After a quick trip to the Brazilian side of the falls for a more panoramic view we got a very bumpy plane to Buenos Aires and spent a great week there seeing the sights and doing what Portenos (people from BA) do. The city is divided into Barrios (neighbourhoods) so we looked at the govt. buildings in the centre, admired the brightly coloured wooden houses (but ignored the Maradona lookalike) in La Boca, checked out the street tango in San Telmo and visited Evita´s grave during a lightning storm in the spooky Recoleta cemetery. But Buenos Aires is as much about [View Full Entry]

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We´ve covered quite some ground since our last entry! Leaving San Pedro, we picked up a car and braved the panamerica to visit some coastal national parks in Chile. The scenery was good, but the weather wasn´t quite what it has been, so the views were a bit on the cloudy side. We visited the Parque National Pan de Azucar, full of wildlife and practically no other visitors and we camped on a very deserted beach. We then went further down the coast to Bahia Inglesa - the weather improved and the beach was beautiful. There were celebrations going on in [View Full Entry]

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Two buses, a taxi, a border crossing and 28 hours after leaving Arequipa we arrived in San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. This is an oasis town in the ´perfect´desert (there are weather stations here that have never recorded rain). We met some friends (Sam and Wendy) here and had a great few days relaxing with them before doing what San Pedro is really about - going on trips; there was an afternoon one to the Valley of the Moon and then a 4 day trip into Bolivia. This was basic, uncomfortable and (as is becoming a pattern) the tour agency [View Full Entry]

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We spent our final week in Peru in Arequipa, and in the Colca Canyon some 170Kms away. Arequipa is a lovely city, by far the nicest we visited in Peru. It is overshadowed by the mightly, dormant, Misti Volcano. We spent several days relaxing in the sunny climate there before booking a trip to the Colca Canyon, alledgedly the world´s deepest canyon. Our trip got off to a bad start, as we were involved in a bus accident. Fortunately, it was relatively minor by Peruvian standards in that everybody was able to walk or be carried away alive. We were absolutely [View Full Entry]

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From Cusco we went on a fantastically scenic bus ride to Puno and Lake Titicaca (at nearly 4,000 above sea level the world largest high level lake). It was here that disaster struck as we discovered we has had some thing stolen - most worryingly Andy´s five pound swimmer shorts. We put this behind us and got a boat trip to the famous floating islands (interesting but very commercial) and Taquile, another traditional island with a Mediterrranean feel. There they served us some great fish for lunch, Clare once again went hungry. On the island, they have an elected govt of [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Cusco on the 8th August and the time since has flown, having packed a lot in! The city itself is the prettiest we have seen on our trip to date, but it is very touristy and I have now lost count of the number of times I have been offered "massaje senorita", and lots of other tourist services to rid us of our precious dollars. After some lazing, we explored the Inca ruins just outside Cusco - several different sites which you could walk between with a bit of effort. Sacsayhuaman was the last fort of the Incas [View Full Entry]

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After a day back in Cuzco to recover we then got a plane, a bus and a boat to the the Amazon basin jungle. On arrival we had a quick lunch (chicken and rice wrapped in a big leaf) before heading to monkey island. It lived up to its billing with hundreds of monkeys, as well as some impressive jungle vegetation and a great sunset. After dinner our Spanish failed us and we followed our group into a boat not knowing what we were doing. The Italian next to us informed us it was a search for alligators so it was [View Full Entry]

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Sorry about the lost blogs... we are hoping this new entry will last for a while! We left Mancora and got on our first long distance bus in Peru, which fortunately rattled our bones less than those in Ecuador. We were heading for Trujillo, Peru´s northern "capital city". We spent a day there, visiting the Chan Chan complex, a series of ruins from the Chimu empire from around 1100 AD. They were later conquered by the Incas. We also went to another coastal town and saw some fisherman on what looked like surf boards made out of reeds which they have [View Full Entry]

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You might have seen this a couple of weeks ago but due to internet problems we have had to republish... We enjoyed the rest of our time in Banos, walking the valley of the waterfalls and spending more time in the baths. We then headed for Riobamba, this was a nice place in its own right and provided the best meal in Ecuador, but the main purpose of it was to catch the only train in the country - the devil´s nose train. This used to be a steam train that you sat on the top on, until two tourists died [View Full Entry]

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So, we spent 3 days in Quito, familiarising ourselves with the altitude and sorting out our two weeks in Ecuador. Quito will be remembered for two smells - delicious fresh fruit and the not so delicious stink of traffic polution. We then headed out of Quito for a three day camping session in Cotapaxi national park. We hired a guide and his mate who looked after us well. We climbed up Ruminahui, a whole 4800m, I got scared and Andy suffered a bit from Altitude sickness, but well worth it for the views. We then moved on to spend a night [View Full Entry]

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