Ok, so we are obviously no longer traveling and are still catching up with our blogs, but we know you guys want to see the photos (well, the ones that weren't stolen) and we want some way of remembering our fantastic trip as it already seems like a long time ago..... being back in an office just makes you want to do it all over again though, but I suppose you have to earn a living occasionally! So we had just done loads of trekking in Chile round the Torres del Paine circuit last time we blogged and after that we [View Full Entry]

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This was what the mammoth bus trip had been in aid of: trekking in the world famous and extremely beautiful Torres Del Paine national park. We were just scraping in at the end of the season but the bonus to this was that we were able to pick up a load of cheap second hand equipment to buy rather than waste money hiring stuff. Fully kitted out with tent, sleeping bags, roll mats and an alcohol cooking burner that I'd made out of two beer cans we were set. Our bags were pretty heavy but it was largely because we [View Full Entry]

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It was obvious as soon as we had arrived into El Calafate that we had found one of the those super tacky touristy places that we try to avoid and we immediately wanted to go back to the cosy little mountain village of El Chalten. Unlike in El Chalten where tourists have to hike to see the glaciers, here in El Calafate you are driven to the glacier (it is 80km away so hiking is a little out of the question for a day trip!) which is possibly why it attracts lots of tour companies - arggh! The Perito Moreno [View Full Entry]

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After our mammoth journey all we wanted to do was find a place to crash out and relax. This proved to be rather difficult with El Chalten's growing popularity with climbers and trekkers; the first few hostels we tried were all completely full! We eventually found a little place after wandering around for a while, right opposite where we'd gotten off the bus in the first place! We had come to El Chalten to go trekking and climbing and spent the following day wandering around checking out the options available. We soon discovered that the local tourist information could give [View Full Entry]

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After much searching for plane tickets and not finding anything cheaper than nearly $500 we had to admit defeat and turn to our favourite form of transport: the bus! After leaving southern ecuador we crossed the border to Peru and made our way to Lima, making a brief stop in a costal town along the way. From Lima we planned to do a pretty much non-stop trip down to southern Argentina, only about 3641 miles! Leg 1 Lima, Peru to Arica, Chile (614 miles) The first leg of our journey was actually done in two bits, a bus to the [View Full Entry]

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Yes that´s right the date for this blog is my birthday, thanks for all the birthday messages everyone sent. We spent my birthday in a little town called Vilcabamba near the border of Ecuador with Peru, as our visas were due to expire a few days later we wanted to make sure we did not have too far to go to leave the country. Supposedly it is a $100 dollar fine if you leave the country even a day late! On hearing that we actually left the day before our visa expired, just in case, you never know if the [View Full Entry]

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After nearly 3 months living and working at the Black Sheep Inn in the highlands we had a week left on our Ecuadorian tourist visas before we had to be at the border so we decided that for our first stop on route we would go to the Amazon jungle. Ecuador is a fantastic place to travel as the country is small, so quick to get around, and its landscape and people so varied: we left the central highlands with its small indigenous towns, valleys and mountains in the morning and arrived into the bustling humid town of Tena on [View Full Entry]

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After the manic period over Christmas and New years we had a week off work at BSI so we decided to cram in as much as we could in the northern / central area of the country. We based ourselves in Quito to start off with and the first thing on the agenda after having a largely vegetarian diet for the past month and a bit was to get some meat!! We found a really nice Argentine restaurant in the Mariscal area of Quito and had some excellent steak and treated ourselves to a really tasty bottle of wine too. [View Full Entry]

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After exchanging numerous emails with Andres and Michelle we finally arrived in Ecuador and checked our messages to find an email saying "the sooner you get here the better" in our inbox, along with some bus directions to find our way to the Black Sheep Inn. The bus trip was about 6 hours half on a normal road and the other half on something that could only be called a road because cars attempted to drive down it! The trip from Latacunga up into the Andean Highlands was bumpy to say the least but the views were amazing as the bus [View Full Entry]

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The rainy season had finally caught up with us and we decided to forgo a visit to the carribean where they were having even more rain than the rest of the country and instead went to San Jose for a bit of city life whilst we waited for our flight to Ecuador. We arrived and went to Hostal Pangea one of the hostals recommended by the guide book but only stopped for the one night as there was no atmosphere and the rooms were quite prison-like! We moved the following day to Tranqillo´s backpackers hostal round the corner where there were [View Full Entry]

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