The jeep ride from Uyuni, where we finished the tour of the salt lakes, to San Pedro de Atacam in Chile, where we were spending Christmas, was the perfect preparation for 4 days of doing nothing but sleep and eat. Our driver was a grumpy and incomprehensible (he was missing most of his teeth) 70 year old leathery guy whose name was something along the lines of Vincent. We shared the jeep with a French family, and Vincent didn`t speak a word to any of us apart from the father, Ludovic, who sat in the front and spoke a bit of Spanish, and battled with Vincent`s conversational limitations admirably (jibberish shouted in a manner which conveyed inexplicable irritation and anger, punctuated by voilent pointing at something or another outside the car and more shouting - "volcano!", "rio!", "laguna!". The drive was fairly uneventful, although we did drive through an extraordinary thunderstorm, complete with hailstones and lightning, one bolt striking the ground about 2m from the jeep as Vincent battled with the road and terrible visibility. Exciting stuff. I realised just how much I had got used to having a guide with me when we arrived at a lodging place which was bare and cold, without electricity and grotty toilets, and I was left wondering whether and when we would be fed. We were: packet soup followed by frankfurters and mashed potato. I was embarrassed to note that while I shrugged and ate what was on offer, the French couple and their son hardly ate anything, obviously pretty disguested with the food. Hardly surprising I suppose that 11 months on the road has lowered my threshold of what I will and will not eat. And they are French and therefore in possession of innate culinary sophistication. And no-one was offering any alternatives.
We were sharing a room with the French family (on whom G and I had unleashed our A level French for the past 5 hours) and I got very confused about whether I could change into my pyjamas in front of Ludovic and his 8 year old son or whether I should go and change in the (pitch black, wet floored, freezing cold) bathroom. I opted for changing in the room and hoping that no-one was offended. There was no shrieking at least, a good sign, and their son didn`t wake up screaming with nightmares. We were woken abruptly at 3:45am by Vincent pounding on the door, 30 minutes earlier than we had agreed with him the night before. We got our stuff together in stunned silence, headtorches on, in the bitterly cold dark, the rest of the place silent. Turned out that the clock in the jeep was 20 minutes fast, but it took me several days to concede that this was probably the reason for the sadistically early wake up call rather than Vincent just being a cruel and power-happy tyrant. The moon was full and bright and the stars legion, but rather than stargazing I fell asleep shortly after hauling myself into the jeep and didn`t wake until the sun was coming up. Perhaps sensing the mutinous atmosphere in the jeep, Vincent offered to make a detour to the geysers (Graz being Graz regarded this as the salvation of Vincent`s karma, as he didn`t need to `go out of his way`; personally I thought it was the least he could do given that we were way ahead of schedule and could easily have had another hour in bed). The geysers were a far more dramatic sight at that time in the morning (with Pedro and Lucia we had been there in the late afternoon), as the air was very cold and the hot air hitting the frigidity above ground created huge spirals and clouds of steam which billowed into the early morning blue sky. The silence in which we made the trip to the border seemed fitting given the sublime landscape we were leaving.
Vincent drove off without saying goodbye once he`d got us to the border, but he had the grace to wait until our onward transport to the border had turned up. A guy who would have seemed better in place in a laboratory (tall, thin, thick glasses, serious expression) strode over calling `Buenas Dias!`,shook our hands warmly and gave us breakfast, which we ate standing around a trestle table laden with bread, ham, cheese, coffee and thermoses of hot water. We chatted to the busload of people he had brought from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile and were headed back over the salt lakes to Uyuni. It was a funny meeting, as those coming from Bolivia were dressed in jumpers, hats, boots, scarves, gloves and jeans, and those coming from Chile were in shorts and t-shirts (and beginning to shiver). This boded well for our comfort in San Pedro - it had been a cold few days especially at night and I was out of socks. Once over the border (after a show of making me open my rucksack so she could look through it the customs woman was defeated by the underwear and toiletries that spilled out onto the table and told me to close it up again) it was a very short journey to San Pedro, and strikingly smooth and quiet - it dawned on me slowly that this was the first time G and I had been on a tarmac road in 3 weeks.
Arriving in San Pedro we staggered 10 metres from the bus to a coffee shop where we regrouped. Finding our hotel after about 20 minutes of walking around in 35 degree midday heat with backpacks, and finding that it was apparently a building site (we couldn`t see in, as it was behind a wall, but there were drilling sounds, piles of cement and a lot of dust) we had a last minute crisis of confidence and wondered whether we were going to be staying in a breeze block shack for Christmas Day. 20 minutes of dithering (and a one-man exploration party back into town to look at other places) later we decided that we had better stay in the place we had reserved. In fact it was lovely - and fully built, apart from a bit of construction in the driveway (and who doesn`t have construction in the driveway?) - and we spent a very relaxing few days there, making use of the hammocks strung under the trees in the garden outside and putting the few Christmas decorations that we had bought at a Christmas market in La Paz into little nooks about the room. San Pedro itself was a nice place, very touristy but given that it was Christmas this was absolutely fine. Having seen pictures on the internet and noting that not only is the place in the middle of the desert but that the predominant building material is adobe (mud, basically) I had been remarked to G that it looked like we would be spending Christmas in Bethlehem i.e. in a small desert village with one (full) inn and nothing to eat. While one might argue that Bethlehem would be a very special place to spend Christmas, this wasn`t Bethlehem, it only looked like Bethlehem, and given that this was my first Christmas away from home and my first with G, I wanted nice food and wine and shops. (Petulant little madam that I am). I was very relieved therefore to find plenty of restaurants, bars, internet, telephones, tours, shops, a huge tinselly Christmas tree in the main square and lots of dark-green-and-red.
The tradition in South America is to celebrate large on Christmas Eve, so we carried out a detailed auditioning of the available restaurants and booked ourselves in. Many of the places on the main drag were touted as `traditional style` - a courtyard in the centre, often with a bonfire and an open roof onto the night sky which was always clear and very starry; tables around the edge of the courtyard and lots of nice drinks on the menu. On Christmas Eve we had a lovely dinner (a present from my family, most of whom were gathered in Miriam`s flat in Paris without me) and then repaired to a bar for some post prandials. Imagine my delight when Father Christmas walked in and, working the room, grabbed my hand and dragged me up to the bonfire for a little dance, then posed for photos with G and me. He was a little skinny, but given the time zone we were presumably his last stop for the night and the partying was already taking its toll on his girth. The following morning we donned our santa hats (which alarmed the nice Belgian gentlemen who were at the table when we came out for breakfast) and called our families. Bizarrely, we used the same set of phones that G`s sister used 10 years ago when she was in San Pedro for Christmas! A little tearful (especially after the rendition of `we wish you a merry Christmas` which rounded off the call) I was bought an ice cream and taken up to an old fortress 3km out of town to watch the sun set. It was a very odd Christmas Day - a lovely day in itself, but with the weather and the distance from family and friends it didn`t feel much like Christmas. Wonder where I`ll be spending it next year? Does Father Christmas visit the married?
In a moment of extreme tiredness I had allowed G to convince me that we should visit some geysers on Boxing Day, a tour that required us to be on the street outside our hotel at 4am. On Boxing Day. Idiocy. It was still dark and freezing cold. I was a little placated by the 2 hour drive which meant I could sleep in the minibus, but when I got out into subzero temperatures and was expected to walk slowly around a park of geysers that although steaming gave off no heat whatsoever, I almost expired with sorrow at my situation. It was so cold that I lost all feeling in my toes within a matter of minutes, and my nose went so hard and numb I thought it might develop frostbite. I have seen several geysers since leaving home last Feb and while I am wary of displaying ennui when everyone else is at home and at work, on the odd occasion it pops out and this was one. Our guide, Gonsalo (sp) was an immensely camp and charming little chap who began his chat with `Welcome to my geysers. I have 5 types of geyser to show you today...` and strolled, hands in pockets (of D&G jeans - he was obsessed with D&G) and twinkling out from underneath the brim of his sunhat while I flapped about in an effort to keep warm, wearing 5 long-sleeve layers, a hat, thick gloves and hiking boots. I don`t think I have ever been so cold in my whole life. Things brightened up considerably in more ways than one when the sun came up, as we were served breakfast on a little table next to the minibus and I had 5 cups of tea and a couple of slices of Panetone style Christmas cake. Cinnamon is very warming to the spirit, especially when accompanied by a cup of Lipton tea with 2 sugars.
We needed the R&R in San Pedro not only to recover from the previous 6 weeks of travelling, but to prepare for New Year. We were heading to Rio to meet 2 good friends who were out from the UK on a long holiday (and anyone who knows Jill and Ryan will understand that we were a little nervous about the pace that would be set). A bus ride to Antofagasta on the west coast of Chile (which was a tired and dreary city attempting to brighten itself up with neon lighting and a surfeit of fried chicken restaurants - desperate for a place that would give me something that would not shorten my lifespan I started walking in to one place to be called back by G who pointed out that the two Christmas baubles on the poster outside on the pavement were actually buttocks and I was about to walk into a strip bar. There was a guy standing outside who looked at G with a mixed expression of envy (mate, I wish my bird would take me into places like that) and confusion (mate, why are you calling her back). We ended up at a place with red velvet furnishings and a pervading smell of fried meat which served us White Russians in champagne glasses, and where the other clientele were all-male hunting parties and the cigarette smoke was thick.
We flew from Antofagasta to Rio via Santiago, which if you look at a map of South America demonstrates that either our route planning went through a slight crisis at this point and that we were very passionate about spending NYE in Rio. We were more or less resigned to some mugging or violence during our stay there, because everyone we had met who`d been to Rio had been robbed, and we had been so very lucky so far. As a result we spent 1.5 hours in the airport to gather ourselves (and some cash) before getting in a radio taxi to our hostel, having tied our money belts into unlikely niches around our persons and secreted cash in all our bags and pockets. The taxi driver, far from driving us into a little alleyway and demanding our valuables at knifepoint then dumping us in the middle of the redlight district without our clothes, pointed out a number of sights along the way including the Christmas Tree in the middle of the Laguna which had 2m lights on it, and Christ the Redeemer which at that time of night was a white glow in the sky above the city; and then dropped us at the door of our hostel and wished us Happy New Year before driving off.

We were in Rio, baby!