Our last month was spent mostly camping from Ushuaia (the southernmost city in the world) all the way up to Mendoza. Dave likes to call it the time of a thousand barbecues. In Ushuaia we took a tour of the Beagle Channel to spot sea lions and lots of birds and then visited the Tierra del Fuego National Park in sub-zero conditions. It seems that rabbits are not in the slightest afraid of a little nippiness as we spotted them in their thousands around our campsite. After Ushuaia we headed across to Puerto Natales in Chile, from where we visited the [View Full Entry]

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Arriving in Argentina from months in Peru and Bolivia can be very bad for the health. Mainly because you dive head first into every barbeque and bottle of Malbec (red wine) you see. After a week of constant gorging in Salta we decided that one more wouldn´t hurt and as such we now have to buy extra seats on the plane. David went to visit Iguazu Falls from the Argentinian side. While you can see them from Brazil, the walks and view from Argentina are unbeatable and make for a very memorable time. We met up again in Rosario, a perfect [View Full Entry]

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You have three options to get to the jungle from La Paz: * 18 hour bus journey from hell - most people who take it are too scared to return on it * 3 days in a boat - nice if you have the time * 1 hour in a small plane - which is cancelled more often than it leaves David opted for the plane, and after a day and a half of waiting in the airport was rewarded with a scary but safe ride into the jungle. Nicola couldn´t come as she doesn´t have her yellow fever vaccination. The [View Full Entry]

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Bolivia is David's favourite place so far, it's so cheap: * main course at a really nice restaurant = 1 pound * burger from a street vendor = 20 p * 4 hour bus journey = 1 pound and it has the jungle, the pampas, beautiful hiking, mountain biking down the world´s most dangerous road and the unforgettable salt flats. For some reason, a town without an ATM is a magnet to tourists. Despite the heartache of having to sell your grandad's watch to pay the bus fare out, a small town provides the getaway travellers need from their holidays. Copacabana [View Full Entry]

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Cusco is a really beautiful city, it is also overrun with tourists. The restaurants and hostels are all really nice and the nightlife is rampaging to say the least. There are a number of treks around Macchu Picchu, the most famous of which is the Inca Trail, the only one to actually end in Macchu Picchu. The authorities are very strict and dont allow tourists to use pack animals on the Inca Trail. As a result our group of three had an entourage of four porters, one cook and one guide!! The trail is reasonably hard work, especially the 3 hour [View Full Entry]

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... the red and blue footed kind of course. Do not believe all the hype about The Galapagos being expensive, with lots of hard work the budget conscious traveller will only find it very very expensive. Cost aside we loved it. It seems logical to list all the amazing things we saw, however that is a very long list and we do not have enough time. We tackled the Galapagos with the first few days on a boat - a combination of snorkelling and short walks on various islands with a guide. The rest of the time we made our own [View Full Entry]

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We landed in Lima only to find that yet again we had narrowly avoided an earthquake (Tokyo all over again). This one was a massive quake of around 7-8 on the richter scale that unfortunately killed hundreds in a town called Ica, south of Lima. We missed it by approximately 4 hours, the length of our plane´s delay in Madrid. Lima is perpetually covered in fog during winter, a fact we learnt soon after arriving. Foggy town plus us equals a bus trip to Huaraz in the Cordillera Blanca. From there we went on a 4 day Santa Cruz trek. The [View Full Entry]

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After Nic´s first set of exams we jetted off to spend 6 days in Morroco. We flew into Fez, which was a town in the desert with many small winding streets and people selling everything you could possibly need. There didn´t appear to be a huge number of tourists visiting, which was nice apart from the ínteresting´reactions to blond hair! Then we took the train to Marrakesh. The scenery throughout the 8 hour trip was spectactular - one of Nic´s highlights. However David lost his camera - hence the crappy photos. In Marrakech we visited the bustling market and wandered through [View Full Entry]

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After Zimbabwe, we were met at Johannesburg airport by Beth (Dave's mum) and Peter (her partner). We had a lovely family Christmas at the Johannesburg Country Club. Thank you to Jen and Arthur for organising that. From Johannesburg we flew to Cape Town. We stayed in a gorgeous guest house in Haupt Bay and took in the Cape of Good Hope, Table Mountain and the penguin colony in the couple of days that we had there. We then drove East along the Garden Route to Sedgefield, where we stayed with Adrienne (Dave's aunt) and her daughter, Jacqui. We had a fabulous [View Full Entry]

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Zimbabwe isn't faring too well in the press of late. Family and friends reacted with surprise when we told them we were going to Zimbabwe. Most felt Zambia would be the safer option however we felt safe and would recommend it to others. (One of the) problems in Zimbabwe is their local currency is spiralling out of control. They set the official exchange rate at 250 zim to the us dollar, however most people will trade you around 2,000 zim for one us dollar. Therefore if you were to get cash out or use your credit card in Zimbabwe you would [View Full Entry]

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