The first great experience of this three-month journey occurred the day before the journey itself. I saw a message on my phone as I ate my weetbix and honey confirming that our Melbourne to LA flight had been upgraded to business class. This was to be my first experience of such luxury and I lapped it all up. Leanne had only ever done this once before when flying to the USA for work so it was special for her too. If you haven’t had the experience before, let me tell you about it. The first thing I noticed was the space between my seat and the next. Not just leg room; no one’s legs could reach the seat in front of them. You can really spread out and you have an overhead compartment all to yourself. ... read more

And we are home safe and sound. But I have still got the last five days of our journey to tell you about. We start in El Calafate way down in the south of Argentina. From there we had booked two flights to get to Iguazu in the very north of the country. A two hour connection in Buenos Aires was cutting it fine and when the first flight took off late I had a bad feeling. The plane then sat on the tarmac in BA for half an hour before they opened the doors. And when they did, we stepped on to an over full bus to the terminal. When you are in a hurry you probably don’t read all of the signs that you are meant to, and that may be why it took ... read more

After relaxing in San Pedro for 5 days we had organised ourselves well (we thought) and booked two nights accommodation in Santiago followed by three nights in Pucon, a distance south of the capital. When we arrived, we enquired about the buses between Santiago and Pucon and discovered that the distance was a lot more that I had expected and it took 10 hours to get there, meaning that we needed an overnight bus. So we were very lucky when our Santiago hostel allowed us to cancel the second nights accommodation with no penalty to enable us to maximise our time in the lakes district. Our new arrangement still gave us two days in Santiago and we liked what we saw. It doesn’t resemble Quito or Lima in the slightest, the buildings and roads are well ... read more

From where I finished last time we had one more day in Cusco and we saw some other sites in the sacred valley. The one I had been looking forward to most was Tipon and it proved to be the highlight of the day. It is another terraced hillside for growing crops and used for experimentation like Moray, but this one has a working irrigation system. It was cool to see how the channels worked to provide water for all of the crops and I just love it when things so old still work. From the crisp cool air of the Andean highlands we took off for the humid Amazon jungle. Our destination was Puerto Maldonado and when we got off the plane a number of touts were calling out for our business. We had a ... read more

The Galapagos Islands are one of the best places we have ever seen and we were on a high as we left by plane then bus on our way to Peru in search of new adventures. However, things don’t always go your way and on the bus near the border of Ecuador and Peru my bag was stolen. It had our computer and one of our cameras in it. When I realised what had happened I just wanted to be back home again. I knew of course that the feeling would pass, but over the ensuing days we made new plans to be back in Australia for Christmas. So we will miss a few places and catch more planes and less buses. When we got to Tumbes in Peru we didn’t like where we were and ... read more