Beach, desert, waterfalls, ‘river cruise’ and Pantanal wildlife

Chile
We took a few days to relax and surf (Rene) on the beach in Iquique. Next we headed to San Pedro de Atacama, our last destination with Tutti Frutti.  During the drive along the sea we stopped to see a tiny island with thousands of seabirds (sort of pelicans), we can see some flying just above the sea level in order to grab some fish. After a couple of extra hours of driving (caused by a roadblock because of a protest from fishermen, which apparently could last for days…) we finally reached San Pedro.

On the one hand we felt really sad to hand back in our campervan, it´s so convenient and for sure we will miss the flexibility and freedom to just go park and camp wherever we wanted. We covered 9000kms in 6 weeks, so our friend Tutti Frutti did a great job 😉 On the other hand, it´s also nice to start the normal backpacker life now, to meet other travelers in hostels and share travel experiences.

San Pedro is a tiny but very touristy village in the middle of the Atacama desert, with amazing sunsets from Valle de la Luna. Small magical adobe streets, lots of hostels and cafes, and many many tour agencies. There´s a nice atmosphere and so much to do! We went sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte, a bit like snowboarding but different (a challenge if you don´t have any snowboard experience like Viv 😉 ). The sanddune was much shorter than a ski-piste, so walking up the hill all the time was quite hard work.  We also saw the Tatio Geysers at sunrise. It is the 3^rd largest geyser field in the world (after YellowStone (US) and one in Russia). It was very beautiful and a surreal sight to see all the steam coming out of the ground, maybe because we were freezing here (temperature was -7C). Rene was even brave enough to try the hotsprings that weren´t that hot really (he had to defrost his feet). After the springs we see llamas (even tried the meat, tasty!), vecuñas (small sort of llama), flamengos and vizcachas (tall rabbits with a very long tail). We learned a lot about the fauna in this region, we never knew flamengos are actually born white and turn over to pink over the years as they eat many small shrimps…

Argentina
From San Pedro we headed to Argentina in the direction of Iguazu, via Salta. Bad luck at our first ride in a tourist bus, as the bus was cancelled – it got stuck in the snow around the border pass, so patiently we waited another day for the next bus…not a very positive first experience but we´ve been told that in general the travel by bus in Chile and Argentina is very smooth and comfortable. Which is also what we experienced later when we took a 24h bus ride from Salta all the way to Iguazu, the semi-cama option is not too bad to sleep in.

Iguazu falls definitely deserves to be one of the most beautiful natural wonders in the world; we’ve never seen something this amazing, so many rainbows, breathtaking, especially the Argentinian side. The falls are stretched out over more than 2.5km, located on the border between Brazil and Argentina surrounded by subtropical rainforests. 275 falls altogether with the Garganta del Diablo (the ‘Devils Throat’) being the tallest/most impressive one with 80m in height. The Iguazu park is full of Coati, a sort of raccoon, with their long snouts they are constantly hunting for food…quite annoying as they can jump on you when you’re trying to eat your lunch, but this couldn’t ruin this absolute highlight for us!

Paraguay
From Iguazu we travelled into Paraguay, a little bit off the so-called gringo trail.

We entered the country via Cuidad del Este, where we noticed a big contrast between poor and rich in the hectic streets. On the one hand we saw Hummers driving around and shopping malls with shops full of expensive sunglasses and the latest smartphones etc.  (a lot of people from Brazil and Argentina come here to buy luxury products against lower prices, therefore Ciudad del Este is also called the Supermarket of South America) but on the other hand there are the farmers with their horses and carts. We visited the Itaipu Dam here, nowadays world’s second largest dam (China’s new Three Gorges Dam is bigger). Itaipu’s generators supply nearly 80% of Paraguay’s electricity and 25% of Brazil’s entire demand (!!). René would have loved to do a technical visit, however as we didn’t book this it wasn’t possible unfortunately.

From Ciudad del Este we travel to Concepcion, a colonial city in the North of Paraguay. We are the only tourists in the bus terminal; all is a lot less organized here in comparison to what we’ve seen in Chile or Argentina. There is loud music everywhere (also on the bus for almost 10 hours (!!), so loud that our headphones couldn’t cope with it) and the bus companies are trying to sell their tickets as if they’re on a marketplace, constantly trying to outcry each other. People are carrying incredible amounts of luggage with them (mostly food); we wonder how they still keep track of what belongs to whom in this chaos…

Concepcion is also called the ‘Perla del Norte’. We felt its atmosphere was definitely calmer and more pleasant in comparison to Ciudad del Este, but most of the colonial buildings looked rather abandoned and it seemed like faded glory. The main reason we travelled here was to go on a ‘river cruise’ into the Paraguayan Pantanal via Rio Paraguay, and then enter Brazil afterwards. Well this was certainly a special experience, quite an adventure in itself. It’s not the type of cruise you´d expect; we travelled with the Aquidabán boat, which is basically a cargo boat that serves as a life line for the inhabitants of the remote Paraguayan Pantanal. Every week the boat travels between Concepcion and Bahia Negra. The boat stops in all the small villages along the river to drop off supplies (not just fresh food and drinks but we also saw furniture, ovens, mattresses and even motorcycles…) all this is manually brought onto the ship and taken off again…talking about inefficiency 😉 for us it seems as if we were going back 50 years in time. The boat is like a floating supermarket full with local people. We saw young women (girls) who give birth in the hospital in Concepcion and travel back home with their newborns on this boat (literally only a couple of days old…). As this service is never full, we were told to claim our spot on the deck outside as soon as you get on board. So there we were, among the chickens and crates of bananas, reading, enjoying the sun and beautiful scenery of the Paraguayan Pantanal. We could choose to sleep in a hammock or in a cabin, we took a cabin as we expected this to be more quiet and safer for our bags. Not sure whether that was the most comfy option…the cabin looked like a prison cell, tiny with 4 beds, but the worst were the bedfellows that came to visit us at night…lots of cockroaches on the wall and crawling over our mattress… guess that was all part of this truly authentic South American experience…one night was enough for us, and on the positive side we have to mention that we enjoyed one the best sunsets of our trip followed by an impressive clear sky with thousands of stars.

Brazil
We got off at Isla Margarita where we entered Brazil in Porto Murtinho and travelled to Bonito the next day. We normally don’t book things ahead as we never know exactly how things go, but that would have been wise to do so for Bonito, where the main attraction is snorkeling in the crystal clear rivers. Due to a national Bank Holiday, many Brazilians are visiting Bonito for the weekend and everything was fully booked for the next couple of days. We decided to change plans and go on a 3 day tour to the Brazilian Pantanal instead.  This is a lowland swamp with lots of exotic wildlife to see. Tourism is big here, but still the major source of income is kettle. At the moment the cows looked very skinny, this is because of the high water, there is hardly any grass for them to eat. Lot of farmers are forced now to sell their cows to other farms who have more high land, if they don’t do anything they’ll just die… We stayed at a lovely Ecofarm, a private area of 2000ha, where we went horseriding (yes even Viv overcame her fear of horses), piranha fishing, canoeing, and did some (barefoot!) walks through the swaps. The wildlife we saw was amazing, especially given the cold weather: Howly monkeys, armadillos, lots of caimans, tarantula, capybaras (biggest rodent in the world), a lancehead snake (very poisoning), possums, wild pigs, giant river otters, many many many different bird species (blue parrots, tucans, kingfishers, falks just to name a few), deer and big frogs. Thank you Pantanal (and guide Alex), a great natural paradise!

Bolivia
Yesterday we left Brazil, an amazing country that has so much more to offer, we will be back soon! We took the Trans-Chiquitano night train to Bolivia, the so-called ‘death train’ from Quijarra to Santa Cruz. It was given its name due to the fact that it was once used to carry the victims’ bodies out of Santa Cruz and into quarantine, when the region suffered the yellow fever epidemic.  Although we also heard other stories… no-one really knows for sure. Guess we didn’t really get the experience as for us it was just an expensive, very slow and bumpy ride with no service at all on board. Now we’re in Santa Cruz where we’re awaiting a very special friend who will travel with us for a few weeks through Bolivia and Peru, very excited to see you soon Margot!

Sunset at Iquique beach

Chilling at the beach in Iquique

Surfdude (almost…)

Bird island

Count the birds…

Valle de la Luna (Atacama desert)

View from San Pedro de Atacama valley

Tutti Frutti back home with her family

Sandboarding in Valle de la Muerte

Tatio geysers

Rene in the hotsprings

Landscape at an altitude of 4000 meters

Delicious icecream in San Pedro

Fully packed on our way

Coati in Iguazu

Iguazu falls

Iguazu falls

Iguazu falls

Iguazu falls

Iguazu falls

‘River cruise’

Our cabin on the boat

Fully loaded

The floating supermarket

Chilling on the boat

Sunset view from the boat

Pantanal – Caimans

Pantanal – Capybaras

Catching Piranhas

Luckily the guide unhooks the piranha…

Pantanal – Blue parrots

Pantanal – Armadillo making a hole

Pantanal – Black armadillo

Pantanal – Capybara family in front of our door

Morning walk through the Pantanal swamps

Beautiful Pantanal sunrise

Safari jeep

Death train

Simon the Tucan