hola amigos,

que tal? estoy bien. soy en la chile despues 2 semanas y estaba bien ... for the non spanish: how are you? i'm fine. i'm in chile since 2 weeks and it's great ...

so arrive monday 2 weeks ago ... was pretty weird, as i left auckland at about 6pm and arrived in santiago at about 1 pm ... the same day ... god bless the international date line :) ... so the first couple of days i only stayed in santiago to get used to the chilenean time ... i'm now 6 hours behind austrian time ... i booked an other desert tour for ten days to go norht of santiago, because it was really freezing ... chile is in the middle of winter now ... s***, wrong time to visit south america :)

so, left santiago on 23rd of june to head north ... we were at the beginning 7 people, 5 british, 1 dutch and me .. and two chilenean (one guide called nico, and our driver sergio ... both spoke english, what was very surprising as english is not really used here ... only spanish) ... as the tour was about 4000 km we spent a lot of time in the bus, we also slept in cabins at the campsite and in had a great BBQ made by sergio on the third night ... this was pretty much the highlight so far, after day 5 it got really great, as we crossed the atacama desert, which is the driest part of the world (in some places it didn't rain for 50 or more years) and it was really nice and warm :) saw some weird places, like the salt flat ... there is only salt, even the street through the desert is made of salt, as it never rains there that is possible, cause rain would destroy the street within minutes ... had also a stop at a little oasis there, saw flamencos in a national park in the middle of the salt flat and finally arrived in san pedro de atacama, which is a very touristic place ... there i tried to sandboard (like snowboarden, but on sand dunes), i did never snowboard before, so i had some problems with sandboarden ... moreover it was quite tough to step up the sanddune after every ride ... and you had to put wax on the board otherwise you wouldn't move a single meter on the sand ... but after some time i could ride at least some meters, some of us got really good and one guy even made a 360 (overhead) and broke his board with this action ;) ... the same day we also visited the moon valley (Valle de la luna) and did some caving there ... i climbed again a cave wall (but this time in dry conditions) and then we walked through the moon valley, which is also mostly made of salt ... completely strange landscape ... saw also sunset in the moon valley and moon rise (which was pretty at the same time) ... was absolutely fantastic ... in san pedro most of the guys left to go to bolivia or peru, so back to santiago we were only 5 people ... the highlight back to santiago was the observatory in vicuna ... is the only one you can visit, as all the other observatory in chile are only for research the space ... so we were pretty lucky and unlucky at the same time ... lucky because we saw a planet constellation, which our guide had never seen before (and he does his job since 26 years) ... venus and saturn were very "close" and through the telescope you saw the rings of saturn ... this was quite lucky, the unlucky moment was the full moon, so the sky was very bright and we couldn't see as much as at black moon ... but therefore we got some awesome pictures of the fullmoon (actually, he was not full, but only 99.6% full *g*) through the telescope ... you can even see a big crater on the moon on the picture ...

as chile has the clearest sky in the world (because in some parts in never rains) lots of observatories are in this country .... also the biggest one in the world

the next day we went to a pisco distirelly ... pisco is the alcoholic national drink here .. you can have it straight (on the rocks, like whiskey) or mix it with sprite, lemon juice, coke etc. ... they really drink pisco to every meal (pisco sour - with lemon juice) ... as we had a big night before the visit, it was really hard to smell the pisco taste which was in the air :) afterwards the girls went horseriding and the lads watched copa america (chile-brazil) ... unfortunately chile lost so no more party on this day :)

this was our last day of the tour, the next day we headed back to santiago, which was now much nicer, as the weather was not too bad (before the tour it only rained and was really cold) ... and as there is no heating in the hotels and hostels you got 2-3 blankets for the night ...

originally i wanted to fly after this tour to easter island, but LAN (the only airline which is going there) wants 950 us dollars for this flight ... they are crazy, so i'm now in valparaiso till tomorrow and go back to santiago and will also go a little south although there it will be cold .. but there are some beautiful lakes and you even can climb an active vulcano which i want to do ... in generell, the landscape is really fantastic, you drive through the desert and you can see the andes with snowy peaks ... and santiago is not that bad as maybe everybody expects ... it's quite clean (for south american conditions) and also quite safe ... chile is also the most expensive country here, but compared to austria it's still very cheap (e.g. one beer in a restaurant: 1 euro, main dishes from 2 euros)

ok, tomorrow my last 5 weeks will start, after chile i wanna visit argentina and then brazil from where i will fly home

photos of the atacama desert tour will be uploaded as soon as possible, as in my hostel it didn't work i will do it the next days ...

cu back in vienna

hasta luego, christoph