naeraandjeremy

And so we arrived in Chile... or rather we arrived a couple of hours before we reached the border post of San Pedro de Atacama. San Pedro de Atacama Our first taste of Chile was the crazy border crossing which seemed chaotic to say the least. We weren't allowed to leave the minibus until the tourist police said so. Then we had to leave our backpacks on the bus until they decided we could pick them up to be searched. Following a superficial search we were officially in Chile, passports stamped and ready to go. We headed into San Pedo, which is a small village on the edge of the Atacama Desert. We stayed for a day or so deciding that this small village is one that was too expensive for us and the activities mirrored ... read more

Copacabana Nope, not the suburb of Rio - this Copacabana is in the north of Bolivia and rests on the lake front of Lake Titicaca. We decided we´d had enough of taking tours with loads of other backpackers and chose to walk to the Isla del Sol along the lake shore and through the surrounding villages. Neither of us realised how long or exhausted we´d be after walking 18 kms (taking us about 4.5 hours) at 4000 mtrs above sea level! We arrived at the boat jetty tired but consoled ourselves that we´d nearly walked a half marathon. We proceeded to organise (well we thought we´d organised) a cheap trip across a small straight to the Isla del Sol. Half way across the lake to the island Jem convinced the boat owner to let him have ... read more

Nazca Nazca is a couple of hours south from Ica. It has less than 2 cms rain fall a year and the town water supply comes nearly entirely from underground rivers and aqueducts, some of which were created by the Nazca people more than 1000 years ago! It’s on the tourist trail because of lines and shapes that cross the whole of the desert plateau. The lines were created by the Nazca people (pre-Inca) by moving the red (iron rich) stones which exposed the light colour desert floor beneath them. The contrast is what you see. No one is quite sure why these lines were created - the theories range from alien landing strips (and this is supposed to be taken seriously), astronomic alignments, a map of the underground water supplies or possibly sites that were ... read more

Guayaquil... hot and humid Not to much to say - we flew back into here from the Galapagos - large city with some lovely areas but mostly just another big city... so conscious of time we headed out the next morning for Riobamba (which was a nice town from what we saw - we only spent a night here because we wanted to head down to the Devils nose... the train only runs every second or third day... ) Train ride through the Devil´s Nose This would have to be the weirdest activity that we have done to date. We jumped a train (a bus modified to run on the railway) with about another 50 odd tourists for a loop around the famous Devil´s Nose train track. You have a choice of sitting on the roof ... read more

Quito..... Policemen who moonlight as tour guides and more We landed in Quito on the 22nd and stayed in the old town (the city is defined into either the old or new city) for two nights. The old city houses grand old colonial buildings from the past. There is plenty of information in the guide books about tourist safety which is backed up by the passing comments from the hoteliers. It was with these thoughts in the back of our minds that when we came across the tourist office offering 3 hour walking tours around the old city with a uniformed policeman, for the basement price of $10, we jumped at it. The uniform policeman had natural benefits.....1) only one attempted bag snatch that the policemen foiled, 2) when we were taking photos in this amazing ... read more