I hung my head out the bus window, suddenly no longer able to cope with the smell. We had stopped to pick up passengers in Siguen and in that brief moment several women had boarded the bus and were selling hot corn, cooked trout and chips, clothes, lollies, chicken and strange coloured liquid in clear plastic bags. Minus the goldfish. I had to pull my head in as a man slammed a ladder against the side of the bus and began to fling an assortment of objects onto the roof. Guttering, metal chairs, buckets and bags were hauled up and [View Full Entry]

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A few moments in time that I will remeber...... 1. Realizing my Ipod is dead and I am now going to be subjected to 5 months of traditional pan flute music, Bob Marley, Beyonce, Shakira and raggatone. 2. Running off a mountain with a heavy bloke and a parachute strapped to my back. Tripping over at the last minute and being dragged along the rocks until finally a gust of wind lifted me and the angry bloke up into the air. He was pissed about the gouge in his brand new knee pads. I was pissed about the gouge in [View Full Entry]

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The homemade firecrackers exploded over my head for the hundredth time and I covered my mouth with my jacket. An old women with an iron grip grabbed my hand and almost broke my fingers as she dragged me to the ground and covered me with her shawl. She smelled of horse, dirt and beer. When the crackling subsided we poked our heads out and stood up. All around hundreds of people danced to the throbbing beat of the brass bands. Moments before I had been dragged arm in arm through the crowd by a local women, hat awry but still [View Full Entry]

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Altitude does funny things to people. It makes your hair stand on end, causes chip packets to explode, makes you exhausted just brushing your teeth and chewing a wad of green leaves and dribbling on yourself normal. The lower amount of oxygen can cause some things to swell and unfortunately this meant the cells in my eyes so I was reduced to having eyesight something like opening your eyes underwater. Lucky for me though, La Paz is a city of riotous colour and perhaps a place where not seeing the finer details of things is a blessing! At home in [View Full Entry]

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Ok you can take your clothes off now. As my bare feet touched the cold ground and the wind wrapped around my bikini clad body I questioned again my sanity. I quickly shoved my legs into the wetsuit and looked at my pile of warm clothes on the ground. I swapped my beanie for a helmet and donned a pair of fluoro shorts. I looked across at my friend for a smile of encourgement. Are you sure I am going to be ok? He laughed at me. Reassuring. We were in Pucon waiting for the weather to clear so we [View Full Entry]

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I tried to pick up the piece of bone but could barely lift it. It was as long as my forearm and as thick as my head (pretty thick). It looked like wood but was as heavy as stone. Gigantasaurous was discovered near Chocon in 1993. Estimtated to live about 105 million years ago it was the biggest dinosaur in the world and over 80% of the skeleton has been recovered. With teeth up to 30cm long, a height of 6m to his head, a length of 14m and a weight of almost 10 ton I am glad he isn´t [View Full Entry]

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With an enormous burst of power we lurched up the last of the almond coloured sandunes. Whilst my horse regained his breath, I breathed with a sigh of relief, grateful to still be sitting on him. To my left stretched an endless beach, relentlessly pounded by the Pacific ocean. Cows munched lazily on seaweed to cure parasites in their stomach and watched us with disinterest. To my right was a vast expanse of Patagonian landscape. The mainly flat ground was covered with dry brown dirt, rough green plants and a few rocky outcrops. I love horses and in my mind [View Full Entry]

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I sat on the wall and watched as the fisherman loaded their boats with nets. Behind me a local man chopped wood for the fire and a rooster crowed in the distance. Across the bay, sheep and cows grazed on the green hills, occasionally looking up to the panoramic views of the neighbouring islands. A mist had settled over the water and lent a mystical air to the surroundings. The cry of nearby gulls contributed to the nautical theme. I watched as people called greetings to each other and a dodge truck spun its wheels in the gravel in an [View Full Entry]

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A thunderous sound like a gunshot reverberated through my body. I looked down at my feet expecting the ground to open up at any moment and swallow me into its icy depths. I carefully took another step. Gingerly pushing my crampioned foot into the ice praying it didn´t give way. It held. Woohoo. I took another more confident step and looked up towards the lake and the mountains in the distance. We were ice trekking on the Perito Moreno Glacier and it was quite possibly one of the most exciting things I have ever done. It was cold but the [View Full Entry]

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It was the last day and I awoke at 4am in a room without electricity. The past 4 days had been spent trekking the W through Torres Del Paine, a spectacular national park in southern Chile. My shoes told the story of the many kilometres we had walked up and down seemingly never ending hills, across waterfalls, up rock faces, through muddy forrest and slippery gravel. Whilst the track is quite arduous, the everchanging views of mountains, lakes, forrest, glaciers and waterfalls kept your mind off your aching feet and the knowledge that you absolutely had to make it to [View Full Entry]

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