Holly and Joe

J: Today is the last day of our trip. In a few hours we will board a plane to New Zealand and our journeys in South America shall be over for now, so it seems an appropriate point to reflect on our last few stops. Fittingly for a celebration of our travels, they were all wine regions. After Buenos Aires we stopped at Mendoza and checked into possibly the dirtiest hostel in Argentina, finding both cigarette ash and pubic hair on our bed sheets. Lovely. Anyway, Mendoza is the wine capital of Argentina, with over 70% of the country's production coming from the region, and is one of the eight global premier wine regions. In the spirit of fully embracing the local culture we booked a bike tour around the vineyards for the following day and ... read more

J: We've been traveling now for three months non-stop and privately we have both admitted in our weaker moments that we were starting to feel fatigued by the lifestyle. It's not that we were no longer enjoying ourselves, which we undoubtedly were, but we hadn't stayed anywhere for more than three successive nights, lived out of a suitcase, slept erratically and in flagrant disregard of circadian rhythms, often caught consecutive overnight buses and were both generally missing the comforts of home. In this frame of mind we decided to make a couple of changes to our plan, and at shunned the 36 hour bus into Uruguay in favour of a flight and decided to spend a whole week in the capital rather than exploring surrounding towns. Arriving at Montevideo airport was quite a tonic. Everything was ... read more

H: Hello! Apparently I am a little bit naughty and Joe's writings are way outnumbering mine. So I thought I should sit down and tell my side of the Christmas story... Early November sometime we suddenly realised that a familyless Christmas was looming and the only way to survive was to think up some exciting and exotic place to spend it. When we found a pretty hostel near the Iguazú falls in Argentina that had a ping pong table and we didn't have to search anymore. If we didn't have family around, at least we could have a game of our newly traditional Teeny Tiny Tenni Christmas Tourny (a very competitive game of ping pong!). Getting to Puerto Iguazú was one of our longest overland travelling missions yet. Joe finished his last blog at the Salt ... read more

J: Although La Paz hosts the seat of national government, is Bolivia's most populous city by far and is the country's most important historical, cultural and economic centre it is technically not the capital. That distinction belongs to Sucre. This fact becomes a little more surprising whilst meandering through Sucre's sleepy streets rather than fighting through the 24 hour noise and bustle of La Paz. The story goes that 100 years or so ago the most important city in the country was Sucre, but when the democratic party were elected into power they moved the seat of government to the party headquarters in La Paz, and from that everything else followed. Sucre did manage to retain the title of official capital although the de facto honour now lives in La Paz. Sucre is an aesthetically pleasing ... read more

J: When we first heard about Death Road Holly said she had a bad feeling about it and made me promise to not go down it. It is rare that Holly makes such a stand, and since it was not on my list of must-do things on our travels I agreed. However, the closer to La Paz we got, the more we heard about it and the more excited about the ride I got. Under weight of expectation Holly relented and I booked myself on the trail. Holly didn't change her mind entirely though and instead took a bus down to La Senda Verde, the animal sanctuary where the ride finishes. I opted for pretty much the most expensive tour operator of the trail as they are supposed to be the safest - we'd heard stories ... read more