LatAm-2026: intro-post with 75 pix!

Hola Folks!

And so this here blog of mine has finally caught up with my late-2025 globetrotting escapades to bring me (almost) up to date – at least firmly into this year and its first touristic adventure. And that adventure, as you already know from the title of this blogpost, took place down in South America. But not Rio, and not Iguazu/Itaipu either – though there was a Brazilian installment…

The touristic adventure was an extended vacation – to fill in the lull early in the year, as per tradition. And “extended vacation” can mean only one thing for my blog: an extended series of posts thereon – coming right up! Today – also as per tradition: intro post, to get the juices flowing…

Not only is there our tradition of January trips away somewhere exotic; there’s now the beginnings of a tradition for those trips being namely to South America. January 2025 for us started with the mountains of Peru and the natural wonders of Bolivia. And this year practically the same group of traveler-friends and I took on the Andes.

The whole trip lasted precisely three weeks (including the flights there and back), and took in the following:

– Argentine Patagonia (Los Glaciares National Park);
– The mountain landscapes and salt flats of northern Argentina in the province of Jujuy;
– The high-altitude Atacama Desert in Chile (another long-held dream destination checked off my list);
– The Amazon basin in Brazil! Not the Amazon River itself (too muddy), but one of its main tributaries – the Rio Negro.

It was a very busy trip with regard to flights too – all 14 of them! (With various adventures in airports – but more on that a bit later.)…

And we drove (rather – were driven) around… 2300km!! 650 in Patagonia, about a thousand in Jujuy and up to Atacama, and then another 650 there. Yes – that’s a lot, but we didn’t mind: the views from the roads were just so beautiful! But that’s a whole other story…

We even spent two days on a yacht – pure delight! ->

We didn’t walk all that much – in total probably about 60 kilometers:

But we did ride bikes on a salt flat! I hadn’t done anything like that before…

What else did we do?…

(i) We checked out around 25 places of interest – some of them twice, like this one:

(ii) We fed: Amazon pink river dolphins – Amazonian endemics, giant pirarucu fish (aka arapaima), as well as tiny Guianan squirrel monkeys…

(iii) We viewed (twice) the highest peak in South America – Mount Aconcagua:

We took home with us a huge quantity of impressions, memories, emotions, thousands of photo and video files, and tons of positivity. Of course there was some negativity too (how could there not be) – but more on that later.

The first course on our menu was Argentinian Patagonia and Los Glaciares National Park (Parque Nacional Los Glaciares). It’d been on my Top-100 Must-See Places in the World list for a real long time, and now it’s on my Top-100 Places in the World I’ve Visited. Hurray!

Way back in 2014 I walked around its twin brother in Chile – Torres del Paine National Park. And now I can confidently say these places are equally amazing! The most beautiful, monumental rock towers of enormous size, glaciers sparkling in the sun (in good weather), and multicolored lakes. Simply magical!

The views are just gorgeous!

The cliffs look great both up close…

And from afar:

The trails are well–trodden. In high season crowds of tourists zip around here on day hikes:

Patagonian clouds – out of this world. They really do look like this – no Photoshop! ->

Also checked: the magnificent Perito Moreno Glacier ->

It’s best to admire the ice in sunny weather…

But even when it’s cloudy – impressive:

We did get a bit of sunshine…

Every now and then: boom! And again – boom!…

Ee took a flight El Calafate – Buenos Aires – Salta (alas, there were no non-stops), which marked the start of the second part of the adventure – in the Argentine province of Jujuy. Then we went by road from Salta to San Salvador de Jujuy on the famous old Ruta 9, which passes through jungle:

After Salvador the road climbs higher and higher into a dry climatic zone:

And there – a riot of mountain colors:

Wait – is that cactus pointing something out with its index finger, or… is that its middle finger and it’s actually flipping us the bird?! ->

Streets of small towns:

And the wild colors all around:

A vicuña grazing against a backdrop of colorful mountains:

But these are all daytime views; in the evening, with the light coming from a different direction, the pictures are more contrasty:

And more cacti again (Winston Churchill gesture this time?!) in the Las Señoritas valley:

The scenery is just off-the-charts colorful and bright:

Next we headed to the Salinas Grandes salt flat (not to be confused with the salt flat of the same name (!) further south, in the province of Córdoba):

And here it is:

And that was it for Argentina. From there we headed west – toward Chile; more precisely, to the high-altitude Atacama Desert – a splendid place. It’s on my Top-100 list for a reason. Volcanic landscapes in various hues of red: simply otherworldly views ->

It borders the Bolivian Altiplano Desert (where I was just last year), and overall the views are pretty similar, but still different somehow. Here it’s noticeably brighter and more varied:

Salt flats and salty lakes, which they call “lagunas” here:

Flamingos too:

Real strange rock formations (there are similar ones on the Bolivian side too):

In some places the mountains really are multicolored:

Canyon-like gorges with slanted grotto walls:

Fantastic landscapes…

Hot and bubbling springs that local guides call geysers:

We didn’t find a single true geyser that shoots up a jet of water at regular intervals. The wannabe geysers still look cool:

And that was it for Atacama. Time to move on!…

And wrapping things up – the Amazon. More precisely, the Rio Negro, a tributary of the Amazon (and it really does look black). And lots of other stuff! It’s all comig up – bit by bit…