I`m a whole country behind in updating this thing - shit!

Righto - so since I wrote last, we´ve escaped Bolivia and headed across Northern Argentina and into the coldness and darkness of Patagonia. Right now, we´re waiting to catch a boat in Chile - best I do a quick recap (and we know that everyone - or at least Amy - loves a recap).

Leaving Bolivia - across the great flat white

In this case, this would be Bolivia´s other "great white expanse" - the Salar de Uyuni. This is the world`s biggest salt plain - 10,000 square kilometers of dead flat, pure white salt crust. Driving out into the salt in a four wheel drive is strange and surreal - the edge of the salt is just like the beach, with spiny, coastal looking vegetation and sand and out in the distance are a couple of "islands" - rocky outcrops with cactus on them - it really is like driving out into a vast white sea. In places the crust is nearly 30 metres thick - with interleaved layers of salt crust and saturated salt water all the way down.

Getting to the Salar took us 3 days of serious driving through more incredible country - past the turnoff to the highest road in the world, the bases of smoking volcanos and bubbling sulfurous mud pools, and across deserts strewn with the most unbelievable rocks you can imagine. We saw vicuña, andean foxes and weird little south american ostriches. Everything was cold in the day time, and freezing (-15°C) at night.

Argentina - you don`t make friends with salad.

You do, however, make plenty of friends with a kilo of high quality beef fillet and a pair of oversized steak knives. We know - we tested.

Our first days in Argentina were spent in the little town of Humahuaca. The first thing we noticed was the smell - instead of the pervasive perfume you get when every vertical surface is a perfectly acceptable public urinal, Argentina smells like steak - tasty, smoky, barbecuey, steaky goodness. Of course, we assume that the urinal smell is present, but barbecue works very well to mask it.

Continuing our meaty initiation, we soon discovered what were identifiable butcher shops! Not fly speckled trestle tables on the side of the road, but actual butcheries - with actual refrigerators, with actual electricity connected to them! Needless to say we immediately purchased a metre or two of cow parts so we wouldn't look so out of place walking around meatless. We soon headed back to the grill at the hostel, made a nice little bed of coals and enjoyed our first Parillada.

We´ve left Argentina for a week or so, but not before visiting Bariloche for a completely snow-less snow festival, a feast of very good chocolate, and some excellent puppy love. More pictures on that soon.