Matt & Carla

chilled2thecore

Remember folks 'Regret what you do, not what you don't' and with that thought we welcome you to our round the world travel blog.

As our journey is now over we hope that some of our stories and adventures may help or inspire anybody else who is lucky enough to be currently in any of the locations we visited or planning to travel in the near future.

Do we regret our trip ? .......... absolutely not it was the best year of both our lives and even though we are now back home and things have already started to fall back into exactly the same places they were before we left...... we will always be able to close our eyes or read this blog and draw on some of the most amazing, breathtaking, humbling and unforgettable moments of our lives.
We saw as much as we physically felt possible in 360 days and although only a tiny snapshot of the world outside of our comfort zone we enjoyed EVERY single minute.

We must have been asked a hundred times "what was your favourite country ?" and although of the 14 we visited Japan, Thailand, Lao, Australia, Bolivia and Brazil all stood out - the country that will leave the longest lasting effect on both of us for so many reasons is Cambodia......happiness against all the odds and a special country that touched both our hearts.

Favourite places ? .........those destinations that will always be special to us both:

Kyoto, Pai, Luang Prabang, Phnom Phen, Sydney, Melbourne, Queenstown, Cusco, Isla Del Sol, Buenos Aires, Rio......etc,etc

If your reading this in a dirty internet cafe a million miles from home.......enjoy every minute, it will all be over before you know it!

peace mandc





Travel Blog Posts


An Ounce Of Moroccan

Published: June 29th 2009Africa » Morocco
chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
June 27th 2009

A brief update. 750 days after our engagement in Peru and chilled2thecore are no longer simply Matt and Carla but the new Mr and Mrs Parry. I won’t bore you with the details, this is a travel blog after all, photographic evidence can be found if you search hard enough, but this amazing event did mean one thing. A Honeymoon. The chance to explore. And the chance to travel. Since returning from our RTW adventure nearly 2 years ago we have been lucky enough to attend two weddings abroad, one in Spain and one in Italy, as well as visit my parents in France. All good trips but our honeymoon would be our first trip away alone and we wanted an adventure into the unknown. So where to go? Bein... read more



what happened next ?

Published: April 29th 2008Europe » United Kingdom » England » Greater London » Vauxhall
chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
April 16th 2008

Well Hello !! its been a while - over 6 months in fact - since we typed our last blog in a late night internet café in Rio both full of anticipation, dread and excitement about our return to reality and what we hoped would be our next great adventure. And an adventure it certainly has been ! …so tonight after returning from a failed attempt to meet out travelling hero -Michael Palin - due to mass demand for seats in the gallery auditorium he was presenting a debate on something or other, we find ourselves drinking red wine feeling slightly disappointed (although happy that Palin has achieved rock star status), reflective and a little pissed ready to document what happened next……..so here goes! But firstly for anyone sat there thinking that a ‘back home’ blog ... read more



chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
August 25th 2007

So here we are; 360 days, 62 blogs and 14 countries later. This time tomorrow we will be home. This probably won´t be our last ever blog, as what started as a way of keeping friends and family up to date with our travels, has become an obsession and our own personal record of the experiences (good, bad and ugly) people (friends, enemies and the slightly unstable) and unforgettable moments throughout the past 12 months. But as one adventure ends, many more lie in wait (finding jobs, a new place to call home, getting married) and we head home feeling positive and even slightly excited, but for how long after we arrive it is before we want to leave again I just don´t know! The last two weeks have been strange, if we still had 6 ... read more



chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
August 24th 2007

With the clock ticking on our adventure we decided to head south for some relaxation before returning to Rio for a last few days. Our first stop was Paraty and we managed by sheer coincidence to arrive at Rio´s bus terminal minutes before a bus left and bagged the last two seats. 4 hours later we arrived, realised we had the address of the B&B we had booked into but no map and began to wander off vaguely in the direction we had guessed was right before being stopped by an English man holding a sign with Matt´s name, ready to escort us to our home for the next 2 days. Paraty sits on the coast and the drive to it from Rio had been fantastic, along one of the 'World´s most beautiful highways' where mountains ... read more



chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
August 17th 2007

Touching down in Rio made me realise three things: 1. We are so over long bus journeys (our trip to Rio being our last and longest at 23 mind numbing hours) 2. We only had 2 weeks until we headed home......and 3. I am officially an old fart The first two speak for themselves.... but let me explain the third. When trying to book a hostel in Rio we had discovered that they were both pricey and few in numbers, especially in the area we wanted to be based Copacabana/Ipanema. So with little choice I made the fatal school boy error of booking one with a rooftop bar!! 3 words that would usually make anyone who was a fan of a decent nights kip run a mile. Upon arrival the rooftop bar became an even greater ... read more



Being Bill Oddie

Published: August 17th 2007South America » Brazil » Pantanal
chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
August 17th 2007

We left Curitiba bound for Campo Grande, one of several Brazilian starting points for a trip to the Pantanal. These are the country´s ´wetlands´where low mountains and an abundance of converging rivers make for excellent conditions and a strange sounding biological soup in the water providing for a host of animals and birds. The wet season leaves the area flooded, we were visiting in the dry season when despite being winter daytime temperatures soar into the 30´s and combined with very little rain there are fewer water patches for animals to drink at theoretically giving us a higher chance of seeing some wildlife. After the 14 hour bus journey we were pleased to see our hostel from the bus station and even more happy to find out that it was connected to the tour agency we ... read more



At home with the Romanos

Published: August 13th 2007South America » Brazil » Paraná » Curitiba
chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
August 7th 2007

Since we have been away we have both adopted the idea that whilst we travel through other countrys and invade other people's lives - as long as we are polite, aware and willing to adapt then good luck and good fortune will follow us around - a sort of traveller's karma if you like. This theory may just be a load of hippy nonsense and I may be being a little over reflective as our trip draws to an end but as the rest of this blog goes to show....someone is smiling down on us. We first met Adriana and Betina 9 months earlier on a boat trip in Halong Bay and thanks mainly to this website have stayed in touch ever since. And as every month has passed their original offer of a place to ... read more



chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
August 3rd 2007

Our whole trip evolved from an attempt to plan a holiday which would take in one sight that each of us were keen to see; for Matt Machu Picchu and for me Iguasu Falls and after almost 11 months we made our way to the small town of Puerto Iguasu nearby the famous waterfalls. Arriving to a beautiful clear day with temperatures warmer than we had experienced for a while we wasted little time in a quick shower and change of clothes (we had travelled 16 hours overnight by bus) before jumping on another bus to take us the 18 or so kilometres to the falls. For a worldwide tourist sight the falls are cheap to get into with a fiver getting us in for the day plus the option of returning the next day for ... read more



chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
July 24th 2007

We left Bariloche and it´s arctic conditions behind us and headed 850 miles north to Buenos Aires. We had made the most of some unbelievably cold weather but from here on in we would continue to head back up towards the equator and hopefully warmer weather at every stop until our journey´s end in 6 weeks on the beaches of Rio. Leaving Patagonia also meant our last glimpses of the Andes and surrounding countryside that had been our home since arriving in South America some 2.5 months ago. The Andes had been a mystical place that I had dreamt of visiting since I was a kid and as we headed across the flat central plains of Argentina I realised they had surpassed all expectations and that I was really gonna miss the dizzying beauty and all ... read more



chilled2thecore icon
chilled2thecore
July 16th 2007

leaving England last September we had never heard of Bariloche, let alone been able to point it out on a map but constant glowing reports from people we had met meant that we ended up on a 17 hour bus journey there from Mendoza. Located in Argentina´s Patagonian lake district the town thrives in the summer months for trekking, cycling and other outdoor activities and comes to life again in the winter when thousands of tourists make it their base to take on the slopes of Cerro Catedral - supposedly South America´s most important ski resort. We arrived after our journey having slept about 11 hours each and slightly disappointed not to have won anything in the bus bingo game. On arrival at our hostel we learnt it was only 2 days old and some things ... read more






Tot: 0.155s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 15; qc: 78; dbt: 0.0473s; 1; s:apollo w:www (50.28.60.10); sld: 3; ; mem: 6.7mb