Brazil

Wow, its been a while since I updated this. I've gone all the way through San Pedro, Salta, Posadas to Foz du Iguacu. That's Chile-Argentina-Brazil! Some very long bus trips, only 22 hours left to get to Rio. Its now sunday in Foz du Iguacu, and everything is completely shut down (except this internet cafe). Brazillian Portuguese is incomprehensible.
The Iguaca falls are awesome. Eighty meters high, the huge river Parana runs out of basalt and plummets. You can walk over, around and up to the falls on walkways. I don't think even the photo's will do it justice, let alone this description.

San Pedro de Atacama

There are millions of tourists in this village. I've met more londoners here than in SE Asia! There's a lot of things to do, mainly tours to weird lunar rocks, deserts, salt flats, a cool 3 day 4x4 trek to bolivia that I'll do next time. Even a royal visit- Queen Beatrix of Holland followed us up a sand dune to see the sunset over the valle de la luna. The border crossing was deserted - it took 4 hours for the lone officer to deal with us all. The andes are incredibly high - we went through the lowest pass at 4300m (no air!), and there were another 3000m of mountains towering over us.
Not a lot in Salta - Posadas though. Or Paraguay - I popped over for a daytrip. I think the Lonely Planet got it right when it said Paraquay's biggest highlight were Jesuit ruins that "weren't worse than Argentina's".
A week on the Copacabana awaits. Or maybe the Ipanema. That's the kind of choice I like...