Próspero Año Nuevo! Yes as I reach the last day of my time in Latin America I figure it’s appropriate to prove that I have at least mastered a little of the language whilst I’ve been out here. Okay so that wasn’t too taxing but in the interest of preserving my core group of readers back home (and some of my dignity) we’ll leave it in English from here on I think. As I said, it’s my last day before heading on to New Zealand, but before I get all nostalgic and try to decide on a way to sum up [View Full Entry]

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...here are a few photos from the last week James and I spent in Uruguay. The lemon detox thing has been completed... result: I don't feel any different... well maybe a bit more in touch with my feminine side!! and maybe a bit less squidgy round the edges....! ;-p But it did make coming back to Buenos Aires for James’ last meal yesterday evening a real treat to look forward to. La Cabrera is one of the best steak restaurants in BA at the moment - and that's saying something - with what can now sit at the top of the [View Full Entry]

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So - Ushuaia… the southernmost town of note in the world… situated at the base of the large island known as Tierra del Fuego (land of fire), which forms the tip of South America’s “cone”. Ushuaia itself is a busy port town, with a population of some 45,000 catering for a thriving shipping and tourism industry (this is of course the jumping off point for most tourists heading to the Antarctic). It is, by and large, a pretty unimpressive looking town, but its beauty lies in its setting. From the base of the mountains behind it, it looks south over the [View Full Entry]

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Well we’ve made it. We’re in Ushuaia - the most southerly town in the world (if you don’t count a few small outposts between here and the South Pole!). And its been a heck of a journey down here. Over 2,700 miles travelled which has meant a total of well over 75 hours on buses - most of which have been completed in stints in excess of 18 hours. That’s an immense amount of junk food and dreadful movies - even by my standards. But actually we’ve become oddly accustomed to it and strangely the prospect of a whole day on [View Full Entry]

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Well I’m delighted to report that within just hours of us each taking the 4 “elephant strength” antibiotics we procured at the end of the last blog, normal service was resumed “down below” for both of us. God bless the internet. And dodgy pharmacies who don’t worry about prescriptions. So - fighting fit (in fact feeling better than we had in weeks) we decided it was high time we treated our nicely repaired bellies to some good food and drink. So we ditched our original plan of taking a trip round the Pantanal wetlands looking at birds and made tracks tow [View Full Entry]

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Well despite my, ahem, problems “down below” - of which I may talk more later - I must say that I have absolutely loved Bolivia: another 3 weeks have passed and yet again we seem to have seen and done so much. Bolivia is a very poor country (GNI per capita of c$1,000 puts it alongside Nicaragua and Honduras as one of the poorest countries in Latin America that I’ve visited) but it makes up for that by having a slightly raw and gritty edge to it that gives it a certain charm. Apart from a seemingly inescapable backpacker’s Gringo trail, [View Full Entry]

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The problem with taking a break from blogging for 3 weeks is that you end up with a huge amount to recount. And this isn’t helped by the fact that Peru is stuffed with plenty of things to talk about and take pictures of, as well as plenty of opportunities to have a spot of fun. So here we go... After jetting back from the Galapagos to mainland Ecuador (some 3 weeks ago now) we had a day to try and see as much of Quito as possible so did the touristy thing and visited the equator line - which only [View Full Entry]

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The Galapagos Islands - not many people have been able to describe the raw natural beauty and awe inspiring array of wildlife visible on these islands so I don’t think I’m going to embarrass myself by trying. But a few of the words that are currently springing to the surface of my “stuffed-to-the-brim with nature” brain are: Darwin, finches, giant tortoises, boobies, marine iguanas, theory of evolution, The Beagle, wildlife completely unafraid of humans, snorkelling with Sea Lion pups, 3 square meals a day and 10 hours sleep a night…. So instead of trying [View Full Entry]

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Having left the scorching humidity of Panama and logically expecting to find it even hotter as I flew further south to Colombia I felt a little foolish to arrive in my shorts and find Bogotá a positively chilly 15 degrees. Lack of a guidebook and not enough research meant that I had no idea that it’s Latin America’s third highest city (at 2,600m) and is situated at the northern tail-end of the Andes. Anyhow after digging out some warm clothing and spending a while running round the airport marvelling at how difficult I found it to climb a simple set of [View Full Entry]

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Well immigration lady finally got bored of her magazine and decided she ought to get on with stamping the passports of the ever growing line of would-be border crossers. A cursory glance at mine and, would you believe it - a smile, and I was on my way. That particular border crossing from Costa Rica to Panama is one of the more interesting I’ve taken actually - a rickety old wooden bridge, with barely enough width to get a truck through, suffices as the no-man’s-land crossing point for any kind of traffic heading across to Panama on this eastern side. So [View Full Entry]

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