rtwtravel

It wouldn't be a fitting end to our trip if things had gone smoothly, so instead all the shuttles to the airport in Honolulu were fully booked when we tried to reserve seats and we ended up having to get up at 6am to catch a measly 40 minute flight at 11am from the airport only 7 miles away. The bus system here is soooo slow. Then, when we arrived on Big Island to see the lava flowing in to the sea from the most active volcano in the world which has been erupting since 1983, yes, 1983, we hear that it stopped 2 months ago and the lava hasn't quite built up enough yet for it to be pouring out of the crater. We did still see all the previous lava streams and the glowing ... read more

Buenos Aires is such a great city. We went out 3 times in the week we were there and every night was so different from the others. We went to a tiny club with low ceilings playing DnB music, a huge club with several floors playing all the chart songs I hadn’t heard in ages and a warehouse club which was holding a break-dance battle at 2am. It’s a place where the peak time for eating out is 10 or 11pm and if you don’t have a big slab of juicy meat filling your plate you’re frowned at. The different areas of the city are so diverse it feels like you could be hundreds of miles away from where you were yesterday. There are the colourful houses and extremely dodgy neighbourhoods of Boca, right next to ... read more

The end of Argentina has definitely been better than the start. We went to Iguazu to visit some of the biggest waterfalls in the world, but first had to pop in to Paraguay to buy a camera, as you do. We got on the local bus, but that meant we didn’t stop when we reached the border, so we had no stamp to enter the country. This was slightly worrying, but when we tried to leave there was a crush of motortaxis, minivans, huge coaches and people to cross in to Brazil and nobody was stopped there either. The waterfalls are as incredible as everybody says with rainbows everywhere. We got a mini train across the park and started walking around the 200 waterfalls – they have paths leading right up to where the water crashes ... read more

Travelling through Bolivia is the craziest I’ve experienced in any country. This started with my entrance across the border. All the passengers on the bus were herded off to pay for an extra ticket to cross a river. This was no normal bridge crossing though. We clambered into a tiny dingy/boat and had life jackets thrust upon us, whilst our coach holding all our possessions was driven onto floating planks of wood to meet us on the other side of the river. Apparently bridges haven’t reached Bolivia yet. Then, when we tried to leave La Paz on another coach the union’s strike over pay and conditions contributed to another interesting journey. In Bolivia a strike is a little more disruptive than a tube strike back home. A journey that should have taken 3 hours actually took ... read more

The last stop in Peru was to visit a few of the islands on the huge Lake Titicaca. Some islands are made of reeds and float on the lake, which are incredible to see, but not an ideal place to spend the night. Instead we went to a permanent island with 3,500 inhabitants for a traditional Peruvian night. When we arrived at the port there were several families waiting to welcome us. Our host family lived on the other side of the island so we trekked for about 30 minutes to arrive at a small concrete house where a donkey called Maria, 2 cats, 1 dog, 3 children and the Mum and Dad lived. It was pretty basic – no heating or TV, no shower and no flush on the toilet. The meals that were made ... read more