Mendoza - Argentina´s best wine region Thursday 12th November - Sunday 15th November (Days 67-70) Mendoza is a beautiful place, it was completely levelled by an earthquake around 100 years ago. When it was rebuilt the planners had this in mind, so they made the avenues really wide (room for the rubble to fall). The result is a picturesque city, filled with green plaza´s and wide tree lined avenues, surrounded by Bodegas (vineyards/wineries) and a backdrop of snow covered peaks in the distance. Thursday night we say goodbye to Cordoba and jump on an overnight bus for Mendoza [View Full Entry]

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Buenos Aires Sunday 1st November-Wednesday 4th November We arrived in rainy Buenos Aires Sunday morning, after an overnight bus from Cordoba. First time we´d seen rain in a long time and we welcomed it after having temperatures of up to 40 degrees in Cordoba. We also had one of the best nights sleep on the bus as well because of the air-con, the last few nights we hadn´t slept because of the heat. We got out of the bus station and asked the taxi driver to take us to one of the hostels Rick had found online. The taxi driver was [View Full Entry]

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Oktoberfest On Sunday 11th October, Rick and Lizzy ventured away from Cordoba for the day to visit Villa Belgrano. It is a small German town about an hour away from the centre of Cordoba. It is a nice town which during October hosts a huge beer festival called Oktoberfest. We weren’t about to miss an opportunity to visit an Argentina/German beer festival now, were we… The bus journey there was an experience in itself as it was the first time we had seen the surrounding mountains/lakes of Cordoba. It was beautiful. As it was the weekend you could see lots of [View Full Entry]

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Cordoba Monday 5th October - Wednesday 11th November Days 29-66 During our time in Cordoba it´s been difficult trying to juggle the experience of living/working here as well as being a tourist! We live with a young couple called Jean and Ines who are both lovely. Ines is 26 and works for Projects Abroad and Jean is 27 and is training to be a chef. Jean is orginally from Brazil and is a bit of a surfer dude! They have a dog called "Fiedi" who they found as a puppy on the street. First things you have to get used to [View Full Entry]

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So it´s 7:30am, Friday 2nd October (Day 26) and we´re at the bus station at Paraty waiting for a bus to take us back to Sao Paulo. The bus departs at 8:30am and we arrive in Sao Paulo for 3pm. Once there we were hoping to able to jump straight on the bus to the Iguazu Falls but unfortunately the next one wasn´t until 6:30pm. During the wait we tried a Bob´s Burger which is basically like a McDonalds, however it was the most disgusting burger we´d ever eaten and also one of the most expensive! The bus journey was 16 [View Full Entry]

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29th September - Day 23 The bus from Angra to Paraty took 1 1/2 hours but this time we were on more of a local bus. There was no where to put our rucksacks and the seats were really not comfortable. As soon as we got to Paraty we were bombarded with different people trying to peddle their hostels. We looked at 1 place which claimed it had a pool but it was basically a paddling pool, full of dirt in their backgarden. We settled on this place called Family Hostel where we had a private room ensuite, double bed, fridge, [View Full Entry]

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Ilha Grande 25th September 09 - Day 19 Nearly didn´t make it to the Island as the transfer we´d arranged with the Aquario Hostel never turned up...and in true Brazilian style, didn´t call to let us know! We sat waiting for 2 hours (true British style), called a couple of times to chase and we kept being told they´re on their way and then finally told that the driver had a problem with the car, just never called to let us know! Great... so we jump in a taxi and rush to the bus station. Luckily a bus was leaving in [View Full Entry]

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So we arrive in Rio after the 6 hour bus journey which wasn't bad at all...infact we drove through some wonderful scenery. At the bus station we went to get a taxi however one company refused to take us as we didn't have an address of where we needed to go, just a general area (Botafogo). Luckily another company understood English so we could explain we're heading to an area to find a hostel...didn't realise that would be problem. The driver was desperately trying to pursuede us against going there as it was more for locals and not many hostels around [View Full Entry]

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So it's about 9am September 11th and we're packing up our bags to head to the airport to fly to Sao Paulo...was definitely weird travelling that day! We were glad to be leaving New York when we did as the weather had turned for the worst and it was pouring so we had to re-jig before we set off getting all our waterproofs out! Once at the airport we realised our plane was delayed by about an hour due to the bad weather. All the TVs at the airport were showing what was happening at the World Trade Centre site. It [View Full Entry]

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New York! Day 1 We land in Newark Airport on Monday 7th September, 18:30 local time. Both Rick and I took advantage of the free alcohol on the plane so didn't get much sleep! The queue for customs went surprising quickly considering we all had to have our fingerprints taken (something I hadn't seen before). Once we got through we were just praying our bags were there and luckily they were!! Once we started heading off with our rucksacks I remember thinking that they were really heavy! We were the only ones around at the time with big rucksacks on our [View Full Entry]

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