A few pics of my last days in San Pedro de Atacama and Santiago... Note to self: Wearing black is not practical in a desert environment. [View Full Entry]

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Taxi'd to the Bus Terminal with all my gear (now growing larger by the day) and sat around waiting for the overnight bus down to Uyuni where my 3 day landcruiser tour of the Salt Flats & the Bolivian Desert would begin. At around 3 am it appeared we weren't driving on a road anymore, as we furiously shuddered along. Would've been more fun having someone grab you by the shoulders and shake you for several hours. Met a Bolivian guy from Santa Cruz named Javier, who was telling me all about his family and especially his brother, who was a [View Full Entry]

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Arriving at my hostel in La Paz i had 4 delightful flights to climb with all my gear to my room (a normal double bed, thank god) and passed out, probably still puffing. Woke with the rudest thumping headache and thought, there is no way i am leaving La Paz today feeling this hellish, and booked another night in the hostel. My room was already booked so i moved into a 4 bed girls dorm. Went to an area known as the Witches Market and was offered a Llama foetus - for good luck, she told me. Took about 1.5 hours [View Full Entry]

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Rio has been under a cloud of haze & rain the entire time so far, so no adventures to the beach :( It just means i am going to have to come back here one day! We are staying in Copa, Copacabana, which is not the safest of areas. Went to a shopping mall over in the next suburb. Now, Brasilian retail assistants have this interesting customer service approach where they superglue themselves to you the moment you enter the store and shadow you the entire time, trying desperately to sell you whatever they catch you looking at. Drives you batty. [View Full Entry]

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Having witnessed a few very large Favela´s (slums) driving through Sao Paulo, and of course, who hasn't seen or heard of the movie City of God, i admit i was very keen to do a tour through a Favela to see it all first hand. We got picked up, our tour guide advised us that although it might seem a little scary, the people are very friendly.. we get to the entrance of a Favela called Rocinha. We jumped on motorbike taxis which took us up the long, steep and winding street to the top, which was a thrill in itself! [View Full Entry]

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We set off from Ilha Grande on the dodgiest of small boats, with rainclouds looming & water sloshing in from the side. We arrived at the port where we were picked up by a van and a car. 4 of us dove for the car, me shotgunning for passenger seat and set off for the final destination of our tour, Rio de Janeiro. Oh my god we´re going to RIO!!! We arrived at our hotel a block back from Copacabana beach, flung our gear in our rooms, raided the ATM (all the while watching over our shoulders, there´d been plenty of [View Full Entry]

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Still sore from the previous overnight bus myself and another girl Jenny thought we´d be a bit clever and upgraded to a first class bus for the trip to Sao Paulo, the first leg of what would be 24 hours travelling to Paraty. Seriously worth it. We had a 3 hour wait at Sao Paulo´s mega bus terminal. Another 5 hours of bus to get to Paraty, on which we saw our first good looking person so far in Brazil. Paraty is a beautiful little town with very pretty but highly impractical cobble-stone streets, which you could easily break an ankle [View Full Entry]

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Leaving Montevideo we were heading to Brazil but had a stopover in Salto, not really worthy of anything apart from thermal pools. Highlight of Salto was having the best pedicure i have ever had, i made everyone line up to stroke my newly smooth hooves. That evening we were driven by taxis over the border into Argentina and to the bus terminal where we waited for a good few hours to get on an overnight bus to Iguassu Falls, Brazil. Bored to tears we got the beers in and sat & gossed, while others played cards. I´m an old hand now [View Full Entry]

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We were up ridiculously early to leave from BA to sail across the Rio de la plata to Colonia del Sacramento, Uruguay. The ferry took 3 hours and was quite plush (apart from the bathrooms) and on the lower deck they even had a cabaret singer, making up her own words to english songs. We arrived in Colonia and we all cottoned onto something reasonably quickly - it was warmer! Who knew?! Colonia is a very cute little country town, with wide cobbled streets. Went out to a family-run dairy ranch for the afternoon where they produce their own milk, wine [View Full Entry]

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Today was our last full day in BA so we were up early with plans to do our sightseeing, and taxi-ed over to Recoleta, the nicest suburb where we visited the cemetery where Eva Peron´s tomb lies. The prettiest cemetery i have ever visited, all coffins enclosed in magnificent tombs rather than buried in the ground.. I refrained from bellowing out Evita tunes, i predict i would have been ushered out quite quickly for ruining the serenity. Then we went over to La Boca, a notoriously bad neighbourhood with a few famous streets with bold multi-coloured houses. The place was abuzz [View Full Entry]

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