Don't hate us cuz we can't come with a creative title. We hope the travelling will inspire us. So here we go, for the travel journal, part dos. First we drove... We left home on the 11th of December with the truck packed and the dog happily riding in the back seat. Spent a night in Anchorage with friends, and then left early in the morning for the day long drive to Whitehorse, Yukon. We stayed two nights with our friends Julie and Jassin in their lovely lil' cabin, and had our (hopefully) annual seafood feast. This year was lobster tail [View Full Entry]

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Dave even said so. But, alas, our travels are over for a bit. After 24 hours of airplanes/airports, a day and a half in Anchorage (thanks Nick and Jess!!!) and a 4-hour drive, we arrived back home to our wee little house. Our lovely little four-legged friends who live with us are back too. The house looked great and all seemed well. We're still working on getting unpacked and getting the road cleared of snow, and it's COLD! Only 3 degrees with -15 degree windchill as I write this, fortunately all toasty warm inside with a cup of good REAL coffee [View Full Entry]

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We totally understand now why people rave about Buenos Aires. It really is a beautiful city (and remember that's coming from confirmed NON-city people!). We rented an apartment in the Palermo Viejo barrio and thoroughly enjoyed that. After so much travelling around, we enjoyed coming back to the same place to sleep for a whopping 5 nights in a row. But did we kick back and relax? NO! No time for that...we had a city to see. We made the rounds at the amazing street markets in Recoleta, San Telmo, and Belgrano. We watched tango dancers in the streets in La [View Full Entry]

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Okay, time to Dave another turn... So after a nice night wandering along the streets of Uyuni, we were up at 4:40 AM to get back in the very slow moving jeep to hit the salt flats before sunrise. We were ready by the 5 AM deadline; but our guides were a little slower in getting ready (who could blame them since I doubt they even really slept). So at about 5:20 Am we rolled out of town, again basically just rolling since we only had the 2 gears. We were about 20KMs from the edge of the salt flats and [View Full Entry]

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***I keep forgetting to mention a little something I only recently discovered about this site. You can double click on a photo to pull it up in a larger format and then slide show through all the photos in the entry*** Another entry where I'll mostly let the photos do the talking. The scenery got more and more spectacular as the days went on. This day we started by going to Laguna Colorada first. We were amazed at the number of flamingos and how beautiful the perfectly still lake was. We actually got to spend a bit of extra time here [View Full Entry]

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San Antonio de Lipez to Laguna Colorada also known as a VERY, VERY long day in a Jeep We started the day early...wake up call at about 6am. Most everyone was feeling pretty rough as the altitude affected the ability to sleep. A lil' Nescafé mixed with "Chocolike" (this creation dubbed the Bolivian Mocha) and some bread with jam and we were on our way. We drove past ruins, volcanoes, wee villages, a small salt flat, hot springs, deserts with bizarre rock formations and geysers. We listened to Bolivian music, we listened to Guns 'n Roses, we took photos....LOTS of photo [View Full Entry]

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So we had come all the way to southern Bolivia to do one thing - the Salar de Uyuni tour. Actually we were doing the extended Tupiza version. We were to embark on a big loop through southern Bolivia and end up on the world's largest salt flat. We were not leaving the first day until 9:30 the first morning, so Kevyn and I took the opportunity to wander around town and we stumbled into the already bustling central market. We definitely felt out of place and did not feel that great about shooting photos but we did shoot a few [View Full Entry]

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(Kevyn here) We decided a few weeks earlier that we probably had time to visit Bolivia. Our friends, Pete and Ashely, who travelled around South America for several months last year, spoke very highly of the 4x4 tours of the slat flats in the southwestern part of Bolivia. Of course, always wanting to emulate our friends, we decided we had to add that to the itinerary also. But we really didn't know much about Bolivia. We managed a peak at anothe traveller's guide book and got some place names on the internet. With a little bit of research and a lot [View Full Entry]

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Quilmes and the Museo Pachamama We got up early the next morning to drive the 55 miles south to the pre-Columbian ruins at Quilmes. The settlement is located at 1,978 meters above sea level, and dating from around 1000 a.d., it was the largest human settlement before the Spaniards arrived in Argentina. Covering about 75 acres, the city supported a population upwards of 5,000 in terraced structures with thick walls, overlooking irrigated farmlands. The Quilmes Indians were the last native group to be defeated by the Spainards. The last 2000 survivors were deported to Buenos Aires, [View Full Entry]

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Salta to Cachi The road from to Salta to Cachi starts out going through the lush Lerma Valley. Things quickly changed from the green to the colorful rocks of the Quebrada de Escoipe. This was the first place in South America where we saw cactus. This mostly gravel, winding road climbs to over 10,000 ft. You may have heard of the famous Train to the Clouds, but we felt like we were in the Rental Car to the clouds as we drove higher and higher. The clouds really came down all around us at one point and we could barely see [View Full Entry]

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