Have now found our first luxurious campsite! Having spent most of the past month camping with very basic facilities it is sheer bliss to be staying in Trinidad with power showers and a pool. It is so hot and sticky here that we only need cold showers and the pool is just marvellous. Have had to have my stookie removed so I can get cool! Now have a removable substitute so I can shower and go in the water. It´s very strange to think that just a week ago we were wearing thermals and sleeping with hats and gloves! Even at night the temperature here doesn´t drop below 30C so it´s very hard to sleep. The chorus from the insects around our camp never stops and in the evening it seems they all fight to see ... read more
Just a few pics from Buenos Aires. No time to write much, but what a fab city. Will tell you all about the tango dancing and football frenzy when we get home!... read more
Hi Folks Will have to fill in all the gaps for you when I get home. There´s far too much to write about and just not enough time, so I´ll just give you a quick summary of events to keep you posted. We decided to take a ferry from BA over to Colonia in Uruguay. We hadn´t planned this but several people had told us it was worth doing and I´m so glad we took their advice. When we got there we found a golf buggy rental shop just outside the port. We decided to hire a little Moto (which we named Molly) so we could get about a bit faster and see more. You´re allowed to drive buggies on the roads and don´t need a licence, so it was a great way to get about. ... read more
It's a bit tricky writing with a broken arm, but it's not stopping us having a brilliant time. Had some very long drive days, but have been rewarded with diverse scenery and lots of wildlife encounters. It now seems as if we're on some kind of abandoned planet. From petrified forests to deserted farms and eerie shipwrecks, it sometimes feels as if civilization has escaped to another universe! Perhaps the scariest moment though, was when we discovered we had pitched our tent next to the skeleton of a puma! A few more pics to keep you going....... read more
Sadly we had to say goodbye to Torres del Paine and continue our journey south. After a brief stop in a drizzly Puerto Natales we headed on down the coast and had a wonderful visit to the Otway Sound Penguin Colony. The Magellanic Penguins return annually to this spot between October and March to lay eggs and raise their young. Initially we watched from quite a distance, but at one point, an inquisitive penguin popped his head out of a burrow and walked right out in front of me. I was so busy looking at the others further away that I nearly tripped over him! I had a real magical moment as I crouched down to watch him and he almost came and kissed my camera. What a cutie. I could happily have taken him home. ... read more
I guess this is why I decided to do this trip. Patagonia has been calling me for a while and it really is a most amazing place. It covers the southern parts of Argentina and Chile, from the Andes Mountains to the west and south and plateaus and low plains to the east. It is roughly the sector below 39°S but this varies as you travel between Chile and Argentina (which we've done several times - accumulating many stamps in our passports!). I had expected a land full of mountains and glaciers, but hadn't quite appreciated the scale of the vast barren plateaus, which run alongside. As we crossed from Chile into Argentina we were amazed by the change in vegetation. Thousands of monkey-puzzle trees, bright yellow broom bushes and a range of purple and pink ... read more
This trip just gets more and more spectacular by the day. Our drive to the Chile-Argentina border was beautiful. More and more mountains appeared round every corner and we continued to see lakes, wild flowers and trees. The border crossing was hilarious. We had to queue for ages just to give the exit paper that we´d received on arrival. We then had to drive about 50 metres before we came to the Argentinian border. Seems as if the bit in-between is no-man´s land. I wonder if it´s free to build a house there? We then had to queue for another hour or so before we got our passports stamped. I was totally panicking because we´d been told we couldn´t take any fresh food into Argentina and as I was getting my papers checked I remembered I ... read more
Hi Folks Flight from Paris to Santiago was fine. I´ve come to the conclusion though that along with all the security checks, passengers should be screened for halitosis and B.O. and they should be given their own compartment at the back of the plane - or even better, a separate flight! Apart from the unwelcome smells and sights things went pretty smoothly. Arrived in Santiago last week and immediately loved the place. I don´t think I´ve ever been in such a huge city. Over 5 million people live here and if you take the funicular to the top of San Cristobal you can see the entire city. It´s a very cosmopolitan place and much more advanced than I´d expected. The main pedestrian streets are lined with designer clothes shops and almost everything you´d find on Princes ... read more
Not a country you often read about but I wonder why? Despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, it is one of the most varied and amazing places I've been. La Paz sits in a bowl surrounded by mountains and varies in altitude between 3300m and 4082m depending on where you are. At this height, the air is quite thin and there's no chance I'll be doing anything fast. You're left puffed out just walking up the short incline to our hotel. Don't have time to write much about it at the moment, but will add a few photos to keep you posted. ... read more
What an amazing country. Peru is everything I imagined and more. The only shock was I hadn't expected quite so musch desert! A great opportunity to try a new sport though. Sandboarding is very similar to snowboarding - but harder. Most of us resorted to lying on our fronts and heading head first down the mountainous sand dunes. Not really the best of positions when you have hip bones so close to the surface like mine. I was bruised for days afterwards! The best bit though was travelling through the dunes in a sand buggy. If you enjoy roller coasters, this is the biggest and longest run of your life! Certainly not a good idea to try it straight after lunch though! The Ballestas Islands (named the ‘poor man’s Galapagos’) were interesting, but not as spectacular ... read more