Caro 1

Helloifor the last time! It was with great excitement that we contemplated our trip to the amazing Galapagos. A very early start saw us on the coach to the airport a 2 hour flight to Batra some 1000 kms from the Ecuadorian coast . It is a very arid small island that was the base for the US during the second world war. A further coach trip to the port where we took a taxi boat across the bay, another coach across the island of Santa Cruz one of the 5 inhabited islands amongst the 16 that make up the Galapagos. And that is when the rain started ! The final port destination was in chaos , what with road repairs carnival time and elections pending. The coach couldn’t get through the road works so we ... read more

Hola my Cherubs. Finally arrived in Quito capital of Ecuador after a long old journey going up north to Bogota in Columbia and then down south again to Quito, a total journey time of 7 .5 hours, Direct flights to decrease the carbon footprint do not seem to be on the agenda! Anyway was totally exhausted after the previous days delays and fell asleep in my room and missed the group briefing – so that was a good start! We are 12 people all from the UK and very different , there are electrical engineers, a barrister, civil servants, a voluntary organisational manager and more, most retired, only 3 of us still working- quite an interesting bunch. Ecuador is the smallest of the South American countries but very compact , the guide books say you can ... read more

Southern Patagonia is wild ,desolate , windy and home to Chile’s most famous and well visited national park- Torres del Paine. Its crowning glory are the three stunning granite towers (torres) and the whole area is a hikers heaven!! It is full of spectacular lagoons, glaciers, rolling untamed grasslands, and high snow covered peaks. It also the site of Chile’s oldest human habitation , indigenous peoples now alas no longer. The park has an array of wonderful wildlife apart from sheep cows and amazing horses, and we saw foxes, guanacos (a relative of the llama tribe) by the score, the Andean condor ( check out my photo!) and the nandu described by Darwin ( resembling the ostrich but smaller). We also found flamingos, many ducks and the lesser spotted something or other!! We travelled from Punta ... read more

Tierra del fuego where the andes finally meet the sea has become known as el fin del mundo only Antartica lies beyond some 100o kms away. The end of the world and everywhere you see it from the last train to be ridden to the last beer to be drunk a lesson in marketing!!! It is made up of a main island and several smaller ones divided between Argentina and chile and is separated from the rest of South America by the straits of magellan. It is so named because when ferdinand Magellan discovered it in 1520 he saw a series of fires along the coastline as the indigenous indians tried to warn their fellow peoples of the dangers to come , and how right they were. We flew to the city of Ushuaia gateway to ... read more

The land of Tango the wonderful city of Buenos Aires. It was a long old flight nearly 13 hours but we left behind the cold and snow and found ourselves in the southern hemisphere and in temperatures of 33plus- YES! It didn’t take more than a day for my crowning glory to go AWOL in the high humidity – Oh well! You cant have it all !! Buenos Aires founded a little over two hundred years ago grew up as a port river town along the mighty Rio de la Plata. It now has an inna city stable population of around 3 million with a greater BA total of nearly 14 million and that is over 10% of the county’s people. It boasts its European heritage and everywhere you go you see the Spanish and French ... read more