Arriving in New Zealand at 4am and feeling shattered after a 12 hour flight, we caught a shuttle bus to the Fat Camel Hostel in downtown Auckland. A busy hostel, so much so that we had to leave our bags outside the room and wait for our beds to be vacated. The hostel staff then recommended that instead of catching up on some sleep , we do a free city tour. This sounded like a good way to orientate ourselves, so we signed up. It was also our first introduction to Stray Travel, a company that operate buses on different routes [View Full Entry]

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Crossing into Chile from Bolivia, we only had four days left in South America, so we immediately caught a bus from the border town of San Pedro de Atacama to Calama. We stayed one night here, but unfortunately due to time constraints, we couldn't visit the Copper mine to the north, the largest open mine in the world. Instead we then caught another bus to Antofogasta for our flight to Santiago. Northern Chile will have to wait for another trip....(and the south!) In Santiago, we visited San Cristobal hill for panoramic views of the city. The city zoo was also on [View Full Entry]

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Leaving La Paz by early (again) morning bus, we changed at Oruro on to a Train. Despite facing backwards, there was amazing views of the barren landscape as we headed south to the town of Uyuni. The train stopped breifly and the lights went out for an unexplained rason, but after 7hours of trundling along, we arrived in Uyuni late at night and were relieved to see our bags had been checked on correctly and arrived there with us. Met off the train by our lady host, we checked into the hostel for our last decent nights sleep before the tour, [View Full Entry]

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After a hearty lunch of Shepards Pie in the Irish bar (not quite local food , but heh) , we left Cuzco and headed to Puno on the shore of Lake Titicaca. From here we hooked up with SAS Travel and their tour of the lake. First was the Uros Islands, floating islands made of reeds. When they got a bit soggy, another 5 " of reeds were laid on top. Even the locals boats were made of reeds. Very primitive, although they did have solar panels for their electricity, a gift from the Peruvian government! From here our boat continued [View Full Entry]

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A taxi from Miraflores took us to the Hotel Kamana in central Lima for the start of our 9 day Inca tour with Tucan Travel. Our tour guide was Daniel Torres, a trendy young guy, if slightly camp! Turned out he had a taste for extravagant meals out and well built airline cabin crew! Daniel took us for a walk around the Plaza de las Armas (Main square) and the shopping district of central Lima. Lin and I then went on a tour of the San Francisco Convent, and the catacombs which contained thousands of bones, mostly tibia´s, fibia´s and skulls. [View Full Entry]

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Heading back north towards Lima, we stopped at Pisco which is a small town near to the coast 4hours south of Lima. Arriving late at night because of the delay on our Nazca Lines flight (3hours) we found a nice Hostel that also arranged tours to the local attraction of Paracas. The following morning we were picked up at 7.30am and taken by minibus to the port of Paracas. From here we were taken by speedboat to a group of islands about 40 minutes off the coast that were home to hundreds and hundreds of sea lions, thousands of birds, and [View Full Entry]

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Our Huacachina hostel owner turned out to be a regular tourist baron. He had fingers in all sorts of pies and was able to arrange a trip straight to Nazca, another 2hours south by bus, with a night in a hostel followed by a light aircraft flight over the ´Nazca Lines´. There are all sorts of theories about who and why these lines were created, and we were shown a video before our flight (twice!) about some of them. The main idea, was that these huge images of a Condor, a Monkey, a Humming bird and various others etched into the [View Full Entry]

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Catching our rearranged flight from Buenos Aires to Peru, we were looking forward to the Inca trail, but had seven days to kill before we had to meet at the Tucan tour Hotel in central Lima. Luckily arriving in Lima at midnight, the Incahaus Cooltural Hostel that we´d picked from the internet had space in their dorms. It was a brand new Hostel and quite plush based in the Miraflores (posh) district of Lima. We decided to head straight down the coast the next day and leave Lima until we returned for the trail. A Soyus bus took us to Ica [View Full Entry]

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Having spent almost a week in busy Buenos Aires , we decided to 'pop over'to Uruguay for a day for some fresh air. This meant a boat trip to Colonia del Sacremento, which by fast boat took one hour and cost 100 pesos, but by slow took three hours and cost 50 pesos. Now seeing as the fast boat left 2 hours after the slow boat... (duh!) the decision was simple! Colonia was a nice little town with cobbled streets (painful on my ankle!), various dinky museums, a little harbour for the local yachting fraternity, and some nice beaches. Unfortunately not [View Full Entry]

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Being in Buenos Aires, we couldn´t not go to a Tango show, so with Hannah, Rachel , Al and Ian from the Hostel we went to ´Cafe Tortoni´ , one of the most famous and certainly oldest Tango venues in Buenos Aires. It was great evenings entertainment and having front row seats next to the small stage we could really appreciate the skill of the dancers and the amazing pianist. He was really good and had quite a few solo show-off moments! There were also two singers who sang in between dances. Unfortunately our Spanish wasn´t good enough to understand quite [View Full Entry]

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