Los Gigantes

On the way the way to Argentina after the Chilean border right in the middle of a huge no man's land Ernie decided to fuck up again... This time 50 km from the nearest town in the Northern Argentinian higlands and a major breakdown which ended upo being the water pump.
In consequence not really wanting to spend one week in a former dusty mining town we all packed our bags and left the truck to go the next planned crag. After 20 hours+ of bus and one week supply shopping in Cordoba we arrived in the Los Gigantes crag. Without the truck logistic was a bit more complex having to carry climbing gear and one week food to the crag.
Concerning climbing Los Gigantes is THE traditional climbing place around Cordoba. By traditional it means old-school climbing on slabs, chimneys and cracks with generally run out gears in opposition to modern climbing in generally overhangs and well protected. Therefore it is more a mental game rather than muscle game :) One  week was more than enough to destroy my feet !

Nice sunset in the camp site

Our camp site

Rock and condor

Cerro de la Cruz, one of the biggest sector and very slabby

Woody loves slabs

After climbing relaxing beer and feet in cold water, what else ?

Hot rock alcoholics

One of the almost no slabby route on a nice red granit

Socaire

Quick detour in Chile to go check some crags in the north of the country. Impressive change right after Bolivia we're like in Europe ! Better food, clearly less "authenticity" and higher prices. After a quick day in a trad place called Toconau we head to Socaire supposed to be an excellent crag and it is ! Very nice bush camping in the canyon near a river which saly disappeared the first night... Some locals changed its way ...
The climbing is awesome on a very solid volcanic rock.

Our camp 

Chris leading a nice trad crack

Woody on our 7a+ project "Tortura Digital"

Morning Didgeridoo

Nice boulders as well on volcanic tuffas !

Very nice face offering three stars climbs

Salar de Uyuni

After getting the truck out from the border of the salt falt we finally go through the salar with a guide as obviously there are no roads you just can drive anywhere !

The salar is white very white so white that you can't see anything without sunglasses. Nothing particular except a strange feeling to be on a complete different planet ! 

Entrance of the salar

Biggest cactus ever !

Woody priscilla !

Ernie the toy

Salt harvesting

Chilean Volcanic landscape

Bolivia

Bolivia was a pretty short venue, due to the fact that mainly climbing is pretty limited. Yes climbing is a rich country stuff, you need gear and Bolivia is poor... The first contact with Bolivianos was very nice. I found the people way nicer than Peru where tourism is more important. A nice stuff we French have in common with Bolivia are strikes !!! They often protests and there was a big one when we arrived in La Paz.

Aranjuez Crag

Muddy formations 

Concerning limbing even if it's not very developped we have been amazed by a crag a few km from La paz. From far it looks like mud and in fact the rock is a  conglomerate of solidified mud with pebbles. This made awesome long pumpy routes

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Pebble world

Climbing Champagne (only 7a here :) )

La Paz

After La Paz we headed to Oruro a mining city with as well a very good crag this time on an unknown rock type maybe something volcanic... Very good climbing as well where we met the locals of the Oruro climbing club. Very friendly people who where interested in knowing our opinions concering the difficulties of the climbs. The bush camp this time was in the middle of a neighborhood...pretty poor and dirty !

Woody the OZ crushes

Not the best bush camping.... :)

Disaster....3 days to get the truck out... :(

Snow and water

On the way to La Paz we drove on the side of Titicaca lake where we crossed the Peru/Bolivia border. Easy border this time...except a little funny "paper" issue with Ernie. The official from the border show us an incomplete Bolivian entry for Erne from 2007... At this time the truck didn't even belonged to HotRock but the official explained us that we normally have to pay 150 bolivianos (15euros) per day since the missing exit form the country that is to say from 2007 (which would be more than 15000 euros :) ). As usual we payed 100 bolivianos to the guard and he deleted the infraction in the system. Easy.

Being to late to head directly to La Paz we bushed camp not far from the Titicaca Lake. Nice surprise in the morning with 10 cm of snow... Of course this evening I had chosen to set-up my tent pretty far from the truck ;) I confirm that the MSR Hubba Hubba behaves well with the snow, it was maybe slightly cold ;) Good tent !

Shop on the Bolivian border

Snow !

Water !

 After the snow, some water ! In order to cross the titicaca lake Ernie has the privilege to sail on a nice wooden ferry. Scary but no problem with Ernie's 14 tons.