How lucky we are A visit to the co-operative silver mines at Potosi reminds you how your life can be determined just by where you are born. If our school group had been born in Potosi, there is a fair chance a few would be working in those mines, inhaling lung fulls of dust and dying young, because it is the best of few options. We’d seen a film in Sucre called the Devil’s Miner. It followed the life of a 15 year old boy whose father had died and so he worked in the silver mines from the age of [View Full Entry]

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Carnaval is coming Carnival in Olinda and Recife is supposedly the third most important in Brazil. Some claim to fame after Rio and Salvador! However, we chose to come here as it is said to have a tradition and intimacy that Rio or Salvador lack. And, perhaps just as importantly, it is safer. We arrived in Olinda on the Thursday morning and after a bit of a walk, managed to find the house we were staying at. Like all the other Brazilian cities, accommodation rates skyrocket in Olinda around carnival. In fact, we couldn’t even find anywhere when we started [View Full Entry]

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Ouro Preto As it seems with all our journeys in Brazil, Ouro Preto was accessed via an overnight bus from Rio. We arrived early on a murky morning, with mist clinging to the mineral rich mountains. After checking in and catching up on some sleep, we set about exploring the town in the pouring rain. Ouro Preto literally means “Black Gold”. In the 18th Century the Portuguese exploited some of the biggest gold deposits in the world here using African slave labour. The result of all this wealth meant that Ouro Preto developed into a fine colonial town, with dozens of [View Full Entry]

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What is the first thing you should do after arriving in Rio after a sleepless 24 hour bus journey? Yeah, that’s right; head down to Ipanema beach for a few beers in a pre carnival parade and then go to a samba school until 4 in the morning. We flung ourselves into Rio and it didn’t really stop for the next 5 days. It didn’t really start too well. We got there mid afternoon after spending 24 hours on the hottest bus ever (the only way to deal with it was not to move - seriously!), to find that the hostel [View Full Entry]

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Another sleepless overnight bus journey got us to Campo Grande so we could visit the Pantanal. There is nothing wrong with the actual buses in Brazil. The problem is they stop at every bus station possible, stop regularly for food and the roads are bumpy. Not a great combination, as just when you eventually get to sleep the bus stops, the lights come on and people shuffle on and off. Anyway, on arrival at Campo Grande we got straight off the bus and into one of the travel agents Anwar, at Hostel Natura, had recommended. Within an hour we had booked [View Full Entry]

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Peak season in Uruguay meant we couldn’t find anywhere to stay at Punta del Diablo. This was supposed to be our next stop on the way up to Brazil. So a quick rethink and we’d bought tickets for the 18 hour bus journey along the coast and over the border to Florianopolis. We couldn’t complain too much. It had been a month since our last major bus journey, but in reality it really was a drag. The only bonus was that the bus driver did all of the immigration stuff for all of the bus during the middle of the night, [View Full Entry]

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Back in Buenos Aires we ended up staying at Ayres Portenos again. The flight had been delayed by a few hours, so the familiarity was good late at night. We even got into the Argentine way of doing things and went for a big steak at 12.30am. I’m still not convinced that going to bed on a full stomach is the best way of achieving a svelte look, but when in Rome. We took the opportunity to see some more of Palermo and visit the Evita museum before catching the ferry to Colonia in Uruguay the next day. The Evita story [View Full Entry]

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More gawping at glaciers A short bus (5 hours) from Puerto Natales took us back to Argentina and to El Calafate. El Calafate is a real tourist hotspot, particularly because a magnificent glacier called Perito Moreno is only an hour away. Being a tourist hotspot also means it is horrendously expensive, so for the first time on our trip we booked into a dorm room for 2 nights. One night was enough to make us realise we are too old for it! Unfortunately it was a 12 bed dorm and Lynne was the only girl. On top of this, a group [View Full Entry]

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The boat docked in Punta Arenas in Chile, giving us the day to sight see. It´s quite a small place and we managed to see all that it had to offer, which took some doing as the wind there is really, really strong - 120 kilometres an hour! We also spent a bit of time at the post office trying to post back some of the cruise memorabilia that we had collected before it got crushed and bent in the backpack. Trying to find an envelope, bubble wrap, sellotape etc with our limited spanish tested Andy´s patience somewhat - the luxury [View Full Entry]

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Seeing as we’re on a ship for the next 10 days, we thought we’d keep a log of our adventures. It’s not going to be on a par with Scott or Shackleton’s journals, but I’m sure none of you are expecting a masterpiece! Friday 19 December It’s time to finally board the ship! Ours is named MV Discovery and is the biggest one at Ushuaia port, but is still small by cruise ship standards. We’d seen one in port the other day and it was an absolute monster, but those ones don’t get to do any landings, which is surely what [View Full Entry]

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