From Montevideo we headed to Buenos Aires for New Year, where we met up with a friend Chico who we’d met at Iguaçu Falls. The people of Buenos Aires seem akin to vampires, eating at midnight, heading out at about 3a.m and then partying till way past breakfast. The climate in Buenos Aires was fantastic, beautiful blue skies and baking hot Sun. We had about a week to enjoy the city and got to explore quite a lot of it, mainly on James’ magical mystery tours which were always good fun. One such wandering took us the area of La [View Full Entry]

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Hi everybody, Sorry I haven´t been blogging much recently. We´ve been busy leaving Pucallpa and heading off to Ecuador, after spending New Year´s Day in Lima (not that anybody was worried....) Now were in Guayaquil, a coastal town of Equador, and tomorrow we´re off to Riobamba to take the famous train that goes to Alausi and then round the "Devil´s Nose". The weather here is f***ing hot and the country seems more developed than Peru. [View Full Entry]

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Happy New Year to you all!!! I´ve decided to give up on the long, in-depth journals I´m afraid!!! So here´s one covering the last, well, almost a week I think!!! New Years Eve I tried to go to Santa Teresa during the day, but the queue for the little train was long and slow, and it was just too hot, so I went to look at the Cathedral instead. In the evening, the party started at about 7.30 at the hostel, with a big group of brazilian friends of the owners and employees thrown in. At some point we went down [View Full Entry]

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On Christmas day I lost a game of beach volleyball to a bunch of coke-heads on a tiny pacific Ecuadorian island called Muisne. It was a normal, friendly game of Ecuadorians vs. Gringos when one guy called a time-out, pulled out an enormous hunting knife, dipped it in his baggie, and snorted what he claimed was the reason he loved living near Colombia. The energy level of the other team quickly accelerated and we gringos were left in the dust (no pun intended). It was definitely a unique Christmas for me. I spent almost the entire day laying on the beach [View Full Entry]

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The bus to Calama was quite pleasent, we were expecting a nightmare, but with air conditioning, reclining seats (think Virgin Atlandic style sleepers), toilets and food and drink supplied, all was good. The bus left Valparaiso at 5pm and we were asleep by 11pm after watching Spiderman 2 (dubbed in English). We awoke at 7am and all that could be seen out of the window was desert, a mass of rocks and sand. We stopped briefly at Antafogasta to streatch our legs but other than that between waking at 7am and arriving at Calama at 3pm all we saw was rocks [View Full Entry]

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Holla, Nous sommes arrivé à Santiago plutòt que prevu. Nous avons été obliger de refaire notre itinéraire. Dans le premier itinéraire nous devions passer par le Brazil, parceque nous n'avions pas de visa pour le Brazil il était impossible de partir de Montréal. Marcel a fait des pieds et des mains pour obtenir un itinéraire qui nous évitait le Brazil si non il fallait retourner à l'embassade et demander des visa, ceci aurait pris au moins 10 jours. Connaissant la difficulté d'obtenir des seiges areoplan c'est un miracle que nous sommes au Chile. Présentement nous sommes chez le cousin de V [View Full Entry]

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hey chaps i have finally gotten around to starting a new blog entry i have just looked at the date of the last entry and realised it is a month since i have added anything. I spent a few days in mendoza recovering from the ordeals of climbing aconcagua. Mendoza being the main wine producing area of argentina had some very pleasant diversions. It also has the best restaurant, a tenador libre which is eat as much as you like including parrilla effectively a huge BBQ with salads and other side dishes. After my fourth plate heaped with meat i had [View Full Entry]

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We were up bright and early on the second of January ready for the 8 o'clock pick up to start our kayaking trip. About 9.30 I wandered down to Antares to find out if they had forgotten us, and after a bit or rearranging we finally set off around 10.30 / 11 o'clock. We really should have learnt by now that Chilean time is different from Australian time. I became slightly concerned when I found that our main guide (German) didn't speak English, but the assistant guide did, so all was well. I became concerned again two hours later when we [View Full Entry]

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From Santiago we flew to Punta Arenas, took a bus to Puerto Natales and from there to the national park of Torres del Paine. Packed with food for a week and all our hiking gear we set off for the W-trail in the park. The name "W" comes from the shape of the trail with three separate branches. The trail took us to see the 2km high granite towers of Paine, rugged snowcapped mountains, beautiful turqoise lakes and the huge Glacier Grey. Of course we were not the only ones to enjoy this all. The peak season had just started and [View Full Entry]

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Une trentaine d'heure de car pour arriver a guayquil et graviter en equateur. Nous partons en particulier dans la sierra, a Riobamba, pour prendre un train qui passe par des chemins extrêmement escarpés, a tel point qu'il doit faire des marches arrières dans une descente trop raide pour faire des virages, et située sur les flans du mont "le nez du diable". 7 heures de voyage sur le toit du train pour découvrir une petite partie de la sierra equatorienne. Après ça on galère trois quatre jours à Guayaquil pour trouver le moyen le plus économique d'aller dans les îles Galapagos [View Full Entry]

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