After the Salar de Uyuni salt flats we quested out to explore SW Bolivia to an extent I didn’t expect. This “mostly driving” tour took us to so many unexpected environmental spots: salt flat lakes, eroded sandstone boulders, flamingos at 15.000 ft, colorful rainbow mountains with pastel flood planes that look like paintings, chinchilla-like animals, volanic outcroppings that are wind eroded in the middle of a sandy desert, lava flows, 19k peaks, snow, etc. It could have maybe been a bit more active, but it was a pleasure to explore this region of Bolivia and I was plenty entertained creating punny jokes and solving riddles with my travel companion.
I was really unsure whether to visit the enormous 10,500 sq. km. salt flats given many of the promotional pictures looked primed for Instagram and I wasn’t really sure what there was to do there. However, everyone both first-hand and online raved about it being a unique and unmissable place. I’m not a staged photo person and I have had a lot of outdoor experiences… However, I’ll still say the staged photos were actually super fun playing with perspective, the salt landscape strange, the use of salt bricks for construction very novel and the SW Bolivian landscape of high altitude volcanic desert very wierd and interesting. In summary, it was worth the visit.
I had a really good time in Morocco when I wasn’t in a city and an okay time when in a city. The mosaic, ceramic, rug art was really enjoyable and everywhere. Driving was mostly fine. Being a foreign tourist was, at times, taxing. However, the adventure climbing and canyoning potential was super amazing a huge highlight. I would definitely go back, with adventure partners.
I figured the UNESCO heritage site of the Ait Benhaddou Ksar would be large and impressive given it is a major tourist attraction. However, my imagination was a bit greater than reality. I expected the scale of a Rajasthani Palace, but instead found a small and moderately aesthetic fortified village. I did find some fun here, had the most memorable accommodation of my trip and mostly avoided the large tourist bus groups, but you should know up front its more popular because it was a shoot location of media like Game of Thrones.
Rains from a couple days prior canceled my canyoning trip due to high cold flow so I laid in bed, considering whether I drive South to see how the Anti-Atlas Mountains transition to the Sahara Desert. Browsing on some maps I pieced together an unexpectedly fulfilling day following Aoukerda Canyon 30 miles from deep gorge to giant floodplain while visiting a huge window, a sculpted Berber tunnel, rock art and only seeing one other tourist.
Looking back towards Bariloche with view of the Nahuel Huapi Lake from Cerro La Mona.
Between Bariloche and San Martin de los Andes is the Seven Lakes Road section of Ruta 40 that really encapsulates so much of the Lakes District reputation of beauty. Every twenty minutes in this 100 mile stretch of road there is another beautiful view and another short side-road to explore a valley, lake, river, town. I said “wow” so many times on this section of my trip and each peak > 7,500 ft offered incredible views of glaciated volcanos, peaks, lakes and the Chilean-Argentinian Andes.
My favorite sculpture of a female backcountry skier
El Bolsón is described as a hippy town and that is kind of true with a large artist market and many wood sculptures at the center and nearby Lago Puelo. That said, it is kinda a commercialized artistic center with large breweries and a fair number of tourists. However, I did have a great time there with my primary goal of visiting the ultra unique live wood sculpture exhibit of El Bosque Tallado on a mountain side. Along with some hiking / running of peaks and a popular blue river. The sculpture art installation was of a like I’ve not encountered outside of Burning Man which meaningfully incorporated the landscape.
When my friends showed me the spires ringing the cirque outside the Frey Refugio, I was an immediate yes to join them on their trip down to Argentina, centering on Bariloche. This isn’t the High Andes, but it’s definitely the Andes, Patagonia and alpine. The prominence here makes 7,500-8,500 ft summits provide a great view from a valley floor around 2,500 ft. It was a great zone to climb interesting spires, get on top of the highest thing around and stumble our way through a mix of information for a memorable keystone to the Central Patagonia trip. You can read my climbing trip here, but this post is about the logistics part which I found difficult to get a full picture abroad before the trip and only slightly better locally.
Bariloche is the ski-epicenter of Argentina, a major summer trekking destination, the main airport for the Lakes District in Central Patagonia and is incredibly beautiful in all seasons. This is a small city of 140,000 people sitting on the shore of Nahuel Huapi Lake. Nahuel Huapi Lake has the equivalent surface area to Lake Tahoe but 3x more shoreline as it is drawn into fjord-like inlets and permeated by an archipelago of islands and peninsulas both big and small. Over the ’25-’26 new year I spent three weeks in the Lakes District and two in the Bariloche area climbing, hiking, running, eating and visiting its lakes and beaches.
Of the few thousand people who live on Haida Gwaii, 1,000 live in the town of Daajing Giids near Robertson’s Island where I stayed on my visit. As I said introducing my kayaking trip here, it feels like the inner corridor of Alaska: mostly undisturbed nature with bountiful resources (at least in these ‘warm’ summer months) punctuated by small communities. As in many small communities, you more easily know your neighbors, they are more willing you help you out, people have to work together to get things done themselves and gossip abounds.
