Irene and Bruno

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO YOU ALL!!! We hope that you've had a great Christmas and we wish you a great year in 2007!!! It has been a month since our arrival in Melbourne yet over the last 4 weeks, a lot has happened already. So much so that our wonderful experiences in South America are now fast fading memories. Aside from the 4 - 0 cricket scores, which we won't mention, the main news headlines have been the depletion of water supply in dams and the ashes/bushfires. We've adjusted quickly to the hot temperatures: mostly in the high 700s, i mean 30s. We were greeted by brown landscapes, not a patch of green in sight. If your garden was green, your neighbours would look at you suspiciously because it was highly likely you've broken the water consumption ... read more

It had been too long since our 5 day Salkantay walk in Machu Picchu, so we were very excited about getting back into serious trekking again.. this time.. the ultimate walker's paradise - Torres del Paine. High organised tour prices were not going to scare us away, thus we decided to trek ourselves, armed with food, equipment and maps. We strategically booked into the fully-serviced refugios in the park, allowing us to cover at least 4-5 hours of walking a day, weather permitting. To re-tell our 4 day experience in the park day by day would only bore you, the readers. You see, there are only so many words that describe our time spent in the park: romantic, awe inspiring, jaw dropping, bloody tiring, marvellous and totally awesome. We started from the eastern side of the ... read more

We've been on the road now for 8 weeks with at least another 2 weeks to go and we find that we haven't really had down time of doing nothing. We are either on the road touring in the middle of the wilderness; or catching buses for as long as 12 hours at a time; or in a town washing our clothes, emailing or planning for our next destination. As a married couple of over 7 years, we have not spent this much time together and it is pleasantly strange - divorce threats notwithstanding. What started out as a 6 weeks tourist trip to South America planned during the summer in London became a fulfilment of a lifetime ambition to visit this continent over a period of 3 months covering 4 countries. Bearing in mind there ... read more

These are what Buenos Aires is generally famous for.. and dubbed the Paris of South America. We were very excited about Buenos Aires. The last 10 days we've spent here, we have not been disappointed. We've also had a chance to catch up with ourselves, shop for some necessities, ring family and email friends, visit San Telmo (similar to Portobello Rd) and Boca (home of the Argentinian Boca Juniors, Maradona´s home club) and the colourful suburb of Caminito. We even managed to cross the Rio de Plata and "popped over" to Uruguay for a couple of days, another very pleasant excursion. Bruno also saw a rugby match in San Isidro and we've made up for the lack of salads.. and have eaten more steak than Ive had in a year!! Other than visiting the main touristic ... read more

We welcomed our descent to Chile - well paved roads and lower altitude. Even the bus ride to the Chilean border was smooth and slow at what seemed like 40 kph. Perhaps it was because this long stretch of dead straight road is punctuated with wreckage of cars/vehicles whose hasty drivers ignored the warning sign to slow down. It was the middle of the day and being next to the desert, the sun was very high and blistering above us, quite a sudden change from the freezing mountains and lagoons from the last 3 days. San Pedro de Atacama is at the frontier between Chile and Bolivia, but what a contrast to Peru & Bolivia in these aspects; the Chileans' openness and engaging nature was refreshing and the western standard likewise was a nice change. The ... read more