Fionnlahart

One last long bus trip in South America to take....this one was supposed to be 7 but turned out to be 12 due to the ridiculousness of customs officials. Don’t get me started! We arrived late at night to stay in Vina Del Mar about 2 hours north of Santiago. The hostel was really nice and was run by a lovely lady named Ninfa who didn’t go anywhere without her beloved poodle estrella (star).....it wouldn’t be a South American hostel without a dog in fairness. Vina is a small coastal city that has lots and lots of beaches so the next day off we set to soak up the rays. Its a real typical seaside town...long stretches of beaches towered over by high rise apartments....not the nicest to look at. We were only on the beach ... read more

After an hour on a bus, during which the landscape slowly changed from barren desert with dust roads, to paved roads and electricity pylons and other things associated with normality! Welcome to Chile! We travelled to a small desert town in the north of Chile called San Pedro De Atacama. We would only be staying one night as Andrea and myself would be travelling to the west coast of Argentina while Caragh and Andy would be heading down to Vina Del Mar, near Santiago, for a few days before heading to Perth. After an hour wasting time at customs we finally got to San Pedro. It was actually a really nice little town with lots of restaurants and little bars dotted around. Its generally full of travellers who are travelling to the Salar De Uyuni from ... read more

And so off we flew to Sucre. Flight was great...only 45 mins (myself and Andy had managed to talk the girls out of a 12hr bus with no toilets!). Sucre was really nice. Much nicer than La Paz. Sucre is a world heritage site with all the buildings painted colonial white and no buildings allowed over 3 stories. While its a city it has more of a town feel to it.....like everyone knows everyone kind of thing. We stayed at a really nice hostel called La Dolce Vita run by a Swiss couple who lived there with their two kids. Rooms were nice and big and clean and they had a lovely Siamese cat running around. Met a few interesting people there - Alex and Jean Philippe the French-Canadians, and then a strange threesome! One guy, ... read more

Next up was a trip to Lake Titikaka on the Peruvian/Bolivian border. We would first be heading to Puno which would be the jumping off point for our trip on the lake. Leaving Cusco we set off on a 9 hour bus journey that would take us to Puno while stopping off at some local ‘places of interests’. After what we had seen on the Inca trail these sites weren’t much but at least it broke up the trip and of course gave Andrea more opportunity to look at more local markets! The closer we got to Bolivia the poorer Peru became and the landscape became more desolate. We passed though a couple of hairy looking towns before finally arriving a little tired in Puno. Didn’t look too nice on the outside but turned out to ... read more

So off we flew to Cusco and our first experience at altitude. Cusco is about 3400m above sea level so you need a few days to aclimatise before you start feeling normal again. It was a weird feeling.....really lightheaded, headaches and just really tired. We got to our hostel and after a cup of coca leaves (helps with the altitude sickness!) we all went to bed for the entire day! The next day we all felt a little better but still headaches and simple things like walking up stairs would leave us breathess!! Sometimes you could even be breathless just sitting down! Anyway the third day we were fine and feeling back to normal so could enjoy Cusco properly. Cusco is a nice little city and the for the most part the people are very friendly. ... read more