Our final stop on our tour of the Americas was 5 days in New York City - sight seeing by day and a mix of Broadway, bars and comedy by night. A fantastic place to end a fantastic few months! THE END. [View Full Entry]

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Costa Rica in 8 days.... 5 on the Carribean coast staying in chilled out Cahuita - beach, snorkelling, zip lining, horse riding, mucho cocktails, sloths, sleeping and food poisoning. A crazy day rafting (with the food poisoning.. nice) followed by a couple of days chillaxing at the foot of Arenal volcano - wicked! [View Full Entry]

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After spending a week in the Amazon it was time for a complete change of scenery as we planned to head south to the Bolivian salt plains. Although these plans soon changed after finding out that some angry locals were blocking the road down there so no buses were running! so, instead we headed to Bolivias official capital, Sucre which turned out to be the nicest city we have visited in Bolivia - much more laid back than La Paz anyways! Aside from yet more colonial churches, one thing Sucre is now famous for is having the largest collection of dinosaur [View Full Entry]

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Well, we are loving Bolivia, especially since it´s pretty much half the price of Peru so mega cheap! After crossing the border we spent a couple of days chilling out at Copacabana, a hippy town on the shores of Lake Titicaca with plenty of bars, resturants and hammocks to keep you relaxed for a few days.. It´s also the jumping off point for the ferry over to Isla de Sol, a beautiful island on the lake.. Unfortunately Lou missed out on the trip over there as was layed up in bed ill but was prob glad to miss yet more hiking [View Full Entry]

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Following a couple of days in Cusco relaxing after the Inca Trail we headed south on another long bus journey to the city of Arequipa - prob the best city we visited in Peru (the combination of picturesque buildings and great nightlife works well!) After enjoying a night on the town it was time to head out of the city and down into the Colca Canyon whose main claim to fame is that it´s the 2nd deepest in the world. We would also later find out the town of Chivay in the Colca Valley accomodates the highest Irish pub in the [View Full Entry]

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We booked the Inca trail back in January and have been looking forward to it (both with excitement and dread) ever since, so were glad when it finally came around... here is a summary of events and pain endured! Day 1 = 12km We were picked up from our hostel at 5.30am by the bus containing the rest of our group. About 30 minutes into the journey the radiator blew on our bus so we were stood at the side of the road for 30 minutes or so watching the porters pour freezing cold water into it, creating more and more [View Full Entry]

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After the luxury of having a car it was now time to lug our backpacks around properly and hit the mean streets of South America. Our first stop in Peru was the capital city of Lima - bit of a culture shock after spending the last 6 weeks in the US but it made a welcome change to be away from the lines of the same stores and fast food joints. Our Hostel was in the Miraflores district which is a pretty nice suburb near the coast and was and run by 2 football mad Peruvians so spent a while after [View Full Entry]

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After 2 weeks of battling the snow, dust storms and of course sunshine and heat camping across national parks and in middle America it certainly made a change to arrive at the bright lights and scary heat of Vegas. We stayed at Excalibur which is one of the big casino hotels on the strip - and we mean big - over 5,000 rooms and was apparetly the biggest hotel in the world in the early 90´s. The casino floor was massive and no clocks and no directions to the exit were part of the ploy to keep you from leaving - [View Full Entry]

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Apologies for taking a while in getting this online - lack of computers, being out in the sticks and the lack of Neils ability to save what´s been typed before his internet credit runs out has not helped! However a kind barmaid in a San Fran bar has kindly lent us her laptop so we can now update this blog and have a beer at the same time which is perfect! We have also just watched Man U win too so Lou is happy.. anyhow back to business: After driving across the desolate plains of northern Texas it was great to [View Full Entry]

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Our first stop in Louisiana was New Orleans, which certainly lived up to its reputation as a lively city. Our couple of days were spent wandering round the famous French Quarter and other districts by day and heading out to check out the local bars by night. We started off on Bourbon Street for cheap drinks (including 3 for 1 offers!) before heading off the beaten track along Frenchman Street to find some really cool jazz and blues bars where we caught some amazing live acts. From New Orleans we took our sore heads northwards into rural Louisiana where we spent [View Full Entry]

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