Sassal

Hello all! We have just finished our truck tour of Peru which was incredible but very hectic. We left from La Paz which was a brilliant city, full of strange people and things like the witches market selling potions, talismans and even dead lama foetuses which people bury in their house foundations to bring them luck! The tour party consisted of fourteen of us, and despite the odd difficult character we all got on pretty well considering we had never met beofre and we spent 3 weeks in one bright yellow truck called Jock! From La Paz we set out for the ruins Tawanaku. Unfortunately we were to meet our first adventure two hours down the road where locals had set up a road block to protest about the pollution of Lake Titicaca. After waiting several ... read more

Hello all! We are now in the capital city of La Paz, Bolivia possibly our most far-flung destination so far! Buenos Aires was great fun, we learnt a little Spanish, saw a bit of Tango and got food poisoning! Well , I guess we knew it had to happen at some point... I blame the dinner which ended up being free after two drunk irsihman took a fancy to my red hair and proceeded to serenade me (very loudly I might add) with a rendition of "when will you go, lassy go!" much to the amuzement of the waiters and other patrons who all though we were totally mad. It endd up being a fun evening though and its not often you bump into an irish rugby team in Argentina! From BA we made our way ... read more

We set off on our 13 hr trip to Tierre del Fuego (Land of fire) after Alejandro made us our breakfast sporting some furry gorilla feet and a pink dressing gown! We arrived in Ushuaia, and it was just soooooooo cold I couldnt believe it, but then I sose you would expect the end of the world to be cold wouldnt you? On our first day the weater was a bit miserable, you couldnt see the mountains but we went on a trip out onto the beagle channel regardless where we saw lots of birds and very playful sea lions. Woke up very late on our second day, we just couldnt seem to adjust to the time difference - 16 hours of change is just too much! However, the weather was beautiful, snowing, but beautiful. ... read more

Hello all! Unfortunately the weather was pretty grotty for the last week in New Zealand , so when we arrived in Taupo from Wellington we weren´t able to do the Tongariro crossing which was a real shame as we had been looking forward to that most out of all our expeditions in the North Island - oh well that´s just the way the cookie crumbles I suppose. We arrived in Rotorua, or ´rottenrua ´as the locals call it on Thursday, a couple of days before schedule. We visited the Te Puia thermal park where we had a lovely Maori man give us a guided tour of the meeting house and of the thermal areas. We also saw a couple of kiwis which were very cute! The pohutu geyser there was pretty impressive but sadly as it ... read more

Hello all, sorry my last blog went a bit wrong, for some reason it deleted quite a lot of journal, and didnt publish it properly - grrr. I am now in Christchurch, after spending 6 more days in Sydney: we visited the Blue Mountains which were really lovely and stayed with a friend of Fran's cousin, which was lovely of her since she didnt know us from Adam! We walked down to see the 3 sisters but could only see one which led to great confusion until we got round to the viewing point and realised the other two had been behind the one we were stood on! The next day we walked round the other way round the gorge before heading back to Sydney and spending the next few days with Kelly Wildon, relaxing on ... read more

Hello all! I am now in Byron Bay, a few adventures down on the East coast! The trip on the reef in Cairns was -well - a bit rocky to say the least! Sea sickness was rife after about 10 minutes the sea was so rough! I can safely say that we didnt pick the best day to go out on the ocean on a very small boat as after about 10 minutes on the sea there were 6 people heaving over the end of the boat , fortunately I managed to hold my stomach by digging my nails into my arm desperately focussing on something else! When we eventually got out to the reef everyone breathed a sigh of relief and couldnt wait to get into the water - anywhere just not on a boat! ... read more

Hello all! I have just had an amazing three days in Kakadu National Park with Pat from Kakadu 4wd safaris! Having not really planned anything in Darwin, or really realising there was anything interesting to do in Darwin, we were convinced by several people we met along the way that Kakadu was wortha visit. Unfortunately when we arrived in Darwin we were told there had been large amounts of flooding and that Katherine (a town near the park) was totally under with water and people were being evacuated out of there! Never-the-less we decided to book a tour and experience what we could of the park which we could get to through the water. We spent three days wandering around Darwin waiting for Sunday to arrive so we could start our tour. When to day came ... read more

Hello all! We have been having a very exciting time here in Borneo! We arrived in Kuching on Tuesday after getting a bus from Singapore to Johor Baru and then flying from there (much cheaper although we did have to go through immigration a silly number of times!). We are staying in a hostel called the B and B Inn which they are in the middle of painting, which would be fine if they put up wet paint signs all the time, but they only use them in places, so just when you think it's safe to sit, or touch - you get green fingers and a blue bum! Kuching is a really lovely city, clean and relaxed with lovely handicraft shops and waterside cafes. We spent the first couple of days visiting the museums and ... read more