the border of Chile, to a lake called Lago Puelo, to do some more camping...

Rio Azul, a one hour walk from Bolson

San Pedro de Atacama - A whole new world

No, not the theme song from Alladin, but yes, a culture shock all in its own...San Pedro was a nice little desert town, extremely hot during the day, and some incredibly clear skies.  We spent a night at Hostal Corvatsch the first night, after our border crossing adventure into the 21st century.  It was Danica, Juan and I, and we got a dorm style room for very expensive.  Luckily the place had a kitchen, and luckily we finished cooking about 9, because they hurried us out and locked it all up.

streets of San Pedro de Atacama

The next day, we decided to look for camping, and obviously something cheaper...Juan didn't have a tent, and he set off to find a cheaper hostel.  Danica and I found "Camping Los Perrales" just down the road from the center, and while still expensive to set up a tent, it was cheaper than a hostel...

Camping "Los Perrales"

We camped one night, and had a lot of fun.  Cooked, then Juan came and hung out with us at the site til pretty late, and we said goodbye to him, as he was heading to Salta, Argentina in the morning, and us to La Serena, down the coast.
 

Next morning, we got up and found a bus company, "Tur Bus," doing an overnight journey to La Serena, which was about 16 hours away.  We spent the day roaming around, and spending way too long at a cafe on the net, before trudging through the town that evening, in the heat, to find the bus station.

We boarded at 7pm, and headed north-west towards Calama, and into the sunset.  The Valle de la Luna was to our Port-side, and what an incredible sight it was.  Even coming from the Bolivian Salar, the Valle was impressive, with its massive desert rocky cliffs and red rocks.  We would wake the next morning in La Serena...