Betsy and Rob

We were really indecisive about whether or not to take the navimag boat as we heard lots of mixed reviews about it. Basically, the boat is a cargo boat which travels from Puerto Montt to Puerto Natalies in the very south of Chile (the gateway to Patagonia). Apparantly the weather can be awful and you can spend the entire trip in your small cabin reading. For $600 each we were not sure if it would be worth it. But, in the end we decided to go for it and if the weather was awful it would at least be a relaxing trip. We ended up having a great time and would recommend it to anyone. The boat starts in Puerto Montt and there is not much to do there so we only spent one evening there ... read more

Santiago is fantastic. There are huge supermarkets where you can buy pretty much anything you could want (fruit, meat, brown bread and cold milk), very good public transportation, the drivers are super polite and let pedestrians go ahead of them and because we are at a lower elevation it is possible to go for a run and go to the gym!!! It is def a place we could live if we were ever going to live in S. America. Walking around, you feel as though you could be in any European city. We didn´t originally plan to come here but as Chile is so long we thought it might be a good place to stop off at to break up what could be a 36 hour bus journey. To get here from Atacama it was a ... read more

I know we keep saying it but the Salt Plains in Bolivia were another highlight of our trip. It was absolutely fantastic and we got a load of amazing pics. I won´t write too much as the pictures can describe the sites much better than I can--but as always the pictures dont do the place justice, it was just amazing. The journey started off with an overnight bus journey which took about 13 hours. The bus was actually pretty nice with good reclining seats, unfortunately after midnight we were on very bumpy unpaved roads so it was not that easy to sleep. We slept well enough though and arrived in Uyuni around 8:30 and joined our tour just after 10:00--there were 6 of of total in the group. The tour company we went with was called ... read more

We were a little worried that we would not be able to make it to Lake Titicaca as there were huge farmer strikes going on in Peru and they had shut down the highway we needed to pass. We asked quite a few travel agents and were convinced by one that it was now safe to travel on the highway so booked a bus. When we showed up at bus station the next morning we learned that our bus had been cancelled due to the strikes. So much for that travel agent!!! After looking around a bit we managed to find a minibus that would take us there (for quite a bit more money) the long way which bypassed the highway with the strike via a dirt road. We were on our way! The drive ended ... read more

The Galapagos Islands are absolutely one of the highlights of our trip. We had a fantastic time and I can´t think think of a better way to celebrate my birthday (even though they are starting to get depressing!). Because of our flight dramas getting to South America we missed the first day of our trip and had to pay US$500 to take a speedboat to catch up to our boat. We only missed one day though so it was not the end of the world, however we did miss the island that has the huge land Tortoises which was disappointing. Everyday though was absolutley fantastic. I wont go into a day by day description as that may be boring. Everyday we went for a few walks on differet beaches and went snorkeling. On the walks we ... read more