Kai and Ains
Welcome to our Blog.kaiandains
(By our I mean Ainsley and myself (Kai) We are from Newcastle, Australia. Ainsley is in conference/sales sector and myself at high school teacher.)
This Blog will keep track our year long travels around the world. We leave on the 28th of December to our first port of call Santiago, Chile. From there we travel through Chile, Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil on a tour before ending up in Rio for Carnival. We then head over to Peru and the Amazon, Muchu Picchu and Lake Titicaca before ending up in La Paz, Bolivia. After our time in Bolivia we travel to Las Vegas then on to Canada, where we will travel the east and west coast. After Canada, we move on to the European leg of our trip where we will base ourselves in the UK and travel around Europe. We hope to visit the many festivals, events and sights around Europe such as the running of the bull, La Tomatina, October fest and anything else that sounds interesting. At the end of the year will finish our adventure by heading off to South Africa before heading home.
Travel Blog Posts
November 1st 2010
IRELAND!!! Sunday 24 October Our Ireland adventures begun when we flew into Belfast from London on an early morning flight. We arrived to Belfast which was a chilly -3 degrees, but clear skies. Checked into our hotel & went & visited the city hall first up, then decided to do an open top bus tour which took 1 hour 20mins. This took us to all of the main attractions around Belfast, but oh god it was freezing!! To name some – the dock where Titanic was built, and two gaint shipping gantries, known as David & Goliath, Parliament building, the peace wall which is similar to the Berlin wall, in that it is filled with different artworks, & also people's signatures & peace messages, such as Gandi, & lots more too. It was interesting to see ... read more
July 5th 2010
We jet-setted off early Saturday morning headed for our first destination for the Summer - Madrid, Spain. We spent 2 nights here & stayed in a hotel which was right in the centre of town. Unfortunately the lift was broken down so up we went lugging our backpacks up 4 flights of stairs. After settling in to our nicely air conditioned room, we setted out to do some sightseeing in the heat (over 30 degrees). Not long after walking through the streets we both asked each other if we thought there was a lot of gay people around....a lot more than usual. It wasn't until we saw some rainbow flags & then a sign mentioning it was 'gay week' while we were there in Madrid. Awesome...that's exactly what we came for!! haha..we actually felt a little ... read more
Amsterdam & Den Haag - Netherlands
Published: June 3rd 2010Europe » Netherlands » North Holland » Amsterdam
June 2nd 2010
Saturday 29th May - Wednesday 2nd June Flew to Amsterdam this morning. As we were walking to our hotel we got our first glimpses of the city. The buildings were all so old & had so much intricate detail. After settling into our room we went & explored the town. There are canals everywhere - almost on every street! Boats were constantly going up & down them. We noticed, being a weekend when we were there, there were lots of hens & bucks parties. We were to meet a few friends today, however their flights got cancelled so they could not make it until Sunday, meaning they would only have 1 night there. We had planned a few nights extra to have a little more time. Kai was on his mid-term break so we thought we ... read more
March 28th 2010
Montreal This weekend we went on a little road trip to Montreal with John, April & Aliana. We left on Friday at 3pm & boy was there some traffic around, took us a while to get through the thick of it. Anyway it took around 5-6 hours to get there as we had a few stops with the baby and all. We got to our hotel & pretty much went straight to bed. The next morning at 9am we were all woken up by a very loud fire alarm going off throughout the entire hotel. Then the hotel made an announcement that the entire hotel had to evacuate. So we quickly grabbed our coats & went down the front of the hotel on the street. I swear Ains & April were the only ones in pajamas…everyone ... read more
March 27th 2010
We arrived in Toronto at 10pm from Las Vegas, & were happy to see some familiar faces..April & John & of course their new addition to the family, Aliana who is 5 months old. On the way home they drove through the city of Toronto & John insisted that we stop at the infamous Tim Horton’s (coffee shop chain), which is everywhere here. John & April live about a 15-20min drive from the main city centre in Toronto in a cute little house. We are to spend 2 weeks here with them which will be great to catch up. The city of Toronto, is I guess like most citys, however as it does get quite cold here in the winter there are a network of underground passageways within the city. You can pretty much get from ... read more
March 22nd 2010
We finally arrived in Vegas after our long flight. We were greeted with the loud carousel sounds of the poker machines which were lined all along the airport, just waiting to suck all your money up! We found the taxi line in order to get to our hotel & realized we were slightly different from the crowd of people lined up with us. Here we were with our big backpacks, hiking shoes & baggy clothing, amongst designer bags & luggage, high heels & oversized sunglasses everywhere! We were in Vegas!! We arrived at our hotel which was a big castle - The Excalibur! After settling in and having a shower we decided to check out the strip. Yet what had total skipped our minds is that it was St Patrick’s Day. So we headed to an ... read more
Worlds Most Dangerous Road
Published: September 7th 2010South America » Bolivia » La Paz Department » La Paz
March 15th 2010
Kai was very excited today because it was the day we had booked in to do the Worlds Most Dangerous Road (WMDR). The WMDR got its name from its horrific past in which on average just under 200 people a year died on the road, untill in the 90's a main highway was finished which was used instead of WMDR. This road is about the size of a fire trail but with a vertical drop of up to 1000 meters in some parts. We headed off early, at around 7ish to meet the bus and head of to our starting point. Ahead of us was a 4000 metre decent over 63kms. The first 32km of the ride was on tar road so we could get used to our bikes & also some real speed up, well ... read more
Bolivian 4WD Tour & The Salt Flats
Published: September 7th 2010South America » Bolivia » Potosí Department » Salar de Uyuni
March 11th 2010
Day 1 After surviving our overnight bus from La Paz, we arrived in the town of Uyuni at about 7am. The first half of the drive was fine, however the second half I wasn't quite sure we or the bus for that matter would make it. The road was filled with pot holes the whole last leg of the journey making it impossible to sleep as the bus was swaying from side to side. We headed off to find our tour company that was to take us on our three day tour of the Uyuni Salt flats and surround areas. All together there were 7 people including our driver in the Landcruiser 4WD. A big mix of people - 1 dutch, 1 french, 2 swiss & us! Our tour left around 10 o'clock, first stop the ... read more
The insane but unique city of Lapaz, Bolivia
Published: June 10th 2010South America » Bolivia » La Paz Department » La Paz
March 6th 2010
Fri 5th Today we were supposed to drive to La Paz, Bolivia, yet after waking up at 6am to get going to the bus terminal to get to aboard our bus called 'Mille'. We set off, but we had heard that there had been some protests in the area, where they had been throwing rocks and boulders on the road to stop traffic exiting & entering the town. Getting up early was the idea to beat the protesters, yet this was not the case. We arrived right at the time that they were throwing rocks onto the road. This was a little scary as we had gotten to a point where they were throwing rocks in front and behind us trapping us in. We turned around and tried getting back into town, lucky they moved one ... read more
March 4th 2010
Tues 2nd - Thurs 4th March From Cusco we ventured by our big yellow bus called 'Mille' to another town called Puno which is the gateway to Lake Titicaca. We had planned a boat trip on Lake Titicaca & also a homestay for 1 night on one of the islands. We had to get to the port to board our boat, so we used the little bicycle transport that race around the city trying to weave through all of the cars & motorbikes. We sat in the front & the driver peddled behind us. This was quite funny as there was a group of about 10 bikes racing down to the port. We boarded our boat and headed off onto Lake Titikaka, first stop was the reed Islands. The reed islands were built here in the ... read more
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