Having spent Earth Day on the rather environmentally unfriendly activity of flying back from the USA to Peru (sorry planet), our final destination before Lima and the flight home was the desert oasis of Huacachina where our friend Beth owns the cafe, Casa de Bamboo. Huacachina is in a sand bowl surrounded by imposing dunes, perfect for sand boarding and Mad Max style sand buggy rides. It is an oasis of tranquility (apart from the occasional revving of sand buggies), 4.5 hours south of Lima and a 5 minute tuk-tuk ride from Ica. Beth built her house (possibly with a little [View Full Entry]

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Thanks to the marvel of frequent flyer award flights, we managed to build in a little side trip from the South to North America to visit our lovely friends Tanya and Dav in Denver. Not sure whether it was good fortune on our part or magnificent planning on their part, but we were lucky to catch them just before they moved back to Sydney. (Not sure we would have been half as accommodating, and we certainly wouldn't have managed the air of organisation and relaxation that they did before we packed up home.) After months of sunny hot weather we were [View Full Entry]

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The classic Inca trail is 4 days of trekking: 45km starting at 2720m altitude, crossing over 3 passes at 4200m, 4000m and 3680m before arriving at Machu Picchu at 2730m. We decided to do the Inca trail towards the end of our trip to avoid the rainy season. Unfortunately the rainy season waited for us - with the exception of day 1, it rained every day. Best laid plans. Pah! I (Mad) had done the Inca trail before, 10 years ago, with my friend, Debs. We did it without a tour group, carried our own packs and lived off Pringles. We [View Full Entry]

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How exciting! We were headed to the birthplace of the Incas on the mystical Isla del Sol - a spiritual experience awaited us, no doubt. We set out along the shores of Lake Titicaca from Copacabana to Yampupata, where we planned to catch a small motor boat across to the island. En-route, Paul helped out a little old lady by carrying her (ridiculously heavy) bag for her for about half a km to deliver her husband's lunch to him in the fields. We were rewarded with sweets and smiles. Slightly short of Yampupata, at Titicachi, we were chased-down by a man [View Full Entry]

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After the excitement and inspirational tour of the Salar de Uyuni, the town of Uyuni itself (with the exception of the quite exceptional MinuteMan pizza restaurant) was rather, well, dull and uninspiring. So much so that - after updating our blog - we were quite keen to leave on the first train, bus or donkey. Our next destination was to be Tupiza - Bolivia's 'Wild West', less than 200 km to the South-East. Unfortunately, escaping Uyuni proved to be rather more of a challenge than we had anticipated. A train heads south to the Argentinian border every 2-3 days, but by [View Full Entry]

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After 2 months moving up Chile and Argentina, the next destination was Bolivia. We took a 3 day tour from San Pedro de Atacama in Chile across the Bolivian border to the National Park and Salar de Uyuni. This has got to be one of the highlights of the trip (thanks Pip for your recommendation). After being promised a tour consisting of a maximum of six people and an English speaking guide, we were slightly put out to be in a 4WD with 7 passengers and a guide whose only English words for the 3 days were ´lunch´and ´no sleeping´. However, [View Full Entry]

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Moving on from Valparaiso, we spent a couple of days in the surprisingly relaxing and diverting town of La Serena. We originally only stopped there to break up the journey North to San Pedro, but we squeezed in an excellent visit to the observatory at Vicuna (can never seem to get too much of the clear night skies) and were treated to a couple of very relaxing days at Casa Maria. Maria is a lovely sprightly 70 year old lady who served up freshly made jam (from plums she grows in the garden) and baked us a delicious peach pudding on [View Full Entry]

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Just finished reading ´The Cold Six Thousand´ by James Ellroy, which has inspired us to follow his style for our latest offering. Few sentences longer than five words. A bit unorthodox, but it gets the message across. Quite fitting for Valparaiso... Valpo: Gritty. Seedy. Edgy. Colourful. Bus station heaving. The bald gringo caught the dude´s eye. - Hospedaje Amigo? - Si, possiblemente. Quanto Cuesta? Donde es? That´s the kick-off. Dude doesn´t speak much Ingles, but understands most. Similar the gringos espanol. Dude looks like a good guy. It´s enough. Dude - Jorge - hails a cab. Another passenger is already inside. [View Full Entry]

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After nearly 2 months without a surf, it was time to get wet. We picked Pichilemu as our location due to its reknowned long left hand break. However our first impressions of the town were a bit underwhelming. We´d imagined sparsely populated golden sands, the creak of swinging hammocks and the odd straw beach umbrella. The reality was grey sands, grey skies, grey sea, sunbathers in coats (a la UK), 2 circus big tops, a fair and the whole population of Chile. Apart from the last bit we could be in Blackpool. We had a bidding war of accomodation when we [View Full Entry]

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So - Bariloche - what´s it got that other places haven´t? An enormous crystal clear, snow-melt fed lake, lots of mountains with the prospect of skiing in the winter or mountain biking in the summer, beaches (albeit rocky and a little chilly), curranto (we´ll come back to that), chocolate shops, locally brewed beer, crazy Swiss ´alpine´ villages, Oliver Reid lookalikes (OK only one), a friendly laid back language school, good cheeses, empanadas, good wine and a generally relaxed, if a bit touristy, vibe. We started with a 3-day walk in the mountains via Cerro Cathedral and some very sketchy scree slopes. [View Full Entry]

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