Jet-lagged and straight up into the Bolivian highlands: geysers at Sol de Mañana, the red Laguna Colorada, a night when the thin air hardly let us sleep, and then the Salar de Uyuni at sunrise, with shadows stretching to the horizon. Back in Chile we drove a small Polo through the Atacama, into the Valley of the Moon and the Rainbow Valley, and spent three nights outside under a starry sky clearer than anywhere else. And to finish, a dream for years: the moai of Easter Island. Here are all my travel stories from Chile and Bolivia.
With jet lag it was a bit stressful to drive on across the Bolivian border into the highlands on the very first morning after arriving in the Atacama Desert. We were soon above 5,000 metres, and luckily our circulation coped…
The first night in the highlands wasn't particularly pleasant because of the thin air and the cold. But when we stood at Laguna Colorada after breakfast, all that was forgotten. The red lake was very impressive, from above too, of…
The real goal of our tour through the Bolivian highlands was the Salar de Uyuni: an endless white salt flat wherever you look. We were up before sunrise so we could be alone somewhere out on the flat when the…
After our tour through the Bolivian highlands we returned to Chile early in the morning, where we settled into our base in San Pedro de Atacama for the next few days. We arrived at the hotel at midday and in…
The next day we drove from San Pedro de Atacama in our little Polo through a great mountain landscape to the Valle Arcoiris, the Rainbow Valley. There was nothing about it in our guidebooks; only a few reports and photos…
On our last full day in San Pedro we drove through the Atacama Desert towards the highlands and into the border area with Bolivia. Everywhere along the way there were llamas, which put a big smile on Luisa's face every…
The Atacama is considered the driest desert on earth and has one of the clearest starry skies anywhere. Of four nights, we spent three outside looking up. I've seen impressive starry skies in many places, but this one is among…
Easter Island, called Rapa Nui by the locals, had been a dream for years: those colossal moai statues, whose history is still not fully understood, on an island that seemed unreachably far away. When Luisa spontaneously got a business trip…
