J M

The last stop in Brazil was the Iguazu Falls, which form part of the border between Brazil and Argentina. Iguazu is a system of about 250 waterfalls along a 2.7km stretch of the Igauzu river. Although the majority of the falls lie in Argentinian territory we decided to see them from both sides, spending one last day in Brazil before crossing into Argentina - our last stop of the entire trip. How time flies ... As waterfalls go, Igauzu doesn´t break any records. Its not the biggest, longest, highest or wettest, but hey awards aren´t everything. The falls are extremely impressive and on the Argentinian side especially there are so many viewpoints to check out, it takes a full day to see them all. After Victoria Falls it was great to be able to get so ... read more

Oi, oi. I hope you are keeping up with the Portuguese lessons. If so, you are probably doing better than us, who are still struggling. We have taken to speaking to people in Spanish whether they understand it or not. To them it makes as much difference as us speaking English, but to us we feel like we are putting in more effort! The Pantanal had left us in particularly good spirits. We had loved what we had seen of Brazil thus far, so decided we should see more of it than just Rio. We also figured it was nearly 5 months since we had sunned our selves on a beach so we were in definite need of a holiday. All this travelling can be hard work you know ... So we found ourselves a cheap ... read more

Next up La Paz, capital of Bolivia. Although it isn´t actually the capital of Bolivia, that is Sucre, but everyone thinks and acts like La Paz is the capital, so that is what I´ll call it. A fascinating place which gets a lot of recognition for being the highest capital city in the world, but then I have already mentioned the major flaw in that statement. Arriving here is pretty spectacular. We were driving through the outer suburb of El Alto, about 4km high in the middle of the Andies, when suddenly from out of nowhere a massive great crater appeared. In that crater the city stands, situated there because the Spanish wanted some shelter from the bitter mountain wind. We then descended into a thriving metropolis that awaited us below. Interesting Fact: La Paz is ... read more

"There are 200 species of snake in our jungle, 4 of them are deadly. We don´t stock any anti venom in our lodge and if you are bitten by a bushmaster you have 4 hours to get it administered. I have to warn you now, that you won´t get it in time and you will most probably die." You gotta love these introductionary pep talks! Nothing like putting the mind at rest. Yes, we are in the jungle baby, and as Axl Rose once howled "we´re gonna die!" OK so melodramatics over, there is actually no (known) history of anyone being killed by a deadly snake in this part of the forest, so we were in relatively safe hands. This part of the adventure finds us in the Tambopata Reserve in the Peruvian section of the ... read more

Arriving in new countries means border crossings, and our arrival in Peru featured another interesting one. We were determined to make the first bus of the day into Peru and to do that we needed to get a collectivo from Arica (in Chile) to the border, through no mans land and into Tacna, which is the first city inside Peru. Getting the car was no problem, we had a whole host of 1970 big American fuel guzzlers to pick from, all we had to do was pay the man and wait for the car to fill up. And fill up it did, with 3 other punters (you get 3 in the front in these old beasts) one of whom insisted on farting the entire journey. It is possible that this wasn´t due to flatulence and actually ... read more