Mid March: Arrive in Arequipa in South West Peru mid afternoon and head to a hostal recommended by a couple of Americans we met on the tour in Puno. We´re paying what we think is around $15 for a beautiful room and the hostal is more like a resort complete with nice restaurant, swimming pool and anything else you could need. We get a bit suspicious of the price when first the room is by far the nicest we´ve been in and then we see families lying around the pool. After much deliberation as to whether these Yanks would send us [View Full Entry]

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Arrive in Puno after a relatively short bus journey and check into a hostal near the centre. Have a quick wander around and find Puno to be another nice place. Main difference from Bolivia is in the modes of transport. More like Asia with tuk-tuk type moto taxis everywhere. Book ourselves on a tour of the nearby islands in Lake Titikaka for tomorrow and then head for dinner. A 3 course dinner in a nice restaurant on the main strip costs less than E4.00. Not bad but still dearer than La Paz where it was E2.50. I sample the Alpaca, which [View Full Entry]

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After much deliberation as to our next port of call it was decided to head to Copacabana on Lake Titikaka which would be our last stop in Bolivia. Our original plan was to do an Amazon trip in Bolivia but there´s been alot of rain, making flights in and out difficult (the runway is grass), and the forecast for the next week was for more rain each day, so it was decided to head for the border and hopefully less rain. When we got to Copacabana we were met by a few women offering hostals at stupidly low prices. We went [View Full Entry]

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La Paz is mental. We took the easy option and arrived there on a somewhat bumpy flight from Santa Cruz, the alternative to a 20 hour bus journey. It is quite bizarre as you look out to the left of the plane and you see La Paz at eye level even though you are still cruising at 14000 feet. It is the highest capital city in the world. On approach to landing the air hostess did not seem too concerned as people wandered round the plane in what I would describe as somewhat strong turbulence. That is South American airlines for [View Full Entry]

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Early March: Got an overnight bus from Sucre to our next port of call Samaipata, a small village in eastern Bolivia. Unfortunately there was no toilet on this bus and I spent most of the night avoiding sleep for fear of wetting myself. Thankfully the driver stopped at about 3am when it appeared that half the bus had the same problem as myself. Bodies scattered in all directions to use the natural toilets. Then at 5am we got dropped on the side of a road a couple of km´s from the centre of Samaipata with 3 other backpackers. Unfortunately as we [View Full Entry]

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We Left Uyini and had a six hour bus journey to Potosi, the highest city in the world. At over 4km (4060m) above sea level it literally leaves you breathless. It is a mining town with the tour of the mines been one of its highlights. According to the Lonely Planet the tours involve ¨scrambling and crawling in low narrow, dirty shafts where work practices are medieval, safety practices are non existent, and temperatures vary from below freezing to a stifling 45 degrees¨. The mine itself is a cooperative so each miner works for themselves taking what they can and then [View Full Entry]

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A couple hours after getting on the night bus from Salta to the Bolivian border the rain started. Seen as this was a dirt road, when you looked out the window it actually looked like we were driving up the middle of a river. I'm sure this wasn't the worst conditions this driver has experienced and we got to the border town early the next morning. With a couple of Israeli girls and a Swedish girl we had met along the way we headed to the Argentinian immigration office to get our exit stamps. No problems here except the fact that [View Full Entry]

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Arrived in Salta around midday and starting walking to get the local bus to the camp site but didn´t manage to find the bus stop so jumped in a taxi. When we got to the camp site it turned out to be the local swimming pool as well and what a swimming pool it was. If this was in Australia it´d be called ´The Great Swimming Pool´or if in Ireland would be considered big enough to be called ´Lough Swimming Pool´. This thing was the size of numerous football pitches and for the princely sum of $4 per night we could [View Full Entry]

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After arriving in El Calafate (for the third time) from Puerto Natales we were keen to head Northward. When we arrived at the bus station we searched for buses to El Bolson, a little hippy town about 18 hours north, located in the south west of Argentina. With free love in mind we were looking forward to relaxing for a couple of days. There are two options for this journey. Option 1 is up the famous Ruta 40 that legendary Che Guevara took in his youth and is recounted in the movie ´The Motorcycle Diaries´ . A bone jarring journey, on [View Full Entry]

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Early Feb 08: Against the fine advise of one Nessa McCarthy we decide to head to Chile. Nessa, it wasn´t that we didn´t appreciate your advise and we accept that you had spent a full 2 nights in the public houses of the country´s capital city prior to dispencing said advise, but we figured that there had to be something worth seeing in a country that´s over 4000km long. So we head for Puerto Natales, Chile, the most southern place we´ll get to on this trip as we´ve decided to give Tierra Del Fuego a miss based on advise of people [View Full Entry]

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