4 days ago, we left Montana, crossed into Wyoming and then into South Dakota, the Black Hills region, so named because of the dark forests that cover the landscape. We're staying in an old (for America's standards) hotel, that is supposedly haunted, in Rapid City. The hotel claims to be the "Residence of Presidents", but it could be referring to the dozens of bronze life-size statues of past presents adorning the streets outside; a theme that seems recurrent in this state. Take Mt. Rushmore for example: an avenue lined by all the state flags leading to the Grand Terrace, from where [View Full Entry]

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Heading up north, passing from Nevada into Utah, we stayed in Salt Lake City. If any place in America can be the absolute polar opposite of hedonistic hustle and bustle of Las Vegas, this is it. Wide open streets, perfect little houses, majestic white official buildings and flowers in bloom everywhere you look, make this one of the prettiest cities we've visited so far, and the fact that the inhabitants are predominantly Mormon only served to make it more interesting. We went to visit Temple Square, where the grand white Mormon Temple towers over the old Mormon council hall and the [View Full Entry]

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Two weeks ago we bid farewell to the cool mountain air of Yosemite and Sequioa National Parks and headed across into Nevada. We picked mum and Simon up from the airport (yay!) and drove down The Strip into Las Vegas. As we drove by the famous sights - the Luxor, Caesar's Palace, New York New York, etc - we were excited, exilerated and hyped up by it all, looking forward to getting some exploration done. And then about 2 hours later, we were ready to leave. There's a reason the highway into Vegas has signposts reminding you of the ten commandments; [View Full Entry]

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Why would you ever return to the city after spending time in America's National Parks? You can really lose yourself in them, and why not? Guidebooks use words like "magnificent", "awe-inspiring" and "food for the soul" and they're not exaggerating at all; the four days we spent in the parks of northern California were - in one word - magical. We drove from San Francisco down through the Sierra Nevada hills, to Yosemite National Park, where we stayed at a ranch in the middle of nowhere. We were sleeping in a tent cabin, which kept the bugs out, but not the [View Full Entry]

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"The air was soft, the stars so fine, the promise of every cobbled street so great..." This is how Jack Kerouac described San Francisco, and he's not the only one this city has made an impression on; nearly everyone we have spoken to has claimed that San Francisco is the best place to live in or visit in America. For a place with a relatively dense population, it still manages to maintain a quaint charm, projecting an image of itself as a small town, with its perfect 'candyfloss' Victorian houses, ridiculously clean streets, roses growing in every garden and up every [View Full Entry]

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We last left you in Phoenix, where, on our final day, we went to the botanical gardens, perched out on the edge of the desert. It combines all sorts of weird and wonderful plants and flowers, with even more weird and wonderful huge glass sculptures, shaped and coloured in a way to make you feel like you're walking through Wonderland. We sat under a pavilion overlooking the desert, waiting for sunset. We were hoping to see the unusually shaped cactuses silhouetted against a sky of reds and oranges, and we were not disappointed; it really was the perfect desert sunset. The [View Full Entry]

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I'm sorry it's been a while since my last entry (again) - America seems to be split into two types of places: those with only wireless internet and those that have probably never even heard of the internet! I'm writing this blog entry in the lobby of a fancy hotel in Phoenix; the staff at the desk have kindly let us use the internet, so I'm writing this really quickly and probably won't be able to add photos - sorry! The day after our last entry, we bid our farewells to the aliens and drove to Albuquerque, a desert city nestled [View Full Entry]

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As we drove from Dallas to Amarillo along Route 66, everything was exactly as I imagined it would be. The road was long, straight and quiet, passing by cattle ranches, oil derricks and dusty green crop fields. The 'middle-of-nowhere', 'nothing-ever-happens-here' towns we drove through were very Deliverance-esque; there may have been no porch sitting banjo players, but that was simply because there was literally nobody around. At one point, to my great excitement, our car even got hit by tumbleweed; we are definitely in cowboy country! And, as is tradition on an American roadtrip, we got to see [View Full Entry]

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Our first glimpses of Texas from the air were very different from the last glimpses we had of Peru. Tumbling mountains and colourful beaches have been replaced by a dusty green and golden landscape that stretches, completely flat, in every direction. I have never visited a place before where, no matter how far into distance you look, there isn't a hill in sight. Everything here is large and wide, from the sky and landscape, to the roads, the cars and (I'm sorry to say it) the Americans themselves. Nobody walks here, we stepped off the plane and were greeted by a [View Full Entry]

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I can try to describe, in words and photographs, just how vast, deep, green, mysterious, and alive the Amazon Rainforest is, but I doubt that I will do it justice. You really do have to be there, standing in the dense jungle, the heat heavy and the alien noises of a thousand different species surrounding you, to appreciate how awe (and fear) inspiring this part of the world actually is. But, as this is a blog, I will endeavour to create an accurate picture for you, of the many colourful sights, sounds and smells of the Amazon Rainforest. We arrived into [View Full Entry]

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