Oh Cafayete! What can we say? The asado´s were delicious, the wine was divine and the people were welcoming. The only unfortunate thing was that this was the point where our "family" had gone separate ways so were by ourselves again. Luckily, we still had one member with us. On the first day, we were greeted by the friendly family who owned the hostel. Little did we know, there are a lot more things to do in Cafayete than we thought. After being overwhelmed with the list the hostel had given us, we decided to look things over while eating emapanadas. [View Full Entry]

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Finally ... Argentina! We had been hearing so many great things about it (especially the steak) and it did not disappoint. We arrived in Salta after a long (around 10 hours i think) but scenic bus ride. I think I spent most of my time just staring out the window of the bus with my eyes glued to the mountains, valleys, farms, and little towns. I'm amazed at myself for being able to think about nothing for so long. It was already 9-ish pm by the time we arrived at our hostel in Salta and cleaned up a little. I personally [View Full Entry]

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Well... Just our luck! We got stuck in San pedro de atacama. Porque? We arrived on a Saturday and wanted to take the bus to Argentina on Sunday, but it was sold out and the next bus didn´t leave until Tuesday. Good thing we had our "travelling family" (the group from salar de uyuni) to keep us company. So we ended up staying in a dorm with the family. 8 beds for 6 people! Hooray we got the whole room to ourselves... So we thought. Halfway through the day, we had a new roomie, Sketchy Francois. Lets just say he enjoyed [View Full Entry]

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So the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni Salt Flat) was amazing ... definitely a highlight of our trip! We made our way to Uyuni from Sucre on a 10 hour bus ride (unpaved and bumpy ride again). We arrived in Uyuni in the late afternoon and planned to book a tour to leave the next morning. Our first thought when we arrived in Uyuni was ´good thing we´re leaving tomorrow morning ... this town is completely dead´. So it was just our luck that there were roadblocks around Uyuni which meant that no tour could leave from town. All the operators just [View Full Entry]

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Fortunately, the overnight bus was OK. We arrived about 630am in the morning to Potosi @ 4100m above sea level. Unfortuantely Lydia felt a bit sick... perhaps due to the altitude :( That morning, we had some Salteñas for breakfast and rested. At about 130pm we went on a tour to see the Mines. The mines were very interesting to see but we would never do it again. The working conditions and the air quality were terrible! Before heading to the mines, they gave us clothing to wear on top, a helmet with a headlamp, and rubber boots. We also opted [View Full Entry]

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We´re back from our 3 day trip to the Pampas (amazon lowlands)! The trip was great (the weather could´ve been better, but oh well) because we were able to see a lot of wildlife. We were skeptical that we´d be able to see all the wildlife they advertised, but we weren´t disappointed at all. I´ll get to that in a little bit. The first day was quite tiring because Myra and I had to wake up at 4:00 to catch a 6:15 flight from La Paz to Rurrenabaque. It sounds like an unimaginable hour to wake up at, but we´ve had [View Full Entry]

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Well lets just say the bus ride from Puno, Peru to La Paz, Bolivia was quite an adventure on its own! Fortunately, the bus company we took was recommended and taken by many tourists so we weren´t scared. Well to start off, we stopped at Copacabana as expected. But what we didn´t expect was switching to a much smaller bus and making an extra stop. I still don´t know what city or area we stopped at but they told us to get off the bus, buy a ticket for the boat, and take the boat accross the lake where we would [View Full Entry]

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We´re almost at the end of our trip in Peru. Last stop: Puno/Lake Titicaca. (Lake Titicaca is one of the highest inland lake in the world). We booked the Lake Titicaca tour at the hostel and walked around the city. They were selling bread (pan) everywhere on the streets! We weren´t too fond of trying plain bread but we gave in and I must say... it was the most delicious bread I´ve ever had. Thinking about it now makes me hungry for bread. We went on a 2 day tour which we visited Los Uros Islands and Amantani. We stayed overnight [View Full Entry]

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What an experience! We arrived back in Cusco last night at around 10pm from our Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu. It was absolutely incredible! We were pushed to our limits during this trek... we were sweaty, freezing, dirty, deprived of oxygen and aching but it was all worth it! During the trek, we were dreaming about clean clothes, a toilet, and a shower but now that it' over, we miss hiking and camping in the Andes. Yes that's right, we miss waking up at 6am and hiking from 7am - 530pm. It was quite an amazing 5 days. We were able [View Full Entry]

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We spent 1 day in Arequipa and 2 days on a Colca Canyon tour. Arequipa was pretty nice - it helped that the hostal we stayed in was helpful and cozy. The only bad thing was that the shower pressure was low and water was only lukewarm. We took it easy in Arequipa and only visited the Cathedral and Santa Catalina convent. The convent was really pretty ... we took our time walking around the compound taking lots of photos. It was Myra's birthday on the 11th (the day we got into Arequipa) and we celebrated by having a nicer dinner [View Full Entry]

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