Buenos Aires instantly had a European feel to it. It´s referred to as the 'Paris of South America´... I don´t know that I´d go that far but it has easily been our favourite city up to this point. We spent most of our first day stuck at our hostel as it rained all day ruining our sightseeing plans! The next day we had a bit more luck and managed to squeeze in most of the main sights. There are a lot of plazas dotted around the city, not as picturesque as some of the others we've seen, but quite a lot [View Full Entry]

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Following an 11 hour bus ride from Arequipa we arrived at 7am in Cusco. We had got into the habit of getting our own room as oppose to dormitories as everything in Bolivia and Peru is so cheap. We decided though that it was about time we made a bit of an effort to socialise with our fellow travellers again. This was a mistake. Very tired, we entered the dorm at about 7.30 when the other 4 inhbitants were sound asleep. Unfortunately our roomies weren´t really in the sleeping mood for long and by about 8.30 they were all wide awake, [View Full Entry]

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What Daniel failed to mention at the end of his last blog is that, on our last night in La Paz, he insisted we go for a curry. I think you can guess where this may be going. His was a tad on the spicy side, however, Dehli belly didn´t start to rear it´s ugly head until we were on the bus to Bolivia´s Copacabana the next day. The 4 hours on a bouncy minibus did not bode well for his fragile state and by the time we got to our hostel he was in a very bad way. Daniel has [View Full Entry]

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Our next outing was to the salt flats of Uyuni in South West Bolivia which are the largest of their kind in the world. We were scheduled for a leisurely 10.30 start only to be told the night before that planned strike action by truck drivers meant we needed to leave at 7 to try and avoid the blocade on the edge of town. After an hour or so driving in the jeep over the flats we reached the bizzarely named ´Fish Island´, which is a rocky, cactus covered island in the middle of the flats. Certainly no where near any [View Full Entry]

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Our first taste of Bolivia was the "Train of Death". The name caused some concern at first but we needn´t have worried as the train itself couldn´t have been less dangerous. It gets it´s name from the fact that it is so slow that most people would rather throw themselves underneath it than repeat the experience. The journey was made a lot more tolerable by the vendors who boarded the train at every stop. Their ages ranged from 5 to 65 and their wares ranged from meals cooked on the platform to their suspicious homemade drinks. The one thing they had [View Full Entry]

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The Pantanal is the largest wetland in the world with vast amounts of wildlife. This was not part of our original itinerary so we were not entirely sure of what to expect. The first signs were not good when we spotted that our guide was missing a finger. Undeterred we set off on a 4 hour bus ride followed by another hour in a 4x4, this last part of the journey took us deep into the Pantanal area so we began to see a bit of wildlife. The back of the jeep soon got very excited when Valentina directed everyones attention [View Full Entry]

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So we left Salvador to go to Olinda via bus (just the 15 hours). We had to negotiate the local bus to get to the station which turned out to be an interesting affair. Once it arrived Daniel got on followed by this man with two enormous bin bags full of empty drinks cans, who snuck infront of me. Before I could get on, the bus driver decided to leave, at which point I began to panic until I saw a very comical scene unfolding before me. Daniel had decided, moving or not, he was getting off that bus and he [View Full Entry]

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My journey didn't start off too well when a young French lady sat next to me on the plane. I got the distinct impression she had been sleeping rough for a considerable period. My concerns were confirmed when she removed her shoes and jumper to unleash a quite repulsive barrage of odour - much to Valentina's amusement. After 12 hours next to the young lady I was pretty pleased when we arrived in Rio. Our next obstacle was to get to our hostel - the taxi we'd arranged didn't appear to be there so we had to enter into negotiations with [View Full Entry]

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