After 4 days with no shower, sleeping vertically in a half reclining bus seat on a bus full of noisy but funny Peruvians (due to their ignorance of what classifies as being rude i.e. if you want to put a movie on you just shout out Pelicula at the top of your lungs until the bus driver gets the message), hitting a cow and eating nothing but fried chicken and rice at various service staions accross the Peru, Ecuador and Columbia we made it to the Carribean Coast of Columbia - first stop Santa Marta. We had a quick two nights at a local hostel (La Brisa Loca) run by a lovely American guy, managed to celebrate the end of our 4 day journey a little too hard on the night we arrived (this involved Nicole ... read more
Hey hey We have been in the lovely Mancora for a week now and life is good! We are checked into Loki indefinitely and have a great dorm room with a bunch of girls from various parts of the globe who are all really lovely - so we got a little possy happening which is really cool! Mancora is absolutely goregous! The sun shines all day every day. The water is blue and warm. It´s ridiculously cheap. The people are friendly and the food is great! Life doesn´t get much sweeter than Mancora! The days are filled with lying on the beach under an umbrella ordering food and drinks from the cafes nearby! Surfing lessons occassionally but I went out day before yesterday and got a RUDE shock when I realised the swell had picked up ... read more
We are now in Huanchaco, a beachside village in Northern Peru. It´s really relaxed here so I´m excited to be finally back up to date on bloggy! We met a couple of local guys Eduardo and Diego on the first night when we went for a wander into town. They took us to a great cheap little place for dinner and arranged our following day for us. Eduardo runs a local surf school so guess what we did yesterday! SURFING! But before the surfing we went to the local fresh food market (although that makes it sound way too glorified) and bought the ingredients for Ceviche. We took it all back to Eduardos surf school and he taught us how to make Ceviche! I´ve had it once in Australia before but this was amazing - we ... read more
The 24h challenge begins.......(the 24 hour challenge is a compulsory finish to the inca trek where you are up at 3 thirty to make the trek and you are not allowed to go to bed until at least 3 thirty the next morning). So after finishng the trek we took the bus to Aquas Caliente (about 20 mins)- such a beautiful little touism driven town set on the Urubumba River. Here we had our last group lunch and it was pretty good - but after eating like kings for 5 days on the trek it was suprisingly nothing special - that´s how good the food was! We got the 5pm train back to somewhere (no idea exacty where) but then had to take another bus for 2h to get back into Cusco. We got to Cusco ... read more
Heya We made the Inca Trek. Yippeeee! We were picked up by SAS Travel Peru at 5am Tuesday morning. Our tour guides Fredy and Jose were amazing, extremely entertaining and bent over backwards to make sure we all had a great time. In total there were 14 of us, a mix of canadians, americans, english, irish, germans and a handful of aussies. We arrived at kilometre 82, the starting point of the trek by about 8 or 9 after stopping for breakfast along the way. The begining of the trek follows the Urubamba River pretty closely for the first hour or so before we headed up into the mountains. The scenery, as I´m am sure you could guess, is absolutely amazing. Surrounded by ginormous green mountains in every which direction with the Urubumba river weaving its ... read more
Hola amigos The 13 hour bus trip to Cusco from La Paz was well worth it. Cusco is fabulous. Again we are booked into the Loki Hostel here (there are 4 Loki Hostels in SA) and we are aiming for 3. We have another nice little matrimonial suite for 2 nights which is lovely. Arrived about 9pm last night and had a quick meal followed by an early night. La Paz was quite intense so it was a VERY well deserved early night. Today we have supported the Peruvian economy for probably the next decade in preparation for the Inca Trek which we start in the morning. We´ve got woolies coming out of our ears. From beanies, to socks, bed socks, wooly jumpers, North Face wind and waterproof jackets, cargo pants, thermals, mossie repellant. Its going ... read more
Guess what? WE MADE IT! YAY! Had a great 6 or so hours exploring Santiago and now I wish we had have stayed longer. Things finally started to look up just after we arrived back at the airport; 1. I had a delicous coffee 2. We were waiting to board and just having a chat with eachother and the guy sitting behind us pops his head over the seat and says ´Hey girls, how ya going?´ So we have some new Aussie friends (Julian, Jarrah and Nathan) from South Coast NSW. It has been a WICKED 6 days! The hostel scene in La Paz is really cool. The two main hostels being The Loki and The Wild Rover. The first night (we arrived at 2 in the morning) we had a wander into town for something ... read more
So the adventure begins....................... We had a decent night in Copacabana at the hostel but as both recovering from the terrible ride we kept it low key.... We ran into a couple of the guys from our tour which was nice! We walked Copacabana beach at night and had a sticky beak at the lovely markets. Had two dinners as we hadn't eaten all day, one was Lebanese Copacabana style - YUMMY. The next morning we went back down to Copacabana and enjoyed the beach while waiting to head to the airport for La Paz. LOVELY! So.... we get to the airport with plenty of time. Check in goes smoothly and our luggage is cleared with no specific weight problems (p.s my backpack has lost 3 kilos - don't know how that happened). We go to ... read more
After a big week in Rio we decided it was time for a bit of a R&R so Tuesday morning we caught the 5am bus to Managaratiba in order to get the 8am ferry for Ilha Grande. As soon as you slow down everything takes a hold and we have both been sick basically since leaving Rio - moral of the story don't stop drinking! Ilha Grande is a lovely little island off the coast of Brazil and finally the weather was kind to us so besides being ill we enjoyed some sunshine and salt water! The biggest problem - No ATM´s on the island and I think for the 4 days we had about $300AU between us - nice to finally stick to the budget though - and thank god they take Mastercard at a ... read more
What you have all been waiting for........RIO! - where do I start! What a fantastic place! It´s been 5 days now so I´ll stick to the highlights, but there are loads of highlights! We were dropped off outside Hotel Regina, downtown Flamengo, Rio De Janeiro about 3ish, the traffic was obviously horrendous, not to mention that the bus had no airconditioning and no windows and it was really quite muggy. I got bus sick :( but it´s only the first time in 4 weeks so I haven´t done too badly (I used to get terrible car sickness). And I got to sit up front with the driver and a window afterwards so it wasn´t so bad. I loved Rio instantly - driving through the city on the bus I knew it was going to be a ... read more
