My final port of call in my Latin American adventure is Buenos Aires and what a place to finish. Every traveller I have met who's been to this country has said this city is their favourite in South America. With such an expectation to live up to I was of course worried that coming here would be a let down, that Buenos Aires had been over-hyped. Thankfully I was proved wrong. For me this city ranks alongside Rio de Janeiro - they are my two favourite cities on this continent. Rio pulls ahead only slightly because of its beautiful setting, but [View Full Entry]

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So I think the pictures in this blog say it all really. This is the second time I've been whale watching in South America, and even though seeing the humpbacks in Ecuador was a fantastic experience, there's not much that can beat what we saw here in Argentina. The Valdes Peninsula, where these photos were taken, is a veritable wildlife wonderland halfway up the eastern coast of Argentina between Ushuaia and Buenos Aires. It's home to a huge colony of penguins, elephant seals, rheas, guanacos, orcas (aka killer whales, although unfortunately not at this time of the year) and various other [View Full Entry]

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And the residents of the southernmost city in the world, where I´m currently residing, never let you forget it either. Ushuaia proudly boasts that this is indeed the end of the world. It´s the last permanently inhabited town before you hit the Antarctic. Presumably there´s a northernmost town too, possibly it exploits its location just as much as Ushuaia does, maybe it needs to just as much as this place does. This little town has little else that could draw as many tourists to it as it does. From the huge roadsign as you enter the city to the dozens of [View Full Entry]

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One of the things I love about this continent is the seemingly endless variety in its landscapes and environments. Before writing my last blog I´d just spent the week basking in 30C+ temperatures on the beach. This past week I´ve hiked up a snowcapped volcano and trekked across a glacier, getting incredibly cold in the process. So from Rio I zigzagged back across the continent to Santiago, the capital of Chile (my route ceased to make sense a long time ago). It´s here that I meet my travelling buddies for the next 28 days. In this, unbelieveably my last month in [View Full Entry]

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Unbelievably my first view of Copacabana was in the rain. And not just drizzle either, but pouring rain. Somehow you just don´t imagine that in these places, Sydney being another example, that it ever rains. Far-flung, exotic and on the periphery of your consciousness while you´re sitting at your desk in dreary England, they are places where the sun always shines and life is literally a beach. Like Sydney the weather in Rio can at times be downright mean and moody but when the sun does shine then this city comes alive. The beach is what defines Rio and no more [View Full Entry]

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I know I said my next blog would be from Rio de Janeiro, technically it is, as I´m now sitting in an internet cafe in Ipanema. But I´ve decided this city is so cool it deserves its very own blog page. So what follows is a rundown of all the other bits of Brazil we´ve managed to pack in in the last few days. Mum had less than two weeks to spend in Brazil, so this was always going to be ten days where we saw just the edited highlights. And as this is the worlds fifth largest country, it has [View Full Entry]

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I'm afraid to say, after promising myself I wouldn't, I too fell into the trap. Cuzco caught me in her web and like every traveller who's passed through this city I stayed longer than I meant to. First there was the recovery from the Inca trail, then there was the big night out to celebrate the end of our Incan adventure, then there was the recovery from the big night out, then there was sheer laziness, then there was a day of white water rafting, then there was another big night out...you get the picture. By which point Anna, Jack (fellow [View Full Entry]

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DAY ONE: The Beginning Start time: 5am Distance covered: 11km/6.8 Difficulty rating according to the guide: Moderately hard I´m picked up from my hostel at daybreak, tired but excited. I´ve been looking forward to this for a long time. After a three hour bus journey, breakfast and lots of passport/ticket/permit checking we finally start the trek. Chatting away we´re all pleasantly surprised by how easy it seems. Our guide Romelo is lulling us into a false sense of security we decide, he seems very keen to stop for breaks on a regular basis. I immediately like everyone in my group, there [View Full Entry]

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The trip from Uyuni to Sucre has to be easily the worst journey I have endured so far in South America - hunched up in a cramped, smelly bus, every inch of me vibrating violently for 6 and a half hours. Most of the buses in Bolivia are pretty decrepit, plus the majority of the roads seem to be little more than bumpy gravel tracks, which makes getting from A to B quite a painful experience. I had serious backache that night and a dodgy stomach....yet again. "Rough with the smooth, rough with the smooth" I kept saying to myself, trying [View Full Entry]

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Fresh from a wonderful nights sleep on the nightbus (note sarcasm here - Bolivian roads are nothing short of hideous) I stepped out into a very cold Uyuni. The town is nothing much to speak of, tourists like myself come here mainly because it´s the starting point for a tour of the world´s largest salt flats, the Salar de Uyuni. The standard tour of this pretty bleak part of the world lasts for three days, during which you spend most of your time in a 4x4, getting out every hour or so to look at some pretty strange natural sights. Cooped [View Full Entry]

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