We drove away from Lima with only 6 people on the tour - it seemed very quiet compared to an average of about 20 people for the rest of the trip but a lot more room to sleep on the truck! We headed to Huaraz where we went ice climbing. It was hard work especially since we were at 4,700m and suffering from altitude sickness. After climbing up a vertical wall with ice picks (in truth Steve climbed the wall … I climbed up half the wall!), we got to abseil down which was more fun! Next we drove to Huanchaco [View Full Entry]

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From La Paz we crossed the border into Peru. Our first stop in Peru was Puno, as small town on the edge of Lake Titicaca. From here we took a boat to the floating reed islands on Lake Titicaca. There are 42 floating islands where people actually live and we were shown how they build the islands and the houses ... clever stuff! Next we took a boat over to Amantini Islands where we stayed with a local family for the night. It was a bit bizarre as they didn´t speak English and we haven´t learnt much conversational Spanish so there [View Full Entry]

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As usual we went on the city tour in Santiago. Saw some nice areas to eat and drink and went up 3 hills to get good views of the city. From Santiago we went on a day trip to Valparaiso and Vina del Mar. Valparaiso is a large port town in the valley of 42 hills with heaps of character. Vina del Mar is a modern holiday resort and as such not as interesting. However it was worth going as we saw one of the famous statues that had been transported from Easter Island. At dinner we met the new people [View Full Entry]

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Sorry it´s been so long. Planning to do a trip at a time (the whole thing being 5 trips) so BA to Santiago ... After leaving Buenos Aires we have a 5 day drive to Ushuaia broken up with a day in Puerto Madryn where we got to see Penguins, Seals and Sea Lions but unfortunately no Orca´s. I absolutely loved seeing Penguins, they were so cute (see facebook photo). Finally got to Ushuaia, the most southernly point you can get to in the world except Antarctica. We went for a beautiful walk in the national park and went to the [View Full Entry]

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So much seems to have happened over the last couple of weeks it is hard to remember it all. I think last blog I was just off to the Pantanal. The massive thing I had missed out though was that we saw loads of dolphins while kayaking which was really cool as we weren´t expecting it at all. Steve has only just recovered from the sunburn we got that day but it was still worth it! Also Rio was a really amazing city. From the the statue of Christ mountain (corvacado) you had a beautiful view of the city including beaches, [View Full Entry]

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Rio is such a beautiful city ... mountains, sea, rainforest and lots of drunk people dressed in silly costumes to celebrate carnaval time! The carnaval at the sambadrome was pretty special. It is amazing the amount of effort that went in and there are too many hightlights to mention. We took loads of photo´s but they don´t really do it justice. We did all the typical sites in rio which were grand and went to a football match which had an absolutely amazing atmosphere. Since then we have camped in the muddiest field (to rival even glastonbury), been on a boat [View Full Entry]

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