At the end of 10 months travelling (5 in South America) I'd topped up my tan, bought too many pairs of Brazilian Havaiana flip flops, had sewn my flags on my backpack and was ready and excited to return to reality! My last week was spent in the island of Ihla Grande and the colonial beach town of Paraty where I managed to chill out completely in preparation of my return. 10 months has gone so fast. I've visited 13 countries, seen some amazing sights and met some fantastic people. It wasn't always easy but it was definitely always fun! I [View Full Entry]

---

---

Well, Rio was the final big city and ´highlight´ before I head home. It´s really an amazing beautiful place and so much bigger than I´d imagined. It has got a slightly dodgy side (and reputation). I´d heard lots of scare stories about muggings from lots of other travellers, including one guy who was mugged at knifepoint by a group of 12 year old boys- scary! Thankfully I was very lucky and wasn´t victim to anything dodgy at all- phew! Brazil has proven to be the most expensive of all the countries I´ve visited so far. Hostels in most other cities have [View Full Entry]

---

---

I love Iguazu falls! It is brilliant and beautiful and wonderful and fabulous!!!! I was especially excited about visiting them as I´d just seen Indiana Jones go over them in the new film! The falls themselves are on the border of Argentina and Brazil, so you can visit on both sides. Although I was in Argentina, I visited the Brazilian side first as the general consensus seemed to be that if you visited it 2nd then you were a bit disappointed after the Argentinian side. The weather in Brazil was a bit rubbish to start off with, then eventually the sky [View Full Entry]

---

---

I've met so many people on my travels who went to BA for a few days and ended up staying a few weeks. Now I know why this is........ the Argentinians live their lives on a completely different timescale to the rest of the world! On a night out at home you'd be in the pub by 8pm, then falling out of a taxi into your house around 2am ish. But in this crazy country people don't think of even eating their dinner until after 10pm. If you go out anywhere before 2am then it will be empty. People who go [View Full Entry]

---

---

There´s only one month left until the end of my trip, and I got a little taster of returning home when I visited the area in Patagonia where many Welsh people settled after crossing the Atlantic in 1865. So funny! I visited a little town called Gaiman which is famous for its Tea houses. I was very intrigued by the idea of this, as I don´t really associate afternoon tea as being a particularly Welsh thing. The town was pretty dead as it is the low season for tourism in Patagonia, but it was so cute walking around the town seeing [View Full Entry]

---

---

#Stop, collaborate and listen Ice is back with a brand new edition.....# etc etc! Enough of Vanilla Ice raps now! I travelled down to the south of Argentina to visit one of the highlights of my trip- the Perito Moreno Glacier. SO COOL!!!!!! I´d seen photos of it before I went, and they really don´t do it any justice. The glacier is 30km long and the faces are 60m high. It is so big! The glacier advances at 2m a day, and if you hang around on the viewing platforms watching, you can see chunks of ice fall off into the [View Full Entry]

---

---

. [View Full Entry]

---

---

For my final days in Bolivia I booked a 4 day tour which took me from a town called Tupiza to another called Uyuni. Tupiza is said to resemble the Wild West with lots of quebradas (gorges) and it is near where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid eventually met their demise. Uyuni is the nearest town to the weirdy salt flats, which is one of the things I looked forward to seeing most in South America. The tour mostly comprised of driving all day in a jeep, stopping to see various sights on the way. As well as the driver [View Full Entry]

---

---

Potosi is the highest city in the world at an altitude of 4060 metres above sea level- yikes! Luckily I seem to have adjusted to the altitude quite well and am no longer puffing and panting so much walking down the street. Potosi used to be majorly rich due to the silver that was found within the mountain that overlooks the town- Cerro Rico. Mines were built there and are still worked in today, although the good silver veins are no longer there and it is mostly a mineral mix that is mined. Before arriving in Potosi I´d watched a documentary [View Full Entry]

---

---

One of the trips that many agencies organise in La Paz is a cycling trip down ´The World´s Most Dangerous Road´. The road starts in La Cumbre (4640 metres above sea level) and ends in Coroico (1295 metres above sea level) and is 64km long with vertical cliffs up to 600m high. Until recently the road was used for traffic and an average of 300 people died a year (mostly from cars and buses going over the edge of the cliff). A new road was built for vehicles 8 years ago, and since then it is mostly used by cyclists on [View Full Entry]

---

---