Mendoza You´ve probably gathered by now that there are (at least) four things that are very important to me when I am travelling. In no particular order; landscape and culture, good company/friendship, great food and last but not least red wine (my dad will contest to this one when I visit Oz)! I arrived in Mendoza, the principle wine region of Argentina very excited about my fourth aspect, red wine, especially the Malbec variety. About 6 months ago, Paul and I attended a food festival in London, tasting various wines from the Mendoza region so I knew what it was going [View Full Entry]

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Having arrived in Salta safe and sound with no problems at the boarders we were all ready to let loose and party. First things first was to eat as much delicious steak as possible. Arriving by bus late at night, first stop was to dump the bags at the hostel, find the best restaurant and devour some Argentinian steak and red wine...... ahhhh, yum!!!!! It´s quite odd going out for a meal at midnight and falling off your chair when they bring you a steak the size of a plate. I´m not kidding, the size of these steaks was unbelievable! We [View Full Entry]

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Next stop after the desert was San Pedro de Atacama, a small colonial town in Chile, not far from the boarder. This route seemed like the obvious way to get to Salta, Argentina which is where I was keen to spend some time on recommendation of friends. Had I known what it would entail I might have thought twice and travelled the extra ten hours back to Uyuni and caught the train! Does anything actually work in this town? Dan, Julia and I arrived mid Sunday afternoon to find this cute little town with wide dusty streets, white spanish looking buildings [View Full Entry]

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Theres nothing like waking up at 5am to catch the sunrise. I just love it! Whether it be in the mountains or the desert the light does amazing things to the landscape and it is such a special time of day. Yesterday morning was one such occassion where I was up early to catch the sunrise. I sat outside waiting for the others (man, it was freezing!), reflecting on the past few days in the desert and all of the amazing scenery we had seen. Truly outstanding... The Uyuni salt flats in southern Bolivia was the starting point of the trip. [View Full Entry]

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Mum, you might want to sit down.... Yesterday I rode 64kms and travelled vertical distance of 3,650m down the most dangerous road in the world on a mountain bike! I survived with no injuries, apart from a dozen or so nasty mosquito bites. I first heard about this a couple of years ago from a friend who´d been travelling in south america and it´s something I´ve wanted to do for ages. As Heather says, my idea of a holiday is throwing myself down a mountain on a bike and hoping for the best. You can imagine how excited I was! It [View Full Entry]

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After our experiences tying to get to Puno we were really happy to be able to get to see Lake Titikaka. Eros the floating islands First stop was the Eros floating islands which are man made islands made out of reeds that grow on the lake. There's 45 islands in total with approximately 2000 inhabitants. It's pretty amazing! They have to lay all the reeds and remake the houses every 3 months so it's a lot of work. We stopped off and met some of the locals on one of the islands. These women were jovial and boistrous and having a [View Full Entry]

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La Paz I´ve never really thought much about Bolivia as a place to visit. What would it be like? Would I like it? Up until the point that I arrived in La Paz I didn´t really have too many expectations. I´d heard a few mixed reviews from other travellers about the city so was keen to check it out for myself. The journey from to La Paz passes through some spectacular mountain ranges. These ranges appear to be never ending and provide a beautiful distraction to the long and sometimes boring bus journeys. As we drew closer to the city I [View Full Entry]

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Cusco After Macchu Pichu we had a free day in Cusco which was fantastic. I spent the day pottering around, exploring the city with Julia and Dan, a lovely couple from England. I really enjoyed Cusco and wished I had been able to spend some more time there. It´s got such a great vibe. Loads of friendly people from all over the world, heaps of good resturants, bars and clubs. We were out every night making the most of it! We were due to go down south to the floating islands on Lake Titikaka. That evening we got news from our [View Full Entry]

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Visiting local communities in the sacred valley We visited a local community on the way to Ollantaytambo to see how they make the wool and weave the materials. They use traditional methods to dye the wool, using local plants and rocks. We spent a bit of time browsing their markets and bought a few things knowing the money goes straight to them. Ollantaytambo The journey from Cusco to Ollantaytambo is through the sacred valley. There are so many sites to see along this route. We stopped off in Pisac and saw the old inca ruins. These ruins were were the common [View Full Entry]

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As all of the the Inca trail permits were sold out months ago we decided to book the Lares trek instead. It was supposed to be 4 days, 3 nights and moderate challenge. Unfortunately for us the weather was really bad so we had to change the route, and miss out on pretty much a full day of walking. There was snow on route to the first destination so the llamas couldn´t pass. We didn´t want to risk it and some of the guys had normal trainers so wouldn´t have been much fun trudging through the snow. Hopefully you can see [View Full Entry]

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