James and Nicole

Here's a quick round up of our time in Laos. It wasn't a long stay but it was a good one! From Chiang Mai, Thailand we picked the popular route into Laos over water rather than land by taking a slow boat trip up the Mekong river from the border to Luang Prabang. The slow boat ride takes 2 days, with an overnight on land stop in between. The main draw of the trip is to see the Mekong and it's beautiful surroundings of thick forest and river beaches, and also the remote settlements along the way, fishermen going about their business and the like. Unfortunately the first day was pretty overcast and not all that sunny so we were more wrapped up in our hoodies huddling rather than appreciating the view! But the second day ... read more

After the fun of an 11 hour flight, sitting 3 rows apart and me (James) entertaining a 3 year old girl while her mum took advantage of the free bar, we finally arrived at our first hostel (relatively drama free). Nicole had splashed the cash and we had a private room with bunkbeds (sexy). Once we'd dumped or stuff and changed out of our winter clothes we ventured out around the corner, cautiously enjoying the culture shock and ate at a street vendor. I had noodle soup and Ncole pad thai. I'm not sure what I expected but it was amazing,even if we did pay over the odds at around 2.50 each. Quietly sastisfied we returned to our hostel, our first mission into Bangkok a successful one. The next morning we departed on an epic walk, ... read more

Paraty was fairly easy to reach, a mere six hour bus journey (pah). We only stayed two nights, as we just wanted to see the beaches and head on towards Rio (can you tell we´re excited about Rio). Paraty was a quaint little town, with a main square and some shops, restaurants etc. but nothing major, no night life or anything like that. During our day we went to Trindade which is a little village half an hour away, where supposedly some of the best beaches are. We weren´t disappointed, the beaches were gorgeous, and we spent some quality time playing that timeless classic beach game that is "bat and ball" with some little wooden bats we invested in. (until a dog stole our ball haha) That might not sound like a very interesting detail, but ... read more

Once we were back in La Paz, realizing that we had less than a month left of our trip, we had to decide on the things we wanted to do the most. Although we had originally planned to go into the Amazon and do a jungle tour, after our trip to Uyuni we had both successfully caught colds and were thoroughly fed up of wearing coats, hats and gloves all the time (see, you complain about the weather in Britain!) The idea of heading to Brazil for sun, sea and sand was more tempting than heading into the jungle on what we heard was the scariest light aircraft flight of all time (everyone we spoke to said they thought they were going to die). So, we booked the next available flight to Sao Paulo. However, there ... read more

As we´ve got so behind on writing this blog (sorry, trying to catch up as quickly as poss!) Our memories are starting to fade, and I just realised that we totally left out our rafting adventures from Cusco! Not much of a story to tell, but we signed up for a one day white water rafting trip on the Urubamba river, a couple of hours outside of Cusco. It was grade 3, which is for beginners, but we had a brilliant day. Will post on the photos the company took to show you us in action! xxx... read more