Before flying out to the Galápagos Islands, we spent a week in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We will add a separate blog entry for Quito after our Galápagos entry. The Galápagos Islands were most definitely the highlight of our trip so far. While being expensive, we think that they were worth every cent. The Galápagos is a surreal place, with strangely tame animals lazing around everywhere. The animals are the main reason for visiting the Islands; they indirectly made the Islands famous by being so unique and influencing Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution. It was specificall [View Full Entry]

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Salento The road between Bogotá and Salento was a nightmare - not as a result of unsafe driving, but rather cockroaches and a million trucks on the road. We finally found out why bus drivers always turn the air con up high, this keeps cockroaches out of the bus! We coped by singing La Cucaracha! Salento is one of the little towns in the Zona Cafeteria, the Colombian coffee zone. There are hundreds of coffee farms in this green, picturesque part of the Occidental Andes. The Andes split up into three ranges in Colombia and this range is the western-most one [View Full Entry]

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Bogotá Arriving in Bogotá, after a twisty journey through many mountain passes, we followed the advice of Shaun, our previous host, and stayed at the Cranky Croc hostel in La Candelaria, the oldest neighborhood in Bogotá, the Colombian capital. Our next week in Bogotá was to be one filled with awesome sights and many ¨rumbas¨(the colombian word for party) as described below: Walking tour: Our Lonely Planet guide contains a walking tour of downtown Bogotá. We decided to follow this on our first day. We headed south to the Plaza de Bolivar, surrounded by some old and [View Full Entry]

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The trip to San Gil took 14 hours on the bus. This included a change of bus in a city called Bucaramanga. The bus trip in itself is an adventure and you need nerves of steel. We checked in at a hostel called Macondo, owned by a very friendly and helpful Australian named Shaun. This was to be our home for the next 10 days. San Gil is located in the Santander province of Colombia (The heart of Colombia, as the inhabitants of Santander like to say) and is situated right on the edge of the Andes. There are many parks [View Full Entry]

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Cartagena After the beaches in Tayrona we took a shuttle to Cartagena on the 21st of September. Cartagena is an old city (founded in 1533) and is very beautiful and charming (at least, the historic town is). It was an important colonial port town in the good old pirate days of the Caribbean. Because of its importance and prosperity, it was constantly attacked by pirates (Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake, to name a few of the English sirs) , marauding bands of savages, etc. As a result of these many dramas, they surrounded the old town with fortress like [View Full Entry]

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After lounging on beaches for some time, we decided we needed some physical exercise and booked for the Ciudad Perdida hike. Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) is an archaeological site of an ancient city in the forest of the Sierra Nevada. This city was apparently built in 800 AD and was only discovered in 1972. The hike takes 6 days in total and is about 40 km of walking (round trip). Our hike started on the 11th of September. Our group consisted of the following: Us, 3 British people, 3 Irish lads, 2 Israelis, 1 Kiwi, 1 Swede, 1 American - a [View Full Entry]

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Santa Marta We reached Santa Marta after a very early departure (4AM) from Maracaibo, Venezuela. The trip was uneventful, except for police blockades, many passport checks and a maniac driver in our Por Supuesto (Shared taxi) - basically an old Chevy or Ford with a 5 litre engine. We booked into a very nice hostel, called Hotel Nueve Granada. This is probably one of the nicest places we have stayed up to date. It has a small pool and palms in the courtyard, with friendly, helpful staff and a very fat cat. We booked in early and wandered around Santa Marta [View Full Entry]

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Just to catch up from our last blog entry, we flew from Cusco to Lima, spent a day or two there to get Visas for Venezuela and Colombia. We found that we don't need visas for both countries, so we left for Caracas as soon as we could. Usually we use the internet to book hostels or hotels wherever we are going to be, so that we are guaranteed to have space. For some reason no hostels in Venezuela are available on the internet. The only place I could find was the Embassy Suites Hotel, a hotel of the Hilton group. [View Full Entry]

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Cusco We have been in Cusco since arriving on Wednesday, 6 August from BA. The first two to three days were cold and rainy, and we generally acclimatised to the high altitude by chilling and having lots of coca tea. For us, Cusco is the most amazing place in the world at the moment. But reserve judgement from us, as we have not been everywhere in the world... yet. Cusco is a mix of Inca ruins and old Spanish colonial buildings, with narrow cobblestone streets, lively cafes and a bustling vibe. We really think that anyone would fall in love with [View Full Entry]

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Buenos Aires, finally!! We arrived on Wednesday 30 July 2008 in Buenos Aires after a 13 hour flight from Johannesburg via Cape Town. We stayed in San Telmo, the older district in Buenos Aires. The area is very nice, and the central district (Centro) is within walking distance. The hostel we stayed in was very nice and we met many nice people. The only drawback was that the hostel was very noisy, as the other guests partied at all times of the day and night while we wanted to sleep our jet-lag off. Generally, we did not do much sightseeing in [View Full Entry]

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