For the second time on our trip, we found ourselves in Colonia, this time Colonia del Sacramento, an attractive old colonial town on the River Plate, just 55km from BA. After finding a lovely place to stay, Posada del Angel, we stumbled upon a big parade of schoolkids, all dressed up to represent different countries and cultures. We worked out it was for the Dia de la Primavera, a sort of May Day parade, but seeing a cardboard version of the South Park school bus stumble up the cobbled streets much later that evening ranks up there with surreal moments of [View Full Entry]

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A mate from home, upon hearing that we'd be travelling to the area, insisted we visit the town of Fray Bentos and send a postcard. I hadn't even realised there was a town to back up the history of meat products and pies in tins we're all familiar with from growing up, so we thought "why not"? The main (really "only") attraction of the town is the dilapidated old meat processing plant now open to the public as the Museum of the Industrial Revolution. The name seemed strange to me until the visit, when I realised that the place really did [View Full Entry]

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Originally, our plan had been to travel from Cordoba to Iguazu Falls and then back to Buenos Aires via a few days in Uruguay. A small matter water shortages leaving the falls running at 50% capacity meant the thought of a 20 hour bus ride in a semi-cama (ie. airline economy class) seat was less than appealing, hence the decision to spend up to a week in Uruguay instead. Despite having to sort of double back on ourselves after our time in Montevideo, the chance to spend some days at the thermal springs in north west Uruguay was too good to [View Full Entry]

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So, another overnight 17hr bus journey and another country...Uruguay, the capital Montevideo to be exact. We landed mid-morning and arranged some accommodation via the tourist office in the Tres Cruces bus station which, should you ever land there, is a pretty cool bus terminal with its own shopping centre upstairs. The only bad thing is that it's a few km walk from the centre of town and thus needs a cab / bus to reach it. We were only going to be here a few days, and this was Saturday, the day the Mercado Central is supposed to be at its [View Full Entry]

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From Easter Island, a mere 4.5 hour flight, night in Santiago, 7 hour bus to Mendoza and a 9 hour overnight bus brought us to Cordoba, the second city of Argentina. That's a lot of DVT potential! Luckily, to take our mind of that, the scenery crossings the Andres was stunning, alhough it was a tad weird to have skilifts passing overheard. To pass the hours once we crossed the border, we were serenaded by a very long CD of classic 80's hits, translated into Spanish - fancy a nice rendition of 'Eclipse Total del Amor' anyone? We can now vouch [View Full Entry]

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How do you make a holiday encompassing many things you've always wanted to do yet never expected to do even better...? Do another one! Persuaded by the author of the Footprints Chile book that we really shouldn't miss out on it, and that a good offer could be found at Lan Chile, we decided to go for it and head back across 4000km of Pacific Ocean to Easter Island (Isla de Pascua as the Chileans know it). I hadn't even realised it was Chilean territory until recently. As a place to visit, this is a pretty remote one...the nearest neighbour is [View Full Entry]

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In a narrow country, there are only two directions to chose from - north or south. Since it's still snow covered in the lake district and beyond, north seemed like the sensible choice so off we went to La Serena, 7 hours north of Valparaiso. At least on a 7 hour bus trip, you get to see some great scenery, unlike flying, so the trip passed reasonably quickly. Chilean buses are mercifully closer to Argentinean standards than to Bolivian or Peruvian ones! La Serena is a major seaside resort in the summer, but it was fairly quiet being off season. Arriving [View Full Entry]

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Chile is an exceedingly long country, apparently the same distance from top to bottom as Scotland to Nigeria (thanks Barney), so before facing the long bus journeys again we decided to ease ourselves into it with a short skip over to Valparaiso. The city used to be a major port, used by European and American ships on the route from Cape Horn to California during the gold rush, but went out of favour early last century and fell somewhat into disrepair. However, the city is reviving itself now, as the cultural capital of the country and is certainly a unique place, [View Full Entry]

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We're back...to South America anyway. Our crazy round-the-world dash has landed us back here for 5 more glorious weeks of seeing everything we'd missed the first time (that's kind of the plan, anyway). So to Chile. Santiago is another city with a reputation...for smog. The city is situated in a lovely spot on the foothills of the Andes, surrounded by mountains. The downside of this is that the area is prone to low cloud, which in turn traps the crap spewing out of cars and factories in the city. I would leave my return to good health through running until we'd [View Full Entry]

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We were warned... Auckland in Winter is wet & cold. Thankfully, we would only stay there for 3 days! All of the above is true, but the short stay did give us enough of a taster of the place to convince us both that we should come back another (warmer) time. Though we were staying in a nice, quiet hostel outside the centre (Brown Kiwi), we spent the first night crashing at an old work colleague's house on the other side of town, having been invited over for dinner (and quite a few bottles of wine). The next day, we cleared [View Full Entry]

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