I am back. Again.
As a very light-dependent creature I love our escapes into summer from dark winter very much. They strongly help to survive the darkest days of a year, and they are wonderful on their own.
The escape from this winter definitely was perfect. For the whole month we moved to the south hemisphere, trading the shortest day for the longest ones.
It was a very multifarious travel.
At first we visited Eastern Island, the place that mostly isolated from other human locations. Its population consists of numerous huge stone statues, Polynesians with the traces of Inca blood in their veins, and enormous cockroaches. From my childhood Eastern Island was covered with a romantic veil of Tour Heyerdahl adventures, so the visit of the island was a special treatment for me.
From Eastern Island we moved to the north-east part of the great Atacama desert, on the edge of the huge highland plateau. In this place we acclimatized for Ojos del Salado, and for this porpoise climbed the three mountains (two about 5600 meters, and third about 6000 meters). Between (and during) the climbing we studied the beautiful and strange nature of this place – mountain desert, geysers and hot springs, salt lakes and salt plains. We saw vicunas, viscachas, guanacos, nandu, flamingos and other desert wildlife. Along the way we broke the one car and lost the other, spent time with Chilean carabineras, and enjoyed our time in full.
The third part of our travel was devoted to Ojos del Salado, the highest volcano in the world (6893 meters). Two years ago we failed to climb it, so this time we amended the situation.
Because we climbed Ojos surprisingly fast, we had some spare time for short visit to Argentina. So we spent some time among the vineyards of Mendosa and made a very short trip to Buenos Aires.
Detailed stories and many photos will be shortly.
