With literally just days until I am back in the UK I wanted to post some pictures from my wonderful time in the Galapagos, if only to give you a flavour of where I have been for the last 2 weeks! In any event, I will tell you the TRUE story of Lonesome George, in case you do not know it.... Once upon a time in the Galapagos, on the Island (of which there are many here and I only peeked at 7) called Pinta lived over 100,000 giant tortoises. They pretty much had the place to themselves until over the [View Full Entry]

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Still in Peru at this stage (our final stop in fact before crossing the border to Ecuador). We had intended to spend a few days here enjoying the sunshine and beach and possibly even some surfing but Mancora hostels were fully booked and we struggled to find a room! In any event we did get to stay a couple of days and enjoyed lazying in hammocks, eating ice cream and paddling in the ocean :) More text in next weeks. [View Full Entry]

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...where Brim finally did some dancing! :) Okay, because I am about 4 weeks behind in sending you my travel updates I have decided to try and cut some corners and send some photos. I will try and update the text over the next weeks, if I am not too busy having too much of a good time in the Galapagos if not, I will just bore you with the stories when I get back. In any event, as a very quick summary we stayed a couple of nights in Trujillo. We did a day tour where we visited ruins from [View Full Entry]

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When Brim said she wanted to go sandboarding in Peru I have to admit it was not top on my agenda but as I had dragged her to Tango and Whales I could not really argue...and in fact, it was such brilliant fun I would probably do it again :) Please check out Andrea´s travelblog for me (with great panache) coming down a sand dune! :) More text in a couple of weeks. [View Full Entry]

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the unofficial Barton and Brimelow Inca trek to Machu Picchu courtesy of the Danish family in Puno and Dave and Paul from the Southern Comfort hostel in Cusco! There are mainly two ways to get to Machu Picchu. 1. The train from Cusco to Aguas Calientes and then a walk up or a bus up to the entrance. The other way, a 4 day trek - and it is a real trek (not even close to an infamous Barton family stroll) in heat and altitude involving carrying your belongings with you and camping! Needless to say I didn't jump at the [View Full Entry]

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Here are some of my photos from our stay in Copacabana. This was where we took a day tour onto Lake Titicaca and visited some Inca ruins with a guide, who only spoke Spanish. I am not sure I understood everything he was trying to tell us, but I will bore you all with it when I get back! Copacabana was a nice place, and had a great custom of a daily blessing of its cars! More text in a few weeks! [View Full Entry]

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Having said goodbye to the remainder of the "Rurrenbaque gang" the night before it was another early start to get the plane back to La Paz. Unfortunately due to clouds and other unknown reasons, there was some delay before we could get on board the plane on the grassy runway and head back into the altitude! More soon. [View Full Entry]

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Lucky Bartoni :) After the coldness of the salt desert tour and the high altitude we had been in, including La Paz, we decided we needed to get back down to sea level and also to do the infamous Pampas tour that had been recommended by Ken (thank you) and Heidi and Tom (from Salta) who raved over it compared to the desert. I am so glad we took their advice. The Pampas is made of a network of riverways and swamp like wetlands. The area is full of wildlife including various birds, alligators, caiman, capibarah, turtles, snakes, monkeys. Basically we [View Full Entry]

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...it is cold, it is not very pretty and they only put the heating on at 8pm at night!! This is a very short blog as not many photos and not much happened! OK, so the Salt flat tour ended and we were dropped off in Uyuni. We did not a hostel booked so we asked at 2 places (no space or no TV) and found ourselves at Hotel Julia! The place was fairly clean but it was FREEZING. There was no heating until 8pm at night, nothing to do in Uyuni town itself so Brim and I fully clothed got [View Full Entry]

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As I took so many pictures from the 4 day tour from the Bolivian desert to Salt plains where we travelled from Tupiza to Uyuni by Jeep a second blog is needed for all the pictures! Hope they are good as the tour was brilliant. FYI - the ladies in the pictures are Elena, Krystal and Christie, me and Brim :) More text to follow in the coming weeks :) [View Full Entry]

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