We arrived in California with half a plan and without really any clear idea of what we were going to do for the next six weeks apart from catching up with our friends Ellen and Florus in LA. And thanks to their kindness in putting us up in their gorgeous beach house on Venice beach, we didn't have to start thinking about what we were going to do immediately. We had a great few days enjoying Venice and Santa Monica - cocktails at Shutters on the Beach, breakfast at the Fig Tree watching the craziness start up along Venice boardwalk. We [View Full Entry]

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So with just two weeks left in Peru we managed to pack in some big adventures - the first was the 5 day Salkantay hike to Machu Picchu - the second a trip to the deepest Amazonian jungle - and an amazing journey to the astral plane courtesy of a shaman ceremony and a psychotropic brew (more on this later). We were prepared for extreme cold and altitude on the Salkantay trek (the trek was called from snow to jungles!) and had been gearing up for this - which stood us in good stead when it came to the hiking. What [View Full Entry]

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From the Salt Flats it was straight onto La Paz, capital of Bolivia perched some 3000 to 4100 metres above sea level. We feared we were running out of time so decided to delay delights like Sucre and Pot0si until next time, rather than rush them. And we really liked La Paz, lots of steep windy roads filled with market stalls displaying an amazing array of fresh produce. We visited the Coca museum which was crowded but pretty interesting and considered going to the Cholita wrestling- a WWF type event but then with little sturdy ladies with plaited hair and wearing [View Full Entry]

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The border crossing from Argentina into Bolivia couldn't have been easier - we hopped off our bus from Tilcara and walked across to Villazon in Bolivia - no worries! And booked ourselves onto the first bus leaving to Tupiza - where we planned to take a trip through the salt flats up to Uyuni. We wasted a couple of hours in a friendly local pizzeria where Eric had his first Spanish conversation on politics as we watched the unfolding Honduras coup on television. When our bus rocked up we were delighted- it was a total piece of metal trash, rusty, dirty [View Full Entry]

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Salta was a great place - we would have loved to have spent more time around the area but as it was we were running short. We stayed at the great Inti Huazi - loved the folks there who took us out for some amazing live music nights (reggae, folk, ska, bluesy combinations that got us dancing) and when we left gave us more music than we know what to do with! During our time there we had few plans apart from to climb the hill and view the surrounding area - and that was the one thing we never [View Full Entry]

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Having finally made it out of Buenos Aires we arrived at the little town of Puerto Iguazu having taken the famous 'ejecutivo' overnight bus. And very nice it was too with comfy seats, champagne and wine served - the only shocker was the 2 hour long 80s music compilation video which they played. However after a few bevvies we were soon singing along. Puerto Iguazu itself is pleasant enough and is located very close to the famous Iguazu Falls. We had been recommended the Hostelling International, which was out of town - but as it was too cold to use the [View Full Entry]

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BA was, as a friend had promised, a wonderful mix of some of Europe's most fun cities - like Paris, Rome and Barcelona wrapped into one. For the first few days we laid low as on arrival Zoe was pretty sick with some kind of virus (which of course had all the matching symptoms of Mexican flu - if we had a pound for every backpacker we have met who is convinced they have had swine flu then we would be very rich). Plus the weather was cold and wet and the heating didn't work in our hostel room. So we [View Full Entry]

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We arrived in San Carlos de Bariloche on the overnight bus from Puerto Montt and decided to stagger into town under our own steam (we thought the lake walk would be nice - which it is....when you aren't carrying 18 kilos of stuff in the cold rain). Within minutes we'd picked up an escort - it appears that the wild dogs here in Argentina are as friendly and as crazy as the ones in Chile. Soon we had about 6 or 7 canines running around us - running ahead and looking back doing the whole 'follow me I'm Lassie' business. This [View Full Entry]

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We loved the hostel Casa Roja in Santiago with its swim up bar, huge rooms and great atmosphere. But because there was comparatively little 'South American' buzz about the city (it was more like Europe) we were more than happy to use this as a base to stay in for a week or so and take our Spanish lessons with the fantastic Jesus Wong (such a cool name). We booked a crash course of 20 hours and we made progress after some initial teething problems (yo 32 anos - I have 32 arseholes) and our teacher confiding in us that he [View Full Entry]

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Rapa Nui (Easter Island) is some 4000 miles from anywhere, with a population of just 4000 people making it the obvious place for us to run into a French couple (and their travelling teddy bear Fifi) with whom we had crossed the Vietnam/Cambodia border some seven months previously. Small world...and small island. We had an inkling that the two weeks we had on Rapa Nui might prove to be a little much and after covering the whole island in pretty much one day, meeting most of the local population on an evening out and, as it turned out, knowing many of [View Full Entry]

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