10 days in Rio de Janeiro, The Cidade Maravilhosa (The Marvellous City). Not many cities can boast such a beautiful setting, its backed by green mountains that look down on to wide swathes of sandy beaches. My hostel was in the area of Ipanema, one of the more expensive, and safer areas on Rio. The hostel was on a small closed street with a few other hostels so the atmosphere was relaxed, friendly and safe. Every evening people from the different hostels were out chatting on the street, well until the 10pm curfew. The first couple of days were spent getting [View Full Entry]

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Ilha de Santa Caterina - Florianopolis Arrived in the south of the island of Santa Caterina to a lovely little hostel in a very quiet part of the island. Spent a couple of days lounging around on the beach, swimming in the sea and generally taking it very very easy. Met some great people at the hostel and we spent a few evenings chatting over food and drinks. What more can I say!! It was very hard to leave! I'll let the photos speak for them selves :) [View Full Entry]

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Another little "hop" later, only 18 hours on the bus this time, and we arrived in puerto iguazu. Our hostel was just over the road from the bus terminal, which was just as well cos the humidity was about 30 billion % NO EXAGGERATION..... So we sweatted the day away until the aircon came on in our room and we could breathe without getting our clothes soaking wet... Next day we visited the Iguazu National Park. Was really impressed with the park itself, very easy to negotiate around, paved paths and raised walkways kept us tourist hordes from trampling the forest [View Full Entry]

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We arrived back in El Calafate, and back to our hostel, strange to be back after a week in El Chalten. The next day we had a few hours to kill before making our way back up to Buenos Aires, 4 hours to Rio Gallegos, a couple of hour wait there before a 36 hour bus to Buenos Aires. Time passed, saw some stunning scenery passing by. We had a massive 4 breaks, each of 5 minutes, really just anough time to have a smoke, toilet visit or buy fresh supplies. We had an interesting selection of films, mostly bad.... but [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in El Calafate late afternoon and quickly found our hostel, not too difficult, this place is not big. The first evening in El Calafate we took pretty easy, when out for a lovely meal - had Patagonian lamb, delicious, wine great too  We came back to the hostel, there was live music in the evening provided by 3 Brazilians on guitars and percussion, a lot of improvised. After playing some brilliant music the whole show eventually moved out side onto the terrace on the side of the hostel, and turned into a massive jamming session, with everyone taking [View Full Entry]

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This blog was written by my travel buddy Simon...... Day 1 - Leave El Calafate on bus to El Chalten After enjoying a touch too much Malbec the night before with some people we met in the hostel we kind of missed our scheduled bus and had to book another for 1pm. All went OK from there as we headed off for what seemed a very easy 3 ½ hour bus trip. However, we left fairly clear but windy weather and headed off into what can really only be described as ‘a cloud'... Driving rain and blustery winds gave the impression, [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in Bariloche, only an hour late, and were blown away - literally - there was a chilly gale racing through the overcast day, quite a shock to the system after our incubated bus journey. We shouldered our packs for extra wind resistance and set off to catch a bus into town centre, our first priority to find a place to stay for the night. Of course we missed our bus stop and ended up in the far side of Bariloche, but as we walked back towards the centre, we came across one of the hostels we had tried but [View Full Entry]

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Buenos Aires, the first time So finally arrived in BA, the first day spent around the hostel in San Telmo. It was a Sunday and there was a large, famous street market where you can buy a whole variety of things from t shirts to antiques, it made a fascinating couple of hours. Surprisingly though I was still quite wiped from the travel so it was a fairly quite evening around the hostel. Next morning headed out early for the airport to meet my friend Simon, all went according to plan, and soon we were back at the hostel. Turned out [View Full Entry]

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Venezuela to Arentina I left Margarita on the 22nd January and had about 8 days to make it down to Buenos Aires, I really hadnt left myself enough time The epic journey started with a flight from Margarita to Caracas, and then a flight from Caracas to Bogota, at Bogota I changed flight again to Guayaquil, Ecuador. Arrived in Guayaquil after a torturous wait to clear immigration to then find my bag had not come though and was still probably in Bogota. It seemed that this was the case for half of our flight so there was not much else [View Full Entry]

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After Cuzco I headed aver to Lima, had been invited to join some friends on the coast and learn to Surf. A couple of days later we arrived in a small village of Cerro Azul, where not much happens apart from fishing and surfing. We checked into our hotel and got straight out to the beach. Unfortunately after about 30 minutes my teacher Hector dislocated his shoulder pushing my board. Spent a horrendous 30 minutes on the beach with Hector in a lot of pain and I wasn’t able to help much. Fortunately we found someone who could help Hector fix [View Full Entry]

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