Alex and Sarah

Given the aspect ratio of Chile, it never takes long to leave the country, with the destination more often than not being Argentina. Leaving Puerto Natales, bound for El Calafate was no exception to this rule and within an hour we were at the border. A few hours later we arrived at our destination. El Calafate is one of those places that exists solely to service the tourist industry, specifically those tourists wanting to visit Los Glaciares National Park. You don’t need to be proficient in Spanish to guess that this national park is home to a number of glaciers. Despite having seen a number of glaciers on the Chilean side of the border, those contained in this park were reportedly some of the most spectacular in the world and well worth a visit. Of the ... read more

Our final stop in Bolivia was, a more or less compulsory, visit to the Salar de Uyuni and the surrounding area. This salt flat, which was once a giant lake, is the largest in the world and roughly the size of Lebanon. Admittedly Lebanon isn’t perhaps the most impressive country for size comparison purposes, but you get the picture, it’s big. As well as a tourist destination, the area is also, perhaps not surprisingly, prime mineral extraction territory. It is estimated that the area contains something like half of the world’s lithium. If, in years to come we’re all driving cars with batteries, this will become a highly prized commodity and could potentially provide a much needed boost to Bolivia’s economy. However, from what little we have learnt of Bolivia, we can’t help but suspect that ... read more

Our border crossing into Peru was notable only for our, now customary, confusion regarding changing time zones. In our defence, it seems inherently illogical to change your watch when travelling on a North-South axis. Although that said, thinking about it, we don’t give it a second thought when visiting France. Our arrival in Peru was also significant due to it being our final new country on this trip. Fear not though, taking full advantage of not needing to worry about visas in South America, we’ll be revisiting a few old favourites. Once in Peru our first stop was Arequipa. Although it has the reputation for being a beautiful city, we only spent the night and headed straight for the small town of Cabanaconde. Our reason for visiting Cabanaconde was its location at the top of the ... read more

Having said goodbye to Cassie and Dave, we headed north to Rio de Janiero. Despite having visited before, being only six hours away (our perception of time has certainly altered this year) we couldn’t resist the temptation of returning to one of our favourite cities in the world. Especially as it would provide the perfect antidote to Sao Paulo, which will go down as one of our least favourite. After a hectic few weeks, we opted to take a little time out and enjoy travelling without moving. It being off-season, we were lucky enough to be able to rent a fantastic apartment, situated only two blocks from Copacabana beach. Having seen the tourist attractions of Rio on our previous visit, we gave ourselves (and our cameras) a well deserved rest and enjoyed the simple pleasures in ... read more

More times than we care to remember in the past few months, one or both of us have uttered the words, “I can’t wait for Australia”. Be it while having our bones jarred on Ethiopian buses, banging our heads against the brick walls of embassies, trying to stomach Uzbek cuisine, or attempting to communicate in China. Don’t get us wrong, we’ve had the time of our lives and we knew exactly what we were letting ourselves in for. However, there have been numerous occasions when we have craved something just that little bit normal. Hence, in our darkest moments, Australia has been our light at the end of the tunnel. As well as our first taste of being in the ethnic majority for quite some time, Australia was to provide us with our first familiar faces ... read more