We flew to Lima on valentine´s night. One way to measure how good a time you've had in Lima is to count the number of credit cards and bags that are missing at the end. Not known for it's safety (most hotels send a designated driver to the airport to pick guests up directly) - ours didn't of course - we locked our taxi doors and headed to our gated hostal. We only had a few hours to see Lima the next day before flying to the Peru-Ecuador border town of Tumbes. We did manage however to take some pictures of [View Full Entry]

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Due to a whistle stop tour to Machu Picchu we managed to squeeze in time for a 3 day trekking trip through the Colca Canyon - about a 5 hour drive from the old Spanish colonial town of Arequipa in Southern Peru. Arequipa has a picturesque main square with white moorish style columns and arches lining the edges. We arranged our trekking trip, bought some new hip and trendy flip flops (mine had broken) and guaranteed ourselves another 5:30am pick up. That night, we opted for a small pizzeria on the other side of town. Within 5 minutes the girl sitting [View Full Entry]

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Sheena and I wouldn't have made good Incas. First we opted for the bus rather than face climbing the 1000m at 5am from the town of Aguas Calientes to Machu Picchu. Then, huffing and puffing, we crawled our way up Huayna Picchu, the mountain standing behind Machu Picchu in the classic postcard shot. We got the first bus to try and snatch a view of Machu Picchu before sunrise and before the hoards of tourists would arrive around 10am on the train from Cusco. It was worth the effort. Once we had signed ourselves in at the entrance gate we turned [View Full Entry]

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Off to Peru we were. A short 6hr bus ride around Lake Titicaca, past Puno and onwards to Cusco - Peru´s oldest city and the base from which to visit Machu Picchu. A simple journey until our bus driver decided to drive past a customs police blockade at 60miles an tour. Whistles, sirens, the works as the police caught up with us. The driver eventually pulled over and the luggage holds were opened for inspection. Normally that would be fine but the Peruvian police are not reknowned for being the most trustworthy themselves so Sheena watched the bags inside the bus [View Full Entry]

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La Paz {meaning Peace} has been anything but peaceful. Set in a bowl in the mountains at 3660m La Paz literally takes your breath away as you arrive. Houses ride all the way up the sides of the surrounding mountains as far as the eye can see. Ironically, I too have basically been set in a bowl for the past 10 days (we're now in Peru). The bathroom in La Paz hasn't quite lived up to expectations which is a shame given I have been visiting it about 30 times a day on average. Sheena has been the perfect Florence Nightingale [View Full Entry]

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For the last few days we have been in Potosi - the highest city in the world (4060m) and a Unesco world heritage site - and the town of Sucre (named after the General that supported Simon Bolivar to lead the struggle for Bolvia's independence). The bus ride from Uyuni to Potosi was a unbelievable if not a little nerve racking. The bus set off through the plains on no defined route. It was so bumpy and with the recent rain the bus weaved and crawled over the caked mud. To give an idea of the state of the road (and [View Full Entry]

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The 3rd trip organised in San Pedro - a 3 day 4WD drive - took us from Chile to Bolivia with the highlight being the last day where we would visit the Salar de Uyuni - a 12 000 sq km salt plain. It started off in true South American fashion with the announcement from the border control (aka zoo) that the Bolivian roads were closed due to heavy rainfall. Our guide reassured us that this was more or less a daily sketch and correctly predicted we would be on our way within 30mins. We switched at the border into 4WD [View Full Entry]

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Having arrived in Antofagasta in northern Chile, Sheena & I decided we would leave as quickly as we could and explore the region a little. We hired a car and headed south along the Pan-American highway (Ruta 5) from Antofagasta via Chañaral to the Pan de Azucar National park. This national park is in the Atacama desert which falls abrubtly into the Pacific Ocean where we set up camp on the beach. We were the only non-Chileans and it´s the kind of place you imagine will be discovered in a few years time by other travellers. The camping in Pan de [View Full Entry]

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4 days, 3 nights, 1 tent, 50km, 2 vultures, 1 Southern American grey fox, 5 condors, 1 mouse, 1 (minor) lip wobble....this was the "W"! The route named for the shape of the walk over the mountains of the Torres del Paine national park in Patagonia. Having arrived the day before from Punta Arenas on a bus that could have qualified for the Monaco grand prix (made worse given one had flipped leaving 18 people in hospital the day before), we set off from Puerto Natales 2 1/2 hrs to the national park where we were met by guanacos a distant [View Full Entry]

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After two days of excitement building up in Ushuaia (The Southern most town in the world) we finally made our way to the port to meet up with the ship - a Russian icebreaker called the Professor Molchanov. Sailing through the Beagle Channel to meet the open ocean and take on the legendary Drake Passage. The mood on the ship was full of anticipation as we were shown to our cabin by the Russian crew before going through the emergency drills....Sheena and I instantly made a name for ourselves by being the only ones to turn up to the muster point [View Full Entry]

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