Babybee

We've done it! 3 days of hiking and one of biking. Saddle sores from bikes, muscle pains from hikes, insect bites. We marched through rain, landslides, biked over waterfalls and dirt tracks. And every minute was worth it!! We tried to do our homework by going around to a few agencies on Saturday to try and work out which would be the best one for what we wanted to do. After going to quite a few, we decided to book with the first one. We were told there would be just ourselves plus 6 others on the trip - Irish, Scottish and Argenitian which we were pretty happy with. Incidently, this was to be an "alternative jungle trip" as opposed to the famous (and more expensive) Inca trail where the whole thing is trekking for 4 ... read more

We left around 8 a.m. on a mini bus from our hotel after a night enjoying cable tv, a hot shower and listening to random whistlers all night. We couldn't work out why every few minutes, sometimes more frequently, until dawn, we heard whistles from across the road. Turns out it's a security measure for the school across the road, the security guards keep in contact by whistle, 2 blows means all is well, short frequent blows or none at all means there's trouble. We got on board a boat with about 12 others and a guide plus captain and went to our first destination, Uros Island. Uros Island is one of 40 floating islands on Lake Titicaca. These are entirely man made islands constucted from reeds which grow in the lake. Uros is populated by ... read more

According to the Lonely Planet: Boliva is the hemisphere's highest, most isolated nation. It's one of the coldest, warmest and steamiest places. Geographically it's the driest, saltiest and swampiest. It's one of the porest nations of South America but one of the richest in terms of natural resources. It's South America's most indiginous country: 60% of 8.8 million claim indigenous heritage. It also provided us with the coldest, most uncomfortable, most dramatic bus rides of this trip. We left Santa Cruz for La Paz on a night bus. We had paid for what we thought was going to be the most comfortable bus. It turned out to be a bit of a shit box, and we hated to think what the stadard of the cheap buses must have been like. We were cramped and freezing for ... read more

Fact: Brazil nuts aren´t called Brazil nuts in Brazil. They´re called something completely different. And they´re not extremely cheap. They´re actually quite expensive. So we´ve enjoyed Rio being our home for the past few days, to having fresh juice daily and for me a dose of "açai" with various acoutrements. We´ve got used to seeing men walking around on the streets in speedos (sometimes white, always tight), and women in their g-string bikinis (sometimes black, always up the, well, you know what...) We´ve seen dog salons where the poshest of the Ipanema la dee dahs get their pooches groomed and fluffed to the max. We´ve got used to a daily life of gossiping about our newfound motley crew of hostel mates, discussing the ins and outs of Portuguese (we´ve decided it sounds weird, almost Eastern European) ... read more