The Amazing Atacama

Hello.  I'm in the Atacama Desert in the North of Chile.  Apparently it's the driest desert on earth!

You haven't heard from me for a while because I've been driving around in a four-wheel drive and camping in the desert.  The stars are amazing at night because there are no lights from towns or cities to block the view.  That's why lots of countries have built telescopes here to find out more about the stars.

You might think it would be nice and warm in a tent in the desert but actually that's not true.  It's very warm here in the day but very cold at night.  Some nights it was -10 degrees in my tent!

There are lots of amazing rocks here.  In some places it looks a bit like you are on the moon or another planet.  In fact, I visited a place called 'The Valley of the Moon'.

There are also lots of volcanoes here.  Here I am at the top of Volcano Toco, which is over 5,500m high.

There is an area full of geysers.  They look like pots of boiling mud and they let off gases.  The fumes  come from deep down in the earth where it's very hot.  The heat makes some of the nearby pools of water nice and warm, so Robin's auntie and uncle went for a swim.  I decided not to bother though, as my fur doesn't like getting wet.

There are also lots of salt flats here.  They're a bit like a sea that has dried out.  Instead of salty sea water you just get layers of white salt on the ground.  It's very strange!

There are also some lakes with flamingos.  The scenery is amazing!

I'm off to Bolivia tomorrow so I'll send you my next update from there!

On Top Of A 6000m Mountain

Hello.  In my last blog post I said I was quite tired.  Well, here's the reason why.

I've just got back from climbing a mountain that was 6,000m high!  That means it was over two-thirds of the height of Everest, the tallest mountain in the world.  It was called San Miguel de Palermo.

It took six days to get to the top.  We spent the time walking up a valley, camping, and cooking pasta to give us lots of energy.  Some days we rested and played cards in the sunshine.  We couldn't go any more quickly as there isn't very much oxygen on top of high mountains so you have to move slowly.  This wasn't so much of a problem for me, as I'm a stuffed traveller, but Robin's auntie and uncle found it quite hard to breathe.

Me on top of a 6000m mountain!

On top of the mountain the views were amazing.  We could see lots of other big mountains with snow on top and we could see the clouds below us even though it was sunny on the mountaintop.  It was very cold and windy though; Robin's auntie and uncle had to wear mittens and hats and three pairs of socks.  I was just fine in my fur!

There wasn't any wildlife on top of the mountain but we saw lots in the valley on the way there.  We saw condors which were like huge black eagles soaring above us.  We saw llamas most days; they are very common animals in this part of South America.  There was a family of a mummy, daddy and baby llama that I saw lots of times.

One day I saw a fox very close to our campsite.  I also saw lots of animals called Vizcachas which are like overgrown rabbits except that they have long tails instead of short fluffy ones.  There aren't any Vizcachas in England so I was very excited to see them.  That's one of the things I like about travelling - there are lots of things to see that don't exist in Birmingham.

A fox visiting our campsite

After looking at all the wildlife and climbing San Miguel de Palermo we walked back down the valley to a village called Cachi.  From there, we could see the mountain we had climbed.  It looked enormous and I felt very proud to have been to the top!

The question is: have I set a new world height record for stuffed travellers?!

The Train In The Clouds

A week ago I went on a very exciting train ride.  It was called 'tren a las nubes', which means 'the train in the clouds'.  It's so high you can sometimes see clouds underneath the bridges that the train crosses over!

Tren A Las Nubes going over a bridge

My train ride started in a place called Salta, in northwest Argentina.  It's quite desert-like here and I saw lots of cacti from the train.  They are very tall spiky plants that live in deserts.

Salta is about a thousand metres higher than the level of the sea.  From Salta station, the train went up a mountain until we were over four thousand metres above sea level!  There isn't much oxygen in the air at that height so an ambulance drove along beside the train in case any of the passengers found it hard to breath.

It's very difficult for trains to go up steep slopes so the train had to go round the hill in spirals for part of the journey.  It also went up two zig-zags - it went along the 'zig', then stopped and had to reverse up the 'zag', then it stopped and went forward again.  It's a bit complicated!  You'd have to be a very good engineer to build a train line like that as it's much much steeper than the Lickey Hills!

Me peeping out of the window as the train goes round a bend

I spent the whole day on the train and looked out of the window all the way at the view.  We didn't get back to Salta until 11 o' clock at night, by which time I was a very tired stuffed traveller!

Since my train ride I've been on a very exciting expedition but I'll tell you about that in my next blog post.  I hope you're looking forward to it!

A Thousand Miles By Bus

Hello.  It's time for another update on my travels, as I've been on a very long journey since I last blogged.

After I got back from Easter Island, I took a trip to a city called Valparaiso.  It's on the coast of Chile and it's a huge port.  I saw hundreds of containers ready to be stacked onto ships for delivery around the world.  Have you ever thought about how the stuff in the shops in Birmingham gets there?  I bet some of the things you buy have travelled in containers exactly like the ones I saw in Valparaiso.

The port of Valparaiso

The other interesting thing about Valparaiso is that all the houses are brightly coloured and they are built on a very steep hillside.  There are lots of funicular railways in the city to get to the higher streets in the town.  Otherwise, you have to be very fit and walk up all the steps.  I preferred the funicular myself!

After two days in Valparaiso I took the bus across to Argentina.  It was a beautiful bus ride as there are very high mountains between Argentina and Chile, called the Andes, and we had to cross them in the bus.  It was like driving to a ski resort; we went round loads of hair pin bends.  Luckily I wasn't travel sick!

In Argentina we stayed in a place called Mendoza.  They make lots of wine around here - hundreds of litres a day!  I took a tour to see how the wine is made.   They crush the grapes in a big machine and the leftover bits (the pips and skin) come out of the machine in a big pulp.  This pulp goes on the fields as fertiliser!  Meanwhile, the juice is turned into wine.  I think I'll stick to orange juice for now though!

Vineyards

Casks of wine

Yesterday, I spent twenty hours on a bus!  It wasn't too boring as I had lots of chances to look out of the window at the mountains.  They also showed 'The Hobbit' on the journey, but they'd turned it into a Spanish version, so I couldn't understand very much.  At least I now know that the elves in Spanish are 'los elfos'!

I'm now in a place called Salta in the northwest of Argentina - a thousand miles from Valparaiso where I started writing this blog.  That's a very long journey for a stuffed traveller!