(Catherine and Matt) We´re just about to head to the airport for our flight home, but before we go, we wanted to say thank you for reading our blog and for all your comments and emails throughout the year. When we left London 12 months ago, with spotless backpacks and glowing white skin, we had no idea what was in store for us on our round the world trip. At times, it´s been frustrating, challenging and downright scary, but mostly it´s been exciting, surprising and lots and lots of fun. We could both write a thesis on our experiences but that [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Matt) We decided a while ago that our last two weeks would be a ´holiday´ rather than ´travelling´. You may agree with the English hotel owner in Paraty who, when hearing about this and the rest of our travels, muttered ´greedy b@$****$´then, without pausing, he slipped back into his role as perfect host and followed with ´just let me know if there´s anything at all we can do to make your stay more enjoyable´. Travelling vs Holiday On holiday we´ve started to choose from a menu with taste as a priority rather than price. Our practical travelling cloth [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Catherine) In the last two weeks, we´ve travelled from the very bottom of Argentina right up to the top where it meets with Brazil. We´ve covered a lot of ground in a short space of time but it´s been really easy because Argentina has the best buses in the world! We did three overnight journeys while we were there and each time we went a class higher. Our first journey was in semi-cama class where there were four seats in every row which reclined a bit. They showed films in English and we had a hot dinner (with Pepsi!) and breakfast [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Matt) Many months ago I was looking at a map of South America (whilst enjoying a glass of wine) and said to Catherine in true Andy from Little Britain style ´I wanna go to that one!´. ´That one´turned out to be Isla Navarino the southernmost inhabited place in the world (excluding Antarctic research bases!). Catherine responded with ´can I have some wine?´ and ´what´s there?, how do we get to it? And how much does it cost?´, all good and reasonable questions in the circumstances ´Errr here´s the wine I´ll get back to you on the rest´! I knew I wouldn´t [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Catherine) Patagonia is a huge expanse of stunning snow-capped mountains, enormous glaciers and beautiful lakes, that spans southern Chile and southern Argentina. We´d originally planned to journey down to the region on a scenic four-day ferry trip through the Chilian fjords. Being the organised travellers that we are (well, that I am anyway!) we booked our tickets two months in advance and planned our before and after travels around the dates of the boat. So it was very annoying when, five days before we were due to set sail, we received and email from the ferry company informing us that [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Catherine) Border crossings are usually very boring affairs that inevitably involve filling in lots of forms, having your bags half-heartedly searched by a bored official and getting ripped-off by money changers because you can´t get your head around the exchange rates quickly enough. So when we discovered that our Bolivia/Chile border crossing could be tagged on to the end of a three-day trip crossing the largest salt flats in the world, passing numerous colourful lagoons and taking a dip in natural hot springs, we could hardly believe our luck! We dutifully headed to Uyuni, the starti [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Matt) -Sucre- We spent a few days in the pleasant spanish colonial town of Sucre. During our time there we visited Parque Cretácico a cement quarry where in 1994 employees uncovered 6000 dinosaur tracks on a vertical mudstone hillside (much to my disappointment the dinosaurs couldn´t walk up walls it was once flat but the land was pushed upwards by plate tectonics!). The park is now a minor tourist attraction with model dinosaurs, a tour guide and rip off Jurassic Park typeface on the signs. It is the largest collection of dinosaur footprints in the world. Slightly more exciting (for [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Matt) -The World´s Most Dangerous Road- It is estimated that every year, 200 to 300 people die travelling down the 43 miles of vertical descent that basically consists of a dirt track road carved into a canyon from La Paz to a village called Coroico. With no safety barriers or guard rails and drops of 1,600 ft, cycling down the road (aptly nicknamed ´Death Road´) is not the first thing that springs to mind. However, that´s what I decided to do (thanks Soph for your blog on this!), Catherine didn´t fancy it. This was firmly in the category of things you [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Catherine) Our final destination in Peru was Puno, on the shores of Lake Titicaca, a three-hour bus journey from Cuzco. We´ve found bus journeys in Peru highly amusing because the normally calm Peruvian people become very impatient when it comes to public transport. If a bus is due to leave at 10am and it hasn´t moved by 10.01am the passengers will start stamping their feet on the floor and shouting 'Vamos!' meaning 'Let´s go!´. The same thing happens if the bus stops for more than a minute along the way. Passengers on this particular journey became very aggitated when the bus [View Full Entry]

---

---

(Matt) We had a full 8 days in Cuzco just to take it easy for a while and to acclimatise in preparation for the Inca Trail Trek to Machu Picchu. ´The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry´ ...how true that is, with one day to go before the four day, 26 mile hike that crosses a 13,750-foot pass ominously named ´Dead Woman´s Pass´we were both lethargic from illness and recuperating in our hostal room watching cable TV, Catherine with the remains of a virus and me with a stomach parasite (a bit like in the Alien films!). [View Full Entry]

---

---