New Years Eve 31st December 2006 So we booked the poshest restaurant in Valparaiso for tonight's festivities. We were walking along yesterday admiring the views when we stumbled across this beautiful looking restaurant with panoramic views of the bay. We popped in to have a look around and couldn´t help but book ourselves table for our most expensive dinner ever! We´re told to get there for 6.30pm for the aperitifs. At 6pm Kate is worrying as she wants to get there early enough to sample the atmosphere, but of course we´re running slightly late because we had to have an after [View Full Entry]

---

---

Valparaiso 30/12/2006 - 03/01/2007 According to the guide books Valparaiso or Valpal for short is Chile's most interesting town. With it's steep hills crowed with a jumble of multicoloured clapboard homes, a mixture of wooden shacks & weather beaten mansions & it's many rickety old acensors carrying people where it is too steep to build a road. All the books say that the city has seen better days, is a bit rough around the edges but will weave a spell on you & you will love it .... and we did, with bells on! We spent our days riding the acensors [View Full Entry]

---

---

25th December to 30th December We arrived in Mendoza on Christmas Eve. The hostel is really nice with a pool and garden and a great big BBQ! However its bloody hot here and the rooms never seem to cool down. Nessie, Kate and I wander in town for a look around. Mendoza has a good feel to it with wide streets lined with trees. We stopped for lunch in a cafe where Kate orders a plate of snacks. From the menu it looks quite small but plates and plates of food keep arriving - sandwiches with the crusts cut off, ham [View Full Entry]

---

---

The Altiplano 13th & 14th December We spend a couple of full days driving over the Altiplano to the Chilean border. We need a guide so that we don't get lost. Some parts of the drive are beautiful with strange rock formations and green mossy things! En-route we stop at Laguna Colorado - a red lake with thousands of flamingos resting in the lake. We also stop at Laguna Verde which is a beautiful green and blue lake, but we're told not to get too close as the colours are due to the arsenic in the lake. Nice - first asbestos [View Full Entry]

---

---

Our last stop in Bolivia was a place called Uyuni, we arrived in the evening and went to book a tour onto the salt flats, 12 000 square kilometres of salt!!! We then went out to dine on what our trip leader described as the best Pizza in South America, and it was good, but we´d had better since we came out her. They also had expensive wine at cut down prices so it was a good evening all in all, with quite a lot of singing from what I remember! As we were leaving the restaurant I stopped to talk [View Full Entry]

---

---

Sucre is a lovely little town famous for the dinosaur footprints you can see in a nearby quarry. And & I were already feeling much much better but needed some chill time after being sick. So instead of rushing around trying to see all the sights we chose to have lie ins, go for nice meals & just mooch around. Maybe it´s because of this that we have such fond memories of the place. It was very pretty but unfortunately as we weren´t in tourist mode we didn´t take any photos so if you want to see it you´ll have to [View Full Entry]

---

---

It was a short (well short for us) drive of a couple of hours once we had crossed the border to reach the town of Copacabana. Which is a small pretty town on the bank of Lake Titicaca. We checked into our hotel, booked our tickets to Isla del Sol had a short wander around then went out to dinner with most of the group where we were entertained by two young fellows who played the first Pan pipe style music we´d actually liked, they even got a tip! The next morning as we were waiting for the boat to leave [View Full Entry]

---

---

On our last day in Cusco we spent the next morning in a web cafe trying to update this blog it´s a very slow process out here & frustrating too. I spent almost an hour writing an email to my parents only to have the computer crash spectacularly & lose it all. Grrrrrrr blasted Puters! Then we met up with Vicky & Nessie to head out for lunch & an explore of Cusco. I was feeling weak but much better but unfortunately Vicky was feeling pretty rough so after we dragged her into what must have been the 20th Artisan shop [View Full Entry]

---

---

We were all up yet again very early for the usual breakfast of fruit, bread, jam & coffee then Smith rounded us up & herded us to the train station about a hundred meters or so down the dusty road. When we got to the station & saw the trains & all the information about the Inca trail & ther ruins we started to get very excited so took lots of daft photos. The train itself was really sweet, only two carriages with little windows in the roof so we could admire the mountains towering over us as we wound our [View Full Entry]

---

---

Friday 24th November onwards ..... Friday was a free day in Cuzco, unfortunately both Andrea & Nessie picked up a really nasty stomach bug & we're both wiped out & bed bound for the time we were in Cuzco. Vicky ¡ I went out for a bit of an explore but the other two managed to come out only once to by some bits for the Inca Trail but most of our time was spent hanging out in our room eating pizza & watching TV . Luckily we have another full day in Cuzco (today in fact) to see the sights [View Full Entry]

---

---