Archiv der Kategorie: America

Chile, World Trip 2018-19

Colourful Valparaíso & down-time in Viña del Mar

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After all the wine and mountain views around Mendoza, we hopped across the boarder again to Chile. Well, hopped sounds quick – but it took the whole day. In Valparaíso, we were staying at a basic and not too nice (but central) AirBnB which made it easy to explore the hilly town over the next 1.5 days.

Valparaíso is kind of an artist town that spreads out across various hills. From the hills, there are nice views over town and the ocean. It felt really good to be back at the ocean after spending so much time inland recently!

What Valparaíso is really famous for though, are all the colourful graffiti that are covering houses and sometimes whole streets. They are the main sight of the city and beautiful! You can clearly see the difference between some talented and not so talented artists. I really enjoyed walking around on the hunt for more street art to photograph. Sometimes, we also took some of the old escalators up to viewpoints, saving on energy and walking time – plus, it’s kind of a must do experience to be in at least one of these old escalators once.

We had talked about taking a bit of a break from travelling for a while already and spontaneously decided that now was a good time. There was no nice apartment left on AirBnB in Valparaíso unfortunately, but we kind of also liked Viña del Mar when driving through by bus, so booked ourselves a little place there. The next three days, we didn’t leave the apartment all that much, but chilled a lot, got some things organized and ate some good food. When you’re traveling for a longer time, sometimes you need a little downtime like this! 

Argentina, World Trip 2018-19

Mountains & Wine in Mendoza

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We arrived in Mendoza in the morning after a 18 h bus ride from Salta. It was ok though – it didn’t feel that long and we got a good amount of sleep. We were lucky to be able to check in at our AirBnB straight away, shower, do laundry, get organized etc. Later, we ventured out to see the city – one of the greenest ones we’ve seen yet. Unfortunately, weather was grey and it started to rain soon, so after seeing the main squares and streets, we returned to our AirBnB.

Next day it looked a little better, so we took a train and bus to Maipu where many bodegas are located and where we were able to rent bikes. In the course of the afternoon, we visited 3 different wine goods and did a wine tasting at each of them. While the cycling wasn’t as nice as expected (big roads and lots of traffic), it was a fun way to spend an afternoon. We realized that we definitely preferred red over white wines of the region and the rosés were barely drinkable. The views from the wine goods were quite pretty, despite the clouds that stayed persistently throughout the day.

On our third day in Mendoza, we woke up super early and caught a bus at 6 am to Aconcagua National Park. It takes 3.5 h to get there, so if you want to hike to the base camp Confluencia like we did, you don’t have another option. The drive itself was spectacular already and we were once again (like so many times on this trip) sad to be on a bus where we couldn’t stop for photos. Luckily, the landscape was still beautiful when we arrived!

We straight away set off for the hike – it takes about 6 h and the last bus is at 16.30, so you can’t be much slower than that. It’s not that we’re such slow hikers, but we (especially *one of us*) loves to take hundreds of pictures which always takes a bit, stopping a lot along the way. As mentioned, the mountain scenery around us was breathtaking! We were so lucky it had snowed the day before, so in the morning everything was covered with a layer of fresh snow… On our way back, most of it had melted already.

Even if the main attraction of the hike – Mt. Aconcagua – was hiding himself behind a blanket of clouds, we really enjoyed the hike. The surrounding mountains made up for missing out on Aconcagua and the trail leads through such a nice valley, that you have beautiful views in both directions. Very much recommended!

From Mendoza, we hopped on a bus across the boarder again – to Valparaíso.

Argentina, World Trip 2018-19

Rainbow Mountains of Purmamarca & relaxing in Salta

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Time to cross a boarder again! After only a couple of days in Chile, we took a bus to Purmamarca, Argentina. Chile, we will be back soon! The bus ride was…long and a little depressing in the end: We had left with bright blue skies and suddenly found ourselves in fog so thick the bus driver almost couldn’t see where he was going. We arrived in Purmamarca in drizzling rain and it took us ages to find an ok place to stay. Not a good start… but it got better! Much better actually. Next morning we woke up to once again blue sky and sunshine. Yay! Time to explore the colourful hills around Purmamarca that the region is known for. First, we climbed up a hill on the other side of the river where we got the typical view of Purmamarca with the 7-colour mountain in the back. Really nice!

It reminded us a little of Tupiza, although Tupiza was bigger of course. Once again, we really liked the rocky landscape, so we continued our exploration on the village side of the river, climbing up various hills and walking the much recommended Paseo de los Colorados, a dirt road that leads in a half circle behind the village, passing by lots of cool red and colourful rocks.

Purmamarca itself is a cute little village, however a bit more touristy than expected, especially when all the tour busses roll in. There isn’t a whole lot to do and see – we were done with our hikes after half a day, so spent the rest of the day chilling in the sun with some beers. Not too bad either!

The day after, we left for Salta, which took us a good part of the day again as we had to go to Jujuy first and change there. In Salta, we spent two rather relaxed days exploring the small center with its typical plaza and picturesque churches.

We also took the cable car up Cerro San Bernardo. Unfortunately, late afternoon is not a good time to go since you’ll have the sun against you when taking pictures. Still, we always enjoy viewpoints, so it was good to do and see!

The rest of the time in Salta, we took it a bit slower than usual, going out for drinks with a couple we met, eating delicious empanadas and testing one of the famous pay-per-kilo restaurants for the first time. Salta was a nice stop, even though not a very special one, and from here we took our yet longest bus ride of this trip – 18 h to Mendoza.