A Chile reception...

Haha, sorry I couldn't resist. We've finally arrived in Chile, showered and checked into a fab little hostal in the desert town of San Pedro, near the border with both Bolivia and Argentina. We've had an amazing couple of days tripping round the psychedelic landscapes of the south-west of Bolivia; seen the world's largest salt flat which was covered in water, and which produced optical illusions such as cars and mountains floating hundreds of metres off the ground.

the train cemetery outside Uyuni

Laur playing in the salt flats

flamingos grazing in the amazing lake colorado

We've seen bright red lakes and martian landscapes of red soil and towering multi-coloured mountains, flocks of pink flamingos and andean foxes, and had a freezing, eerie early-morning start today where we visited huge craters spewing sulfur fumes, bubbling rock and steam into the air. The circuit is dominated by europeans with the odd Aussie thrown in, so we've been discussing european politics and dredging up our schoolboy/girl french and german - we're thinking once we've conquered spanish these are next on the list!

the stone tree in the surreal uyuni desert

relaxing in the hot springs

San Pedro is small, welcoming and very gringo-centred, much more so than anywhere we have been in Bolivia and Peru, so we are going to recuperate here for a few days before we head south to Santiago. More pics to come in future updates...