Ingrid and Gavin

Once the Oasis lot had gone we had 10 days to explore Cape Town and the Peninsula before our big trip came to an end. We took a trip up Table Mountain, explored the water front and sunbathed at Camps Bay. Cape Town was truly sun, sand, sea and fine fish and chips! We decided to hire a car (for just £85) for a week and head down the coast to Simon’s Town on the Cape Peninsula. We drove along the stunning coastal route known as Chapman’s Peak drive passing through the fishing village of Hout Bay. Views of white sandy beaches, waves crashing against the shore and clear blue skies were all we saw for 10 days!!!!! We were in heaven. We stayed in Simon’s Town for 3 days and visited Boulders Beach penguin colony ... read more

Gavin and I spent an amazing 4 weeks volunteering at the Vervet Monkey Foundation in South Africa. We booked with Global Vision International (GVI) but you can now book directly with the project which works out cheaper! http://www.vervet.za.org/ We landed in Johannesburg very early on a sunny Monday morning and took a taxi to the bus station in Midrand to catch the Translux bus service up to Tzaneen. After a few hours wait sat on our backpacks on the pavement outside the office we hopped on our bus and fell fast asleep! The bus journey from Jo’burg to Tzaneen is roughly 6 hours and as we thought we were just an hour away from our final destination our bus pulled over on to the side of the road… after about 10 minutes passengers started getting off ... read more

Our one and only stop in Brazil was to visit the Pantanal, the worlds largest wetland area which stretches out for over 70,000 square miles. The Pantanal,although classed as a wetland area is actually dry for 6 months of the year and wet for the other 6 months. Fortunately we visited at the driest time of the year! In December the rains come and rapidly flood the area, the water is at its highest in March when the area becomes incredibly hot, humid and full of mosquitoes (unbearable is how our guide described it) and the roads become virtually impassible. The Pantanal is rich in wildlife with over a 100 species of mammals and reptiles. We saw a huge amount of wildlife. The dry season is the best time to spot wildlife because the vegetation is ... read more

We have spent an amazing week here in Mendoza. A beautiful city of long tree lined boulevards, plaza and parks, cafes and fine restaurants. The weather here is very warm and sunny. Things couldn't have been more perfect! Our first day was spent relaxing and exploring the city. We had a pinic lunch in the main plaza and read our books in the sun, then went for afternoon tea in a little cafe by our hostel and had mini cakes and coffee. In the evening we went out to a really nice restauarant and had the biggest steak we've ever seen and Gavin chose a good bottle of red wine to go with his dinner! Yesterday we went on a bike tour of the Maipu vineyards. We took a bus to the vineyard region then hired ... read more

So we flew to Punta Arenas (almost at the end of the world)! Very far south and only about 4000km from Antartica and boy did we feel the wind blowing up from there! The flight down here gave us breathtaking views over the southern patagonian icefield. We saw glaciars and and beautiful lakes and the landing in to Punta Arenas we interesting to say the least, rather like dive bombing out of the sky and almost in to the sea! Punta Arenas is a lovely town with nice buildings and great views over the Magellan straights. Unfortunately the famous penguins you can see here were all off on their holidays so we made do with sightseeing in the town. We visited the naval museum which had some cool exhibits about voyages off the Cape Horn and ... read more