So then to continue my voyages, I hoped on a bus to La Serena. which is the capital of the Coquimbo region. It was a very spectacular busride as the landscape changes dramatically when you go further North. The Pan American highway hugs the Pacific coast on one side and rocky mountains on the other. The green gives way to small coastal villages, sandy beaches with great waves for surfing and small coarse shrubbery. Definitely worth the drive. La Serena itself is a beautiful small town, by the beach and beautifully designed. There are a few churches around and lovely squares and parks. I stayed in a hotel owned by a Scotsman who was not shy to fly the St Andrew´s flag. However, I did stay too long there and managed to mistime my stay with ... read more

Hola todos So it´s been a bit of an absence. Did you miss me? Well, I have been travelling in Chile and I´m here for a couple of days more. Then, it is off to Lima to meet up with my friend, Rupal. My other friend, Annu, will hopefully join us in a couple of days. So what I have been up to these past three weeks? I guess you could say that this trip has been a voyage of four quarters. I landed in Santiago on a cold rainy early morning. I stayed in a lovely hotel in Providencia district. The guy at reception was french and that gave me the opportunity to dust off my rusty native language! I really liked Santiago, very genteel and feels European. I was supposed to stay there for ... read more

Hola chicos y chicas Long time no blog. Yeah, we have been completely chilling out in Costa Rica and these two weeks have gone so quickly! Taruna is now headed back to Houston as I type. I guess I will have to change the name of the blog, but that will involve sending you all new links, which might be a bit of a pain! So I have taken the executive decision to retain the title as is, although I will be joined at some point by two other fellow travellers. For the time being, I am on my own and have a few more days to spend here in Costa Rica before I head back South to Chile. Hence, the time to update you on what we have been doing. So, what did we get ... read more

So, I am on my own for a week or so. TJ has gone back to the US to celebrate her mum´s 60th and probably get a new set of cothes for Costa Rica! I decided to go to Colonia Del Sacramento in Uruguay for a day trip. It´s only one hour by ferry from Buenos Aires, and it was the chance of gettin another stamp on my passport. The weather was superb in Colonia and I have an amazing set of pictures to prove it. The downside of travelling alone is that one has to depend on the kindness of strangers to be in the pictures themselves or become very good at using the self timer function (and hope that noone is going to make a dash for the camera at that point!). I had ... read more

Mendoza Mendoza - malbecs, desert, food and cheese. This is such a chilled out town - I feel so relaxed that I wouldn´t know if I was missing a spine. We got there by the night bus after 16 hours from Buenos Aires. After El Calafate, it was hot, hot, hot, at least the first day was... Unfortunately TJ was a bit under the weather at the beginning and it was my turn at the end, so we didn´t go all out crazy, well, kind of... We were there for four nights, and the night was spent in Hostel Alamo. My advice would be never to use a guy´s advice as recommendation. It was dark and dingy, and we had to share a bathroom with other people. Ewww... For those who know us, this was paramount ... read more