Planes, trains and smelly socks ✈️🌍

Santiago, Chile

Mon, 15 Apr 2024 21:30:00 -0400

Day 445 - April 15th We're starting to run out of room in our luggage now as we buy more souvenirs to take home! We sorted out our clothes this morning and managed to get rid of a fair amount that were no longer in great condition. It was also time for me to bid farewell to my Hufflepuff hat, it had got too big for me after being washed a few times! Hopefully another HP nerd will make good use of it 🤭 After a big sort out of our things we headed to the airport and flew 6 hours up to Santiago, stopping on the way at Puerto Montt to pick up more passengers. Santiago should be in the 20s in terms of temperature so we are looking forward to spending our final couple of days in some warm weather 🌞 Day 446 - April 16th We spent today collecting our final souvenirs and presents for home, and Freddy bought yet another coat at the market 😆 Good thing it's winter when we get home... 👀 Santiago is a massive city with some pretty rough areas. Some parts felt like London with similar architecture around the old terraced houses. With our shopping finished we headed back to our little flat and enjoyed some red wine and beer on our balcony. We can just about see the Andes! Day 447 - April 17th We were in a quandry with what to do with our day today because we had planned to go down to the beach but we had underestimated the length of the bus journey. Plus after last night's wine and beer we didn't wake up very early 😅 In the end we decided to go down to the coast despite it equalling 4 hours of bus travel. We don't really like cities so we thought it would be a more relaxing day. We caught the bus and had a lovely journey down to Valparaiso, the bus was virtually empty and the views were quite nice of all the vineyards and mountains. We arrived in Valparaiso but the bus terminal was right next to the very industrial port, not the sandy beach we had imagined! We caught an Uber 15 minutes along the coast to a nice sandy beach. We would have walked but we have to get the bus back at 4:45 and it was already midday 👀 It got up to 29 degrees today! Still the water was freezing and looked a little polluted so we were happy just to sunbathe and watch the random seal we had spotted playing in the waves! After a few hours we got a bit hot so decided to go and get an ice cream from the shopping mall. We got a little sidetracked and ended up doing more shopping 🤭 Freds wanted to have one last walk along the seafront so we went down and took our last seaside photos and then tried to get an Uber back to the bus terminal.. Unfortunately nobody wanted to take the ride so we ended up missing our bus :( can't believe we have travelled for this long without missing a single bus, train or plane 😆 Oh well, we got to the bus terminal eventually and caught a different bus back to Santiago. Just means we won't get to bed as early as we would like for our 3am wake up call 😵‍💫 We are all packed up now and ready to go!! We think all of our good luck has run out because our flight home is already 3 hours delayed, so our stop in Bogotá will be 15 hours instead of 12 and our luggage is no longer checked through 🫣🫠 Let's hope nothing else goes wrong between now and Friday - wish us luck on our journey home!! ✈️ Ps. I will finish writing the W Trek entries when I can!

Punta Arenas, Chile

Sat, 13 Apr 2024 21:30:00 -0400

Day 443 - April 13th After a delightful night's sleep in a warm and comfortable bed we packed up and got a bus down to Punta Arenas! Punta Arenas is a bit of a gateway town to Antarctica. It has a rich history linked with exploration and, at the right time of year, you can even see penguins 😍 Sadly they buggered off last week so we just missed them 😂 One of my Mother's many heroes, Ernest Shackleton, a legendary Antarctic explorer, set out on his famous rescue mission from Punta Arenas in 1916. He and his crew had originally set out to cross Antarctica in August 1914 but their ship got stuck in ice. The story is pretty famous but to summarise, they journeyed across ice to Elephant Island where the crew remained for four and a half months whilst Shackleton courageously sailed to South Georgia Island to find help. He was successful and eventually he set out from Punta Arenas back to Elephant Island to rescue his crew. Incredibly every crew member survived. There is a statue of him somewhere apparently, so tomorrow we will see if we can find him ⚓ This afternoon we did our very stinky hiking laundry 🙈 and then we went out for a nice meal for dinner. We wanted to compare Chilean steak to Argentinian so we found a little restaurant and treated ourselves. It was delicious but we just say Argentina has won this one! I will catch up with the W Trek blog bit by bit this week! Day 444 - April 14th - 444/14/04/2024 🤯 We hired bicycles today so that we could visit the whole seafront. There are a lot of shipyards which Freddy loves and Shackleton is along there somewhere too. We found a man with a van who actually drove to our Air BnB and dropped off two bikes for us, then we set off down to a shipwreck. It's quite religious here so Sundays are observed and most people were either asleep or at church. This meant the roads were practically empty and so was the seafront. There are bike lanes too which made cycling around very easy. We stopped off at a shop to pick up a sandwich and an empanada for lunch. The empanada of south America have been a bit hit and miss, but the ones here are pretty good! I had a napolitana one that was filled with cheese, tomato and oregano 😋 We made it down to the shipwreck which was right on the beach. It was a huge boat that didn't look to be too old, I think it would have been a cargo ship at one time. Freddy enjoyed inspecting and then we carried on along the seafront to a little sandy beach where we had our lunch. It was quite industrial to be honest, not the prettiest place but we had fun finding treasure in the sand 🐚 Next we made our way to the more touristy area of the promenade where they had various statues of Antarctic explorers and maritime things. We found Shackleton holding a pair of binoculars and pointing out to sea. Randomly, there were also a couple of horses on the beach here. We had always wanted to spot sea horses! 🤭 Time for our final stop of the day which was actually a lot further along the seafront than we thought.. got a bit worn out pedaling there into the wind but we made it 🥵 We went to a funny little outdoor museum of old famous boats and ships. They had built replicas of the James Caird which was Shackleton's lifeboat that he used for his rescue mission, HMS Beagle which took Darwin on his first around the world expedition, a random old Spanish ship which looked like a cartoon pirate ship and a few others too. It was great because you could climb aboard all the larger ones and walk around the decks. There wasn't a huge amount of info to read as most of it was in Spanish but it was an interesting place anyway. We returned to town with the wind behind us and along the way we bumped into a ginormous fluffy bear dog and we even spotted some dolphins just off the shore! 🐬After returning our bikes we had a quick look around the gift shops and then headed back to cook ourselves some dinner. Tomorrow we are off to Santiago, our final destination in Chile.

😋

We found a penguin! 👀

Shackleton!

Who is this deep sea diver?..

..Freddy!

Replica of The James Caird

HMS Beagle replica

Old Pegfoot has seen better days I think 👀

🐻 A very friendly bear

🐬

Puerto Natales, Chile

Thu, 04 Apr 2024 21:30:00 -0300

Day 434 - April 4th We got two buses today, the first one took us back to El Calafate and the second once took us across the border to our final country, Chile! We arrived quite late and unfortunately the ATM at the bus station was empty. This meant we had to walk into town with all of our luggage to get cash out in order to get a taxi to our accommodation. Good training for our trek next week I suppose! We are staying in a 'tiny house' for a few days. It's located in a field behind some houses quite far out of town. We weren't sure what we were staying in really and it was very windy and cold and as we walked across the field in the dark we had mild anxiety 😅 It turned out to be amazing! The owner had already built a fire for us so it was very warm and cosy inside. It has a kitchen, bathroom and a mezzanine floor with a bed up the top. The hot water is heated by the fire in a kind of giant Kelly's kettle. There's also a few dogs here who were very friendly when we arrived 😁 Day 435 - April 5th This morning we learned that if you want a hot shower in the morning you need to start your fire much earlier than 9am 👀 Eventually we were clean and headed into town. We decided to walk as we had been sitting on buses all day yesterday and the sun was shining. On our way we bumped into a cow and two goats munching on a grass verge 😆 They were very friendly and the goats were especially interested in nibbling our trousers 👀 We made a hasty escape and eventually ended up in town. We stocked up on food from the supermarket and found a place where we could rent all of our camping gear for next week. We also managed to find a cash machine that wasn't empty 🥳 This afternoon we came back to our tiny house and cooked what felt like the first meal we have cooked in ages! We really enjoyed it but I'm sure the novelty will eventually wear off 😅 One of the dogs has taken a liking to us and she came for a visit, suspiciously as we were eating dinner 🤔 We didn't mind too much 🤭 Day 436 - April 6th Our furry friend ended up spending the night last night! She slept downstairs, sheltered from the weather. People don't keep their dogs indoors here and you see little kennels dotted about fields and at the side of pavements 🏠 We went back to town today to reserve our camping equipment for collection tomorrow. We had planned to walk but a friendly local gave us a lift 🙌🏻 We also managed to find Fred some sunglasses 🥳 and scout the supermarkets for trekking food. It's very wet and windy here so we spent the afternoon in our little house with the fire going and sorting out our meal plans for next week! Day 437 - April 7th This morning we headed back to town again, dropped off our excess luggage at the place we are staying after our camping trip. A little old lady answered the door and seemed extremely kind and happy to help us, spoke no English but was very smiley and warm. We look forward to coming back here on Friday 🙌🏻 We did our last food shop and picked up our camping equipment. Then we spent the rest of the day trying out our tent and figuring out how to fit a week's worth of food and camping gear into my travel backpack and my day bag! We think we got it all sorted on the end. I have so many things dangling off the outside of my bag I'm going to look like Bilbo Baggins on his way to have an adventure 👀 minus the hairy feet. We won't have any internet access until we make it back to town on Friday night, so please wish us luck with the weather and I will check back in when I can!🤞🏕️ W Trek here we come! Day 438 - April 8th W Trek Day 1! We loaded up five days worth of food, clothes and camping gear into our backpacks and set off at 6am to catch the bus to Laguna Armarga. The bus was full of other trekkers, though not many of them had chosen the camping option. Their bags looked remarkably lighter than ours 😆 You can pay to stay in ready made tents, or even in dorm rooms and have cooked meals but it will set you back about $150 US per night 😵‍💫 We arrived at Laguna just as the sun was rising, revealing a very thick layer of fresh snow up on the mountains and down at our level. We hadn't really expected snow to be honest! Luckily we were wearing almost all of our warm clothes so it wasn't too bad. We checked in with the welcome centre and then caught a shuttle bus which took us to the starting point of the trek. From the start we could already see the impressive towers that the park is named after, Las Torres National Park. They looked amazing, but we have to say not as impressive as Fitz Roy! We walked along the valley through the snow and started to make our way up into the mountains. It was about 3 miles to our first campsite, Chileno. Here we left our luggage and then carried on our way up to the towers. The trek is called the W Trek because of the shape of the walk. We were doing it east to west so today we drew the right hand line of our W, /. The Towers are considered the highlight of the trek so most people opt to walk west to east so that they end on the highlight. We are doing it the other way around because the mileage of each day gets less instead of more! Plus a lot of people end up getting to Chileno camp and then not bothering with the towers because they are too tired. The way up to the towers was about 3 miles and very steep. We walked across frosty bridges and through forests where the tree branches were holding about a foot of snow. Every now and then the snow would drop from the branches, showering us in snowfall. It was beautiful. We tried to make prints of our faces in the snow heaps but as you'll see from the photo it didn't work out that well 😂As we neared the towers, the path became very narrow and icy where it had been walked on already. It was pretty slippery but we managed to make it up to the top. It was a little cloudy but we could just about make out the towers of grey rock which stood next to a lake. They were massive and quite impressive. We sat here for a while to have a rest and take lots of photos, then headed back down to camp. I opted to slide down most of the icy path on my bum, waterproof trousers were a great idea 😍 Once we got back to camp we checked in and found our camping platform. This camp was in the woods and on a hill so wooden platforms had been built so create level ground. Problem was it was all frozen and icy! It was a bit of a job to get to our platform without slipping down the slope 😅 Everything was covered in snow and luckily a guy came over and brushed all the snow off of our spot, but it was still a bit icy and very wet. We put our tent up and realised we were going to be in for a rough night 👀 the floor of the tent wasn't waterproof so as soon as we put it down it got soaked. We were sleeping on very thin camping mats which did keep us dry but didn't do much to provide any cushioning 😆 It was a bit of a rough set up to be honest but when you have to carry your equipment you have to make some sacrifices! We had our inflatable cushions and we had also last minute bought some hideous blue cushions with killer whales on from a souvenir shop and we were extremely glad that we had! Without those we would have been so uncomfortable. After we had set up camp we went and cooked our dinner in the kitchen area. For those of us cooking for ourselves we only had a two hour time frame in which we were allowed to cook and we all had to fit on a table for 5 people. They don't seem to encourage people doing it themselves 😆 I think they would rather we bought meals from the restaurant.. Anyway we cooked up our rather fancy meal of rice, mushrooms and broccoli with a cream cheese mushroom sauce 😋 and then headed to bed! It was way too cold and late to have showers unfortunately, plus the facilities were a little grim 👀 baby wipe baths all round tonight 😂 We settled into our sleeping bags and tried to get to sleep. I think I was wearing all the clothes I had including my snood and my wooly hat, it was absolutely freezing and I wasn't sure I would ever get to sleep. Luckily I had brought the travel pills we bought in Belize that knocked Freddy out 🤭 With the help of a mild sedative I eventually drifted off to sleep ❄️ Day 439 - April 9th W Trek Day 2! The sun doesn't rise until around 8am here and so thankfully it means we don't have any early morning starts. Not sure I could handle dragging myself out of my warm sleeping bag whilst it's still dark! We packed up our soggy tent and set off as quicky as we could do that we could warm up. We had 10.5 miles to walk and we had to carry our packs the entire way today. Overnight the temperature had risen above freezing and so all the snow at our level had melted. I was very glad because the way up to Chileno had been quite steep. We walked back down the arm of our W shape and started along the bottom line. The mountains around us were mostly still white with snow and today we got our first glimpse of Los Cuernos - 'The Horns'. The Horns are a set of jagged granite peaks that supposedly look like a pair of horns, to be honest we disagree 👀 but they are very impressive and we will see them up close tomorrow when we hike up the middle of our W shape to the Britanico lookout. We trekked through very pretty, autumnal forests. It was quite windy today andatvone point a rather strong gust if wind actually blew Freddy into a bush 😂 His big pack didn't help his balance 😂 We cooked our cuppa soup lunch at a closed refugio. It's end of season here so most of the posh places are closed. But they do let hikers use the facilities still. We were sat on a picnic table eating when a little mouse appeared from under the decking! He looked hungry so I gave him a blob of rather frozen peanut butter. He sat nibbling it for ages it was great 😍 🐀 Eventually we found ourselves on the shore of a lake. Filling our water bottles up from glacial streams along the way, we followed the lake shore and eventually came to our next camp, Frances. Just before the camper there was a lookout point where you could view the glaciers sitting high up in the surrounding mountains. Freddy was just taking some photos of a lady for her when suddenly a huge avalanche happened way up on the mountainside. I just spotted a cloud of white appearing and then we heard the thundering sound of the snow tumbling down. It was amazing! At Frances there were no empty camping spot available when we booked, so we had to pay a bit extra and book a tent that is permanently made up. After last night we were quite glad of the change and tomorrow will be our hardest hiking day so hopefully we can get a better night's sleep tonight and not have to faff in the morning putting away a tent. The tent was one of those kind of pop up ones that are designed to go on the top or back of a truck. It was erected on a high wooden platform and from there we could see through the trees and over another lake. It was a stunning setting. This tent also had a lovely cushioned flooring so we didn't need to use our sleeping mats at all and the canvass was very thick which kept the heat it much better than ours did! The showers here were great and once we were all clean and warm we cooked up our dinner in the outdoor kitchen. Tonights meal consisted of peas, carrots and asparagus with rice and a lomo saltado seasoning packet. Every meal we ate made our packs lighter and I was very happy to see the back of that tin of peas! Day 440 - April 10th W Trek Day 3! Frances to Italiano to Britanico to Italiano to Paine Grande Day 441 - April 11th W Trek Day 4! Paine Grande to Grey. Kayaking Day 442 - April 12th W Trek and back to P.Natales Grey to Paine Grande. Catamaran

'Tyni House' 🏡

An equine visitor

This one has made herself at home

'Those trousers look tasty..' 💭

💚

I think she enjoued her sleepover 🤭

Beautiful sunrise this morning 🌞

Can you tell who is who 🤭

Some b*stard knocked our little snowman off his perch with his hiking pole 💔

The wind blew our hats askew 😅

Fred at The Towers

Chileno camp, defrosted this morning. Our tent was up in the trees somewhere

Los Cuernos - The Horns 🤘🏻

Mouse and his peanut butter 😍

Tonight's posh tent!

El Chaltén, Argentina

Fri, 29 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0300

Day 428 - March 29th The temperature has dropped a lot today and we set off to the bus station in light snow. The mountains all around us had a fresh dusting of snow too and it was starting to feel quite wintery! The bus journey to El Chalten only took a couple of hours as we drove around the glacial lakes and past a few more dusty mountains 🏔️ El Chalten is a tiny town, you could walk across it within an hour. Here we are right at the base of the Fitz Roy mountain range. The Fitz Roy Range is a mountain range located in the Southern Patagonian Ice Field, on the border between Argentina and Chile. It's renowned for its stunning peaks, including Mount Fitz Roy and Cerro Torre, which attract climbers and adventurers from around the world. Because of this, this town is incredibly expensive and the cheapest accommodation we could find was still £50/night 🥲 We're staying in a tin shack this week which is very drafty but luckily come with a little heater. The internet reception is terrible so we probably won't be in touch very much! We're not here to summit the famous peaks but we are going to be doing lots of hikes around the bottom. Training for our trek in Chile! 🥾 This afternoon we explored the town a bit and scoped out the supermarket and the restaurants, we found a few places that don't look too expensive 🤞 We can cook in our accomodation in the shared kitchen but all the supermarket really sells is pasta, rice and biscuits. This evening the clouds cleared and Fitz Roy appeared 🏔️ it's stunning even from town and we can't wait to get closer! Day 429 - March 30th Today we went on a 6.5 mile hike along the valley to see a waterfall. It was a sunny day but the wind made it quite chilly! The walk started off along the river at the bottom of a rocky cliff. We were wandering along and I asked Freddy to stand on a big rock so I could take a photo of him with the river behind. Suddenly a huge bird flew up from below, it was ginormous! It soared over us and landed on another rock higher up the cliff. Standing there it was about 3.5 foot tall and had a wing span of about 5 foot! It took off again and swooped down towards us coming fairly close to Freddy's head, I thought he might lose his hat 😆 It was an Andean Condor one of the largest flying birds in the world and I think we might have been a bit too close to a nest or something! Another one appeared and they circled the sky above us. After taking a few quick pictures, we scuttled along the path out of their way 🦅🦅 We arrived at the waterfall and it was pretty busy with visitors but we managed to find a little rock or two to sit on and have our lunch. It's autumn here and all the leaves on the stubby bushes are changing colours making it very pretty. The waterfall was nice and afterwards we carried on our way to the river's edge. We wandered back to town along the river bank where noone else was walking. The river was pretty full, I think it's fed by the many glaciers that are up in the mountains. When we arrived back to our tin hut we found a little cat meowing outside our door. It was very windy and cold by now so we let her in for a while to warm up. She quickly made herself at home and enjoyed sharing a cheese savoury with Fred 🤭 Day 430 - March 31st We did two hikes today, the first one took us up to the top of the huge cliff that our accommodation sits next to. We set off fairly early, the sun doesn't rise until 8am here though which is quite a nice excuse to stay in bed a bit longer. We crossed the river over a bit of a makeshift car bridge. There has clearly been another bridge here before but it seemed to have fallen down. Nothing much stands for very long here in the harsh weather conditions! From the top of the cliff we got epic views of the Fitz Roy mountain range and the town. It was super windy and pretty cold so we didn't stay at the top for very long. We wandered back to town and then realised we had lost Freddy's sunglasses along the way 🙈 I think he's got through about 5 or 6 pairs by now 😅 We had lunch and then retraced our steps, after all what is Easter Sunday without a hunt. Unfortunately we never found them! This afternoon/early evening we walked up another hill to see the Mirador de Los Condores. An apparent lookout spot for condors. We did see a few flying in the breeze, but not as close up as yesterday. Tomorrow we are setting out on our longest hike of the week so we took it easy today and headed home for an early night. Day 431 - April 1st Today was our big hike day, a 20ish mile round trek which took us closed to Fitz Roy. We set off early and started our hike up over a small hill that took us into the valley. We passed through a lovely forest of very short tree that were all autumnul colours 🍂 There is a species of deer which lives here called Huemal deer, we didn't spot any sadly as they are very shy. I think it must be these deer that keep the trees so short! They look like they have been bonsai-d 🌳 After the forest we crossed through a huge expanse of shrubberies and dead trees eventually arriving at the shores of a lagoon. It was very pretty and the water was crystal clear. We carried on until we reached a perfect view point of Fitz Roy, and even the clouds parted a bit so we could see every peak of the mountains. We found a bit of shelter from the wind and had our packed lunches here. Lunch marked our half way point and our next stop was supposed to be another lagoon which sits at the foot of the glacier which runs down from Fitz Roy itself. Sadly though the bridge across the river was closed and park wardens were guarding it. Apparently they had to close this section of the park because they didn't have enough staff to deal with any potential accidents. One of the wardens advised us to go and see another glacier instead which was just half an hour away. It was a pretty stunning sight this glacier. It stopped at the edge of a cliff and had a waterfall running down into a lagoon. It was a fair swap for Fitz Roy's. We started our walk back to town, feeling very lucky with the weather and the views today! Our last descent took us back down into El Chaltén and straight into the nearest pub 😇🍻 Day 432 - April 2nd I woke up with pretty sore knees today! But not too bad and Fred says his legs are completely fine 😲, lucky man. We tried to catch a bus down to the other end of the valley for a short walk down there but there weren't any seats left. We took this as a sign to have a rest day and enjoy a couple of local beers in the pubs. We haven't found a place that serves a full pint since we left the UK so that was nice! 🍻 Day 433 - April 3rd We went on a shorter but very epic 12 mile hike today to see yet another glacier. This one was sat right in the V between two mountains. The start of the walk was the same as the one to Fitz Roy but once we got across the flat valley we went left which took us up. Once we had gone up, we went down again and the wind hit us full force. At the glacier lake there were iceburgs floating and white horses on the water. It was so windy! People had built little shelters on the beach out of dead trees and we sat in one and had our lunch. The wind whistled around us and to our surprise a little sparrow sized bird appeared from behind a small clump of grass. It definitely knew where to find sandwich crumbs! We tried to walk around the edge of the lake to get a better view of the glacier but the wind was so strong we couldn't walk against it. When gusts came I had to crouch down and even lean on boulders at times 😅 It was hilarious and eventually we gave up and walked away. On the way back we went through another beautiful woodland where there was a small free campsite in the shelter of the trees. The river ran alongside it and we followed it back to the flat valley. We sort of made our own way up for a short while which meant we found ourselves in rather boggy ground. We ended up climbing through thorny bushes and appearing back on the main path.. hopefully nobody noticed 👀

Just spotted the condor flying up

🦅

I appear to have been ousted 👀

We made friends 🐱

Sunrise view from our tin shack 🌅

The houses here are very odd! Mostly made from chipboard and corrugated metal

A caracara wandering the paths

Finished!!

A pint and a view 👍🏻

Any pizza in there for me?

'Monument to a careless trekker' - some fool set this tree on fire with a discarded cigarette butt

Sheltering from hurricane winds!

El Calafate, Argentina

Mon, 25 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0300

Day 424 - March 25th We made it! We had a few hours sleep on the floor of Buenos Aires airport and a nap in Cordoba. Now we are in Patagonia! We're staying in El Calafate for a few days, right next to a huge lake. It's beautifully empty here. It reminds us of New Zealand and of Iceland and we love it already. There's neighbourhood dogs roaming around that are very friendly. There's a tiny local shop which sells cheese 😍 and wine 🤭 There's a very nice restaurant where we had a lovely dinner watching the sunset over the lake. Plus it's not too cold, just fresh and sunny. Really looking forward to spending some time here! Day 425 - March 26th After a huge sleep catch up we had a bit of an admin day today and sorted laundry 🧦 We decided that we'd like to visit the Perito Moreno glacier tomorrow and discovered that it's actually cheaper to hire a car than it is to get the bus there 😮 So we ran round all the car rental companies in town until we found one that had a car left for tomorrow, we managed to find one just before the shop closed 😅 There are so many dogs in this town and they're all very friendly. A lot of them seem to have taken up semi permanent residences in certain shops and travel agencies 😆 They definitely know how to get attention and food scraps! They're all very chunky so someone must feed them well and a lot of them have collars which I think means they have been vaccinated or nuetured or something. The town is very much a tourist town and kind of what I imagine you find in ski resorts. Lots of tour agencies, restaurants, bars and outdoor clothes shops. Things like tours and buses are extremely expensive but food from supermarkets and restaurants seems to be pretty reasonable and fuel is the cheapest we have seen it, 50p a litre! The weather is still lovely, sunny and fresh, but it's going to change to wet and windy on Thursday so we're glad we can get our glacier visit done tomorrow. I think we might have to hibernate on Thursday as it's going to be very cold! 🥶 Time for us to start adjusting to a colder climate! Day 426 - March 27th This morning we picked up our little white Volkswagen and after much convincing of the rental lady that yes Freddy knows how to drive a manual, we set off to the glacier! 🚗 It was about an hour and a half drive and the scenery was beautiful, it felt like being back in New Zealand. We drove through open fields surrounded by snowy mountain peaks and we hardly passed another car. As we got further west the landscape became more mountainous and snowy. Eventually we were driving along the edge of Lake Argentina and we started to see icebergs floating in the water. The road became very windy and we saw huge birds of prey sitting in the trees, I think they were caracaras. Suddenly we spied a huge wall of blue and white ice through the trees, it was the glacier and it was massive! We parked up and ran down to the boat trip kiosk, managed to get tickets for the 1pm sailing and headed straight down to the dock and got onboard 🛥️ We sailed across the lake and spent an hour viewing the glacier. As geographers we were very excited to see such an incredible natural feature up close. The ice was beautiful blue in some places and we got very close to a couple of large icebergs too. After the boat trip we warmed ourselves up with a hot drink from the cafe and then headed out to walk the trails. They've built a really good set of boardwalks along the forest here which keep you off the ground high enough to get great views of the glacier. The sun came out and we watched in awe as huge sections of ice started to fall off the glacier foot and crash into the water. The noise of the ice cracking was very loud and the whole thing just so dramatic. It was hard to stop watching for more and carry on walking. We saw quite a few ice falls in the end and Fred managed to catch a huge one on camera, sadly I can't upload videos to the blog but it will be on Instagram once we have caught up! I think the glacier is definitely in our top 5 things we have seen, it was almost unreal. After a good few hours of glacier watching we made our way back to town. On the way we saw rheas in the fields! These are like a smaller version of an ostrich. This evening we went out for a steak dinner, if you're in Argentina you have to have steak right? It was declious and a very nice end to a brilliant day 🍷🍺🍛 Day 427 - March 28th The weather forecast for today wasn't brilliant so we hadn't planned to do much. In the end it was a sunny but very windy day so we went to the Glaciarium, a museum next to the lake all about the glaciers of Patagonia. It was a pretty good museum and brought on a lot of flashbacks to my geography A-level, I had glacier notes selotaped to the walls of our loo 😆 The ticket to the museum also included two drinks in the ice bar. It was literally a giant freezer with a bar made from ice. We've been to these before but I don't think I've been to one this cold, it was -12 🥶 The bar man didn't seem to like us very much and I think it may have been because he realised we are English 👀 might be wrong but we couldn't see any other reason! We had our drinks quickly and then escaped.. In a week or so we are doing a 5 day camping trek in Chile called the W Trek. It's taking a lot of organising so we spent the rest of the day sorting that out, cooking our final meal and packing up for our bus trip tomorrow up to El Chalten. We also popped out for a walk down the the lake this evening and saw and flock of flamingos! 🦩

El Calafate

Travel agency dog

Bus station dog

Park dog

Restaurant dog

Car rental dog 😆

What a treat 😋

El Calafate tea

Puerto Iguazú, Argentina

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0300

Day 420 - March 21st We got two flights today, the first to Buenos Aires where we had a 5 hour wait and then the second to Puerto Iguazu. In Buenos Aires we decided to leave the airport for an hour or so and visit a nearby Japanese gardens. The weather there was lovely, quite warm, a sea breeze and no humidity. The gardens were very pretty and in the little rivers and ponds they had huge Koi carp. After the gardens we wanted to walk around another park that we had seen on the way but unfortunately we quickly realised that it was full of mosquitos and so we got chased out and ran away in an Uber back to the airport 🦟 Our flight to Iguazu was delayed a bit so we didn't arrive here until gone midnight. We have come to this funny little corner of countries to see the incredible Iguazu falls. Tomorrow we are off to see the Brazilian side! Day 421 - March 22nd Day trip to Brazil! We hired a taxi man to drive us across the border and bring us back again after we had finished our visit. Extremely easy border crossing, all done through the car window 🤭 The weather here is hot and it will be the last hot weather we see until we get to Santiago in a few weeks. Iguazu Falls is around 2km wide and consists of nearly 300 waterfalls 😵‍💫 hence it is split between Brazil and Argentina. When we arrived we had to get a bus down to the panoramic walk. It was about 11km and we drove along a road that took us through the jungle. It was an open top bus and it was very nice to have delicious forest air blowing through our hair after a few days of being cooped up. When we reached the start of the walk we descended some stairs and out from behind the trees a stunning view of the falls appeared. I've seen photographs of it before but it was something else in real life. Just a huge wall of water falling hundreds of metres. Our view was of the falls on the Argentinian side, we were level with the top and could see right down into the massive river canyon below. It was incredible. We walked along and couldn't believe the amount of water we were seeing just tumbling over the edge and it just seemed to go on for miles. The river that this comes from must be ginormous. At the end of the walkway there was a metal walkway that went out over the water and almost underneath one of the waterfalls. Standing at the end of it you were drenched in mist and could feel the power of the water vibrating the platform. The noise was incredible too! After drying off and taking about a million photographs we returned to our taxi and headed back, wondering how on earth tomorrow's visit from the other side could top today.. Day 422 - March 23rd Well. First of all we went on a boat ride on the Argentinian side and what a blast that was. We went in a rib and the journey down the river to the bottom of the waterfalls took us through rapids which was pretty exciting! We were told we would leave this tour drenched and were given dry bags to put all of our belongings in, including our shoes! They weren't joking either! The boat went right underneath some of the smaller falls. I say smaller because they were small compared to the huge ones, but by no means were they 'small'. You could barely breathe under the water and it was crazy! It was hilarious with everyone screaming and getting completely soaked. What a thrill it was to actually interact with the falls. Freddy tried to get a video and some pictures with his phone in a case but they didn't quite turn out to plan 😂 you'll see what I mean! The boat ride was amazing and luckily we had the rest of the 30 degree day to dry off. We spent a good few hours walking the many trails on this side. They have an upper and a lower trail so that you can see the falls from different angles. We walked on boardwalks that took us right across the huge river and through the jungle. It was so hard to comprehend the size of this place and the incredible amount of water. We spotted a bit of wildlife, including some very daring herons that were fishing on the edges 😳 If there were herons there then there must be fish that go over 🫣 flying fish? Yikes! I can't really put into words how incredible this place was, you'll just have to visit it yourselves! And if you do we recommend doing both sides or if just one then do the Argentinian side but make sure you 'splash out' 🥁 on the boat trip 🤭 Day 423 - March 24th Tonight we begin the most gruelling journey of our trip. We leave Iguazu at 10:30pm and fly to Buenos Aires. There we wait from 1am to 8am to catch our second flight to Cordoba, then we have a 5 hour wait before our final flight at 2:30pm which takes us to El Calafate in Patagonia! 🗻 It's mostly waiting around and we will survive but we will certainly be glad when it's over. This is also the last flight we have to do where our luggage allowance is only 15kg each. We've had to ditch some old clothes and I've been trying to stop Fred from buying more stuff but alas this morning we visited a mineral mine and so if course he bought more rocks 😂 Let's hope they don't check his pockets! 🪨 The mine was really interesting. It's not a boring old mineral mine where they extract useful things, it's one where they extract geodes of crystals! To be honest, I've never really thought the crystals in shops that you see in every seaside town at home were real 😂 I don't know why, they just look too crazy to be real. But today we saw them in the rock and it was amazing! They form under incredible pressure when hot rocks can't cool down and where the heat can't escape. The mine was only small and just 2m deep. It's still active today but only very carefully mined and mostly by hand. It takes them about 3-5 months to extract each geode 💎 Apparently there are diamonds here but much deeper underground and the government won't permit them to dig so far down. 👷‍♀️

Brazilian side 🇧🇷

Bit soggy!

Argentinian inflation 🫣

Argentinian side 🇦🇷

A very brave heron!

😂 in the waterfall!

Alfajores XL 😵‍💫

Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Bolivia

Mon, 18 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0400

Day 417 - March 18th This morning we flew from my favourite airport ever up to Santa Cruz. It was a very short 45 minute flight and by midday we were in our next Air BnB. Favourite airport ever explained - it was very small and quiet, it had 3 chocolate shops (Sucre is home to Bolivia's most famous chocolate factory, Para Ti) where we did manage to have a delicious £1 hot chocolate, and there was a very friendly dog wandering around 😆 What a morning 😍 Freddy's still not fully better so our plan is to rest again this afternoon, get some planning done then hopefully go out tomorrow and do some exploring! We are now almost back down to sea level, I think we're at about 300m. We can definitely feel the difference, breathing the air is like breathing soup. Really hoping this helps to get Fred back to 100% quickly. We only have a couple of days here before we depart Bolivia and head down to Argentina and Brazil to see the incredible Iguazu Falls! Day 418 - March 19th We had another rest day today, Freddy still isn't fully better and it's very hot here so we didn't spend too much time outside. We did wander into town to buy some hiking gear for Patagonia but this nearly finished Fred off so we hid away in our air conditioned room for the rest of the day. Day 419 - March 20th I have finally finished writing about our tour of the salt flats and Freddy is feeling much better today 🥳 We went out to see the botanical gardens this afternoon. We weren't expecting too much but we ended up spotting a sloth, terrapins and capybaras! The capybaras were drinking from a lake. I just happened to spot what looked like a large orange rock on the opposite shore and after zooming in on Freddy's phone camera we confirmed that there was a little family of them all having a drink. The adult was huge! Almost twice the size of the rescued one we saw at the sanctuary in the Amazon. The map we we had of the park showed a sloth on the logo and we didn't really think much of it until we found a sign that also had a sloth on it. Freddy looked up in the adjacent tree and there was a sloth dangling 😆 we weren't expecting to see any more of these creatures! 🦥 This evening we took ourselves out for a nice meal because we've been feeling grim the last few days. Plus we had a bit of cash left to spend as we haven't really done anything! We went to a bit of a posh Suisse restaurant where they had a cheese board 😍 9 cheeses! What a treat and thoroughly enjoyed after such a long time with no tasty cheese 😂😋 Tomorrow we are off to Argentina 🇦🇷

Bus station buddies - all these dogs have made our journey more enjoyable!

A couple of hairy mclarys greeted me on my way to the supermarket

The airport dog 😁

How is that comfortable 😂

Huge cactus tree!

Hello sloth 🦥

Terrapins and turtles sunbathing

You can just about see the Capybaras

Pretty greenhouse

Yes we found dogs of course

Cheeeeeeeeeeese 😋

Buenos Aires Japanese gardens

Sucre, Bolivia

Fri, 15 Mar 2024 13:00:00 -0400

Day 414 - March 15th Today we had a bit of a hellish journey, I would say our worst yet but Freddy still remembers his nightmare journey onntje bus in Sri Lanka 😅 We had to catch two buses today and we've both been up most of the night with stomach cramps. The first bus took us to Potosi which is the highest city in the world! We didn't have long here to experience this though as we had to get across town to the other bus terminal where we caught our second bus to Sucre. All in all we travelled about 12 hours today and neither of us has managed to eat anything further than a biscuit 🤢 At least we made it here with no accidents! Day 415 - March 16th Today we woke up definitely not very well. We're staying in a self contained Air BnB that has a very nice bathroom and kitchen so it's not a bad place for us to be whilst we recover. Our host is very kind and brings us breakfast in the mornings. We're pretty sure we have giardisis which is causes by a parasite found in contaminated food/water. Luckily we are still carrying the antibiotics that I bought in India when Fred was really unwell. Time to put them to use! Apparently this unfriendly bacteria doesn't like oregano so I managed to get out to the supermarket and we had oregano pasta for dinner 😂 can't hurt. Day 416 - March 17th Today I am feeling much better, Freddy says he's at 50% but when he moves around he feels worse. We stayed in again, luckily the football was on to take Fred's mind off things for a while and for once Chelsea won! 🥳 I think that helped his healing process too. Tomorrow we are flying up to Santa Cruz which is a little further north. You can get there by bus but it takes about 20 hours and you have to go overnight, we are extremely grateful that we chose to fly given our current state 😵‍💫

Uyuni, Bolivia

Mon, 11 Mar 2024 19:40:00 -0400

Day 410 - March 11th Today we got two buses, the first one to a place called Oruro which sounds like it was named by a singing husky and then another to Uyuni! Overall it took us 10 hours of travel to get here, but we met a lovely french girl called Emma on our second bus ride. We chatted to her for the entire second bus trip and the time went by very quickly. She has just finished a whole year in Peru 😵 she's been working there volunteering in the culture sector. Uyuni is a bit of a dust bowl and there doesn't seem to be much going on other than dogs wandering the muddy streets barking at each other. Luckily we're just here for tonight and then tomorrow we're off to search for flamingos on the salt flats 🙌🦩🦩 Day 411 - March 12th We met our tour group this morning at the company's office in town. Most people had arrived this morning on the night bus from La Paz and so were pretty tired. There were ten of us and one guide. We split ourselves between two jeeps and set off to our first stop, a train graveyard 🤔 Apparently this was where some of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid was filmed. Our guide explained a little bit about the history of silver mining and the export of various minerals via train to other countries of South America. The steam trains left here to rust are the ones that got left behind after the upgrade to diesel engines. Over the years the locals have taken away anything useful or salvageable and all that is left now is the hollow shells of the trains. They now apparently make a great place for tourist photos as you're allowed to climb all over them. Our second stop was at a salt factory. It was a little smaller than you might imagine. More of a shed with a load of salt blocks in it that get crushes down to powder, treated with iodine and lemon and then bagged up and sold. I didn't know that iodine is added to salt to help with thyroid function 🤔 After the salty insights we had lunch in a building that was built out of salt blocks, we later learned that we would be staying here tonight as well. By now our group had woken up a bit and we got to know each other a bit more. We met a couple from the Netherlands - Almas and Nick, a couple from England - Tom and Jaz, a couple from Ireland - Toby and Anne-Marie and a couple of retired headteachers Arthur and David - not a couple! After lunch we headed out to the salt flats! It's the rainy season here so the flats are flooded with a couple of centimetres of water. When we arrived in our jeeps we saw the stunning reflections of the sky that the water created. The flats are huge, you can see for miles and not see a thing but a few mountains on the horizon. Because of this, this place has become quite famous for playing around with perspective photography. You might've seen the photos and videos of people seemingly walking out of pringles cans and things. The water hindered this for now and so we created some videos and photos using the perfect reflections. Our guide has clearly been doing these for a while and he directed us as we danced for posed shots. My idea of hell to be honest but I had to go along with it 😂 We wandered around the flats just looking at the stunning scenery of huge white clouds and a massive expanse of water. We looked more closely at the salt we were standing on and saw tiny cubes of salt floating in the water, so weird! In some places there were holes in the crusty surface and underneath you could see huge crystals forming. The water was so salty that if you put your hand in, it came out white and stung. After a while we drove off to see the salt hotel which someone had built here years ago. It turned out not to be very sanitary and has since got quite run down. I think you can actually still stay there but I wouldnt recommend it 👀 Here also there is the Dakar stone monument that was erected when the Dakar car race was first held here in 2014. There were some dry patches of ground here which meant our guide could lay on the ground to create some forced perspective videos and photos. This time we had to act out a few scenes. First we were running away from a giant plastic dinosaur, then we were dancing our way out of a beer can only to be chased back in again by an oversized ogre played very well by Arthur. I guess that comes easily to some teachers 🤭 All this group acting did help to bond us as a group and we had a lovely evening watching the sun go down on the salt flats. The sunset wasn't that spectacular, but there was a huge lightning storm on the horizon which was very exciting to watch. Our guide had even brought some Bolivian red wine out for us to sample as well 🍷 Cheers to day 1! 🌅 Day 412 - March 13th Last night we stayed in a room made of salt blocks, even the bed frames were salt! It was a unique experience that also came with a unique smell 👀 After breakfast we met a brilliant dog that had dreadlocks, probably not very comfortable for him but he didnt seem to care. He was very friendly and happy to see everyone. Our first stop today was at a field of quinoa. I had no idea quinoa came from South America and kind of thought it was one of those niche things that has been labelled a 'super food' by nutritionist salespeople. You find it in a lot of dishes in Bolivia, even in their chocolate bars! It grows on buds of colourful plants that kind of look like lupins. Next up we visited a field of llamas, they had tassles on their ears again and looked very stylish. We've now learned how to differentiate a llama from an alpaca, llamas have longer noses and alpacas tend to look like teddy bears and have a shorter nose. We have also driven past vacuñas which are very similar to llamas. They're much more spindly and look like deers from a distance. Vacuñas are wild and can't survive being farmed, their wool is extremely valuable and you can pay US$200 for a vacuña cardigan! We made our way to the main even of the day, flamingos! Stopping at a rock field where Freddy and Nick climbed all over the sandstone rocks. Or guide showed as an odd looking plant that grows only up here at this altitude. It looked like an ordinary moss covered rock but there was no rock, it was just a solid plant with very short green hair. Driving to the lagoons was like driving through a Martian landscape. It was mostly beige sand with mountains in the distance. There were no roads, just dusty tracks through the sand. We finally arrived at our first lagoon where, standing in the shallows were a handful of pink flamingos, sweeping their beaks through the water. We have been searching for flamingos our whole trip! Freddy's niece Eve is flamingo obsessed so we wanted to find some for her but also they are very cool birds 🦩 We had our picnic lunch here and watched the birds go about their business. Over the mountains a storm was brewing and eventually we saw more lightning in the distance. The rains seemed to be coming out way and so we packed up before we got drenched. On our way to tonight's accommodation we stopped at two more lagoons where we saw more flamingos. There are 6 types worldwide and Bolivia is home to 3 of them. We saw the Andean and the Chilean, the last type the James' or Puna flamingo only live above 4500m altitude and were thought to be extinct up until the 1950's when a small population was discovered high on an Andean plateau. We're staying at a very remote 'hotel' tonight which has its own hot springs. Just around the corner from it we visited some funerals. These are vents in the ground where hot mud bubbles at the surface and the air stinks of sulphur. We've seen these in Rotorua in New Zealand, but these ones were quite exciting too! Apparently a silly tourist fell in one and died a couple of years ago 😳 Or this might've been a fictitious tale to stop us from getting too close.. There's only electricity here for 3 hours this evening so in the window of light that we had we charged our phones, ate our dinner and opened the drinks we had bought from the market. After dinner we all headed down to the hot springs to finish our drinks under a ginormous and stunning blanket of stars. It was definitely the most stars we've ever seen and we even saw some shooting stars too! We had a very merry evening with our group.. 🍷🍻🌠✨ Day 413 - March 14th This morning, as our 5:30am alarms went off, we were all regretting last night's decisions 😅 Everyone had a hangover apart from Arthur and David, who very sensibly headed to bed at a reasonable hour. We also think that last night's dinner was a little dodgy and some of us were suffering more than usual. Those of us who had chosen veggie food weren't too bad but those who had had the meat lasagne were in a poor way. Luckily there was a stunning sunrise over the lake which distracted us for a while. Today our group splits, some of us are heading back to Uyuni whilst the rest are crossing the border to Chile. We all drove down to the 'Green Lake' which was next to the border. Here we could see mountains in three countries, Bolivia, Chile and in the distance Argentina. We said goodbye to the Chile goers and then headed back to the hot springs where we had to wait for our guide to return after helping them make the crossing. It was very hot this morning and we sat around in the sun, trying to ignore the pains in our heads and our stomachs. Freddy and I went for a little wander around the lake edge and found some funny grassy bushes that looked as though an 80's troll had been buried with it's hair left above ground 😆 We also found a small flock of flamingos and some vacuñas that had come down for a drink from the lake. Eventually our guide returned from Chile and we set off on our 7 hour journey to Uyuni. We stopped along the way at a few view points, including a rock formation where Freddy and Nick went climbing and saw viscachas! These are rodents that are related to chinchillas and look a bit like very depressed/sleepy rabbits. They're incredible rock climbers and bounce around at lightning speed. For lunch we had food in a random hut that stood seemingly in the middle of nowhere. Huge storms rolled in over the surrounding mountains and the thunder shook our little corrugated iron roof. We swiftly left the metal rooved building as the lightning came closer and carried on to Uyuni. By the time we arrived we were all exhausted and very ready for our beds. Luckily Freddy and I are staying here for the night, we felt very sorry for those getting straight onto the night bus 🥱 Overall it was a brilliant tour and we met a lot of lovely people and saw some very unique sights. We just regret our drinking choices and as you already know will now take about a week to recover. Though I don't think the parasites are necessarily our fault! 🦠

Bolivian countryside! Much prettier than La Paz 😅

Big clouds this evening

Buying supplies through the window

Choo choo! 🚂

Our group 🙌

A hole in the salt 🕳️

Seem to have picked up a nasty case of nits!

Tiny salt cubes

Not quite the flamingos we had in mind 👀

Apparently people bring their flags here, no Union Jack as of yet!

Salt lifting

Crazy reptiles around here!

Salty room and salty bed

Arthur the ogre 🧌

Rasta dog!

Quinoa!

Flamingo footprints 🦩

No clim-bins

Anyone lost a troll?

Viscacha 😍

Cómo se llama?

La Paz, Bolivia

Mon, 04 Mar 2024 19:40:00 -0400

Day 403 - March 4th Goodbye Peru and hello Bolivia! Our journey to La Paz from Puno wasn't too bad. I think the bus we travelled on was the poshest we've ever seen 😯 The border crossing took a while but it was very relaxed and easy. By the time we arrived into La Paz it was mid afternoon so we went to grab some lunch at the closest place we could find. It was an Irish pub who were showing the Premier League, what a stroke of luck 😂 The food ended up taking absolutely ages so we didn't have any time to explore afterwards, but first impressions of La Paz are mixed. It's clearly a big and bustling city with some noisy and grimey looking areas, but we also found some quaint market streets on our way to lunch. Looking forward to getting out and about tomorrow. Day 404 - March 5th Freddy still isn't feeling great so we think he might be coming down with something. We took it easy today to give him a chance to recover. Our hotel comes with a ginormous free breakfast that even comes with dessert 😵‍💫 so it took us a few hours to digest this morning before we headed out to drop off more laundry and explore the streets. La Paz is famous for it's markets, notably one called the 'Witch Market' (she turned me into a newt!). We're not sure if we'll go to this one. It's in the evening and there are rumours of animal products being sold which aren't very ethical sourced. The day markets in the streets around our hotel are interesting and have a lot of the same stuff that Peru had. But we did notice stuffed baby alpacas hanging up 😔 apparently they're buried underneath Bolivian houses and buildings as a sacrifice or something ridiculous. Heading away from all of that we found ourselves in a world of football shirts 😆 More to add to Freddy's collection! At lunchtime we discovered a little Cuban place that made the most delicious sandwiches ever. They were just chicken with salad but the chicken had been marinated in something heavenly. We will definitely come back here! We also had a side dish that was little kind of cups made from potato or yucca that were filled with smoked ham and some melted cheese, served with a pepper dip and pork scratchings. Very unhealthy but very tasty 😋 After lunch we wandered downtown towards the football stadium, we were hoping to buy some tickets for Sunday's match but the office wasn't open today. The stadium isn't as grand as I think Freddy was hoping but I'm sure Sunday will bring a good atmosphere and a good time anyway. The match is between two local teams, The Strongest and Bolivar. Feeling quite worn out from walking around this very busy and hilly city, we walked back to our hotel for a rest and then headed out for some healthier dinner 🙌 Day 405 - March 6th We had intended to go to the 'Valle de la Luna' today, the Valley of the Moon, but after breakfast we were feeling extremely lazy and Freddy is still a bit under the weather. We stayed in until lunchtime, organising our tour of the salt flats for next week and then headed out to the cinema. We first went to a huge Cineplex place but they weren't showing the film we wanted to see, Dune Part 2, until later this evening so we got a taxi to another cinema a bit further out of town. The drive out of town was abojt half an hour and as we got away from the tall city buildings and into a more residential area I started to doubt that there was actually a cinema around here. But sure enough there in the middle of a quietish town was another large cinema and shopping centre. Sadly the English version was sold out 😭 but we stayed here for a little while as they had an interesting arcade area with VR rides. We went on one that simulated a ginormous swing. It's so odd how effective it is to trick the bain with imagery and a little bit of seat movement. It really got our stomachs and we left feeling quite sick and dizzy 😂 Are we getting too old for this stuff?! 😵 We made our way back to the original cinema but instead of getting a taxi we took the gondola! There is a network of gondolas above La Paz and they're probably the quickest and cheapest way to get around, so long as you're not afraid of heights. It's fairly new though and Freddy felt safe enough to ride it. From up here we got a good view of the city and it's surroundings. La Paz seems to have been built in what looks like a huge sandstone quarry. I imagine it used to be water but from the jagged edges of the surrounding rock it does look like it's been scraped out. Looking around at the orange landscape it felt like being on mars or something. After successfully navigating the gondola network we found ourselves back at the first cinema and just waited for the 5pm showing which was in English. They clearly don't sell many tickets to the English audio films as they seem to only shown them on the VIP screens where they have less seats. It's like one of those fancy cinemas at home where the seats recline, you have a table and you can order cooked meals and fancy drinks. It was a great film, the only downside was it was subtitled in Spanish and so during the scenes where they spoke a different language we had no idea what was going on 😅 Day 406 - March 7th This morning we took a taxi up to Valle de la Luna, the Valley of the Moon. It's an area of natural rock that has been saved from development and is characterized by its otherworldly lunar like landscape. The area is composed of tall spires and pinnacles, deep crevices, and rugged terrain, all formed by years of erosion. We enjoyed wandering around, taking photos and peering down into the cracks. We also saw some lovely little green parakeets here 🦜 After we had finished our walk around the rocks a big rainstorm came and so we hopped into a taxi and went off to try and do some shopping. We ended up getting around on the gondola again which was fun. My day bag has started to break and we have a few multi day tours coming up so I'm trying to find a new one. No luck today unfortunately! This evening we ordered some food in for a change as we had to organise ourselves and get an early night for tomorrow's activity 👀 Day 407 - March 8th Today we survived Bolivia's 'Death Road' 🙌 If you've seen the Top Gear episode you may remember them driving up this - 'the most dangerous road in the world'. Happily (sort of) we were mountain biking down it rather then driving in a car or bus. We were picked up from the hotel at 7am and got into a bus full of the other people we would be cycling with. It was a mix of tourists, Canadian, German, American, French and Welsh. Everyone was tired and probably a bit nervous so conversation was limited until we stopped for breakfast. Then we got to know a Canadian couple, Derek and Steph who had been travelling for a few months. We drove for about half an hour out from the city to the start of our 60km bike ride. We were kitted out in full face helmets, layers of coats, trousers, gloves and knee and elbow pads if we wanted them. We then got our bikes fitted, they were proper mountain bikes with very good suspension. I kind of thought maybe it was a bit overkill as we were only cycling down a road.. The ride begins at almost 5000m above sea level and ends at around 1000m so we had a lot of downhill to cover over a distance of 60km. I didn't realise quite how steep this road was 🫣 We set off on a lovely smooth road, zipping down the mountain side past waterfalls and greenery. On this section I reached a top speed of 32mph, but the road was so smooth and nice that I didn't even realise I was going so fast. Freddy was probably going a lot faster 😆 We stopped every 20 minutes or so to regroup and check nobody had any issues. After about 11 miles we reached the start of 'Death Road'. Farewell smooth tarmac 🥲🫡 Hello horrible loose gravel and big pointy rocks 😵 I hate gravel. If I went on Room 101 I would put gravel in there. It's nasty evil stuff and has no business being on paths or roads. After doing a short 300m section on gravel previously, I was really disheartened to learn that most of this road was gravel. I don't like the feeling of having little control over your speed, the loss of vision due to vigorous jiggling or the feeling of the bike wheels sliding around underneath 🙈 The group travels in single file and you have to leave a big gap between you and the person in front. You shouldn't really overtake either so I opted to go at the back as I knew I would be slow, Freddy went to the front as he was confident and quick. The scenery was stunning but we had little time to look at it whilst we were cycling. You had to really concentrate. We cycled through streams and under waterfalls which was quite nice as it was a very hot day. We still stopped every now and then to regroup but we at the back didn't get very much time to rest as it took us a while longer than those at the front to get to the rest stops 🙈 The downhill cycling position puts a lot of pressure on your hands and coupled with almost constant breaking it made my hands really sore. I found myself bonding with a Welsh girl called Grace who was also with her boyfriend who had also gone to the front. We were happy going along at our own pace and had the same opinions on gravel and sore hands 😅 We rounded a corner and found that a few of the group had stopped as someone had come off their bike. It was Cain, Grace's boyfriend. He was ok, but had badly scuffed up his elbows and would need stitches. We carried on down the road whilst he got patched up in our tour bus which was following us. After a while I realised I couldn't hear Grace behind me so I stopped and waited for her. It seemed like ages until I saw her and the bus come round the corner, I started to think I'd somehow gone the wrong way or she had had an accident. We regrouped and the bus driver waved at us to 'vamos' - go go go. She wanted to check on Cain but he wasn't in the bus, eventually we worked out that he was with one of the guides a little way behind. Grace seemed a bit shaken up by Cain's fall and so I stayed with her for the rest of the way. We were a lot slower than everyone else but we didn't really care at this point, our little hands were so sore and cramping we just wanted to reach the end and have a beer! After what felt like an eternity of bumpy ground we eventually found the town and our final river hurdle. Chello, one of the guides had waited for us in the town to make sure we went the correct way and also guides us across the river. Unfortunately Grace got stuck in the middle and plopped over sideways. It was very shallow and I think this final discomfort just defeated her as she just sat there in the water 😂 I got off my bike and went over and pulled her and her bike out, I'm not sure why Chello didn't help! I guess he is used to much worse accidents and she hadn't hurt herself, only her pride. The final section was uphill (still gravel) and we just took one look and said nope and pushed our bikes up. We finally made it to the restaurant which marked the end of our bike ride. We regrouped with everyone else, Grace went off to sort out their travel insurance coverage for Cain's stitches that he would need and I got changed and went straight into the swimming pool. What a relief to have made it here, I think I can definitely say mountain biking is not for me now. I'm glad I did it but I think the joy I felt was more from having finished than anything else. Freddy on the other hand really enjoyed it and said it's in his top 10 activities. After a swim and a shower we all sat down for a well earned meal and then headed back to La Paz on the bus. This time we took the new road back rather than death road 😅 On the journey back, Chello entertained us with stories of when things had gone wrong on the tour and showed videos of various accidents people had had 🙈 Most of them were because the riders were being silly and some of them were pretty unlucky. I'm very glad he showed us these videos on the return trip anyway 😅 Day 408 - March 9th We woke up rather sore today, especially my in my forearms and hands. Freddy was feeling a bit under the weather again so he stayed in bed whilst I went off to run some errands in town and continue my search for a bag. Unfortunately none of the shops were open before 11am but there was a huge market on. There's always market stalls lining the streets here selling clothes and random things, but this morning there was a big fruit and veg market. It's funny here, instead of having a person shout 2 cabbages for a pound or whatever the Bolivian equivalent would be 😂 they have prerecorded messages that they play on a loud speaker. Some people spend the day walking tiny carts round selling coffee or ice cream with a little speaker on a long pole, advertising their wares. We usually get woken up by these in the early mornings. We went out for some lunch and found a nice local restaurant. I had breaded chicken that came with rice, two fried eggs and a salsa salad and Freddy had a ginormous baguette sandwich. They don't do small meals here! We have eaten so much food lately 👀 and it has all been very tasty 😋 After lunch I finally managed to find a decentish bag. It's not the most stylish but it will do for the tours we have coming up 🙌 We flopped back in our hotel room. It's chaotic out in the city today so we didn't fancy staying out for too long and we were recovering from yesterday! Then this evening we went out for some dinner and bumped into Steph, the Canadian girl from yesterday and her Mum. Derek has gone back to Cusco for three weeks to do a yoga teaching course so Steph and her Mum are going into the Amazon rainforest for a few days, lucky them! Day 409 - March 10th The reason we have stayed in La Paz for so long is because of the football match on tonight! We went to see a Bolivian derby, The Strongest Vs Bolivar at the national stadium. We finally managed to get tickets today from outside the stadium. We arrived early afternoon to ensure we got seats and found there were already huge queues at each entrance gate. Luckily we managed to ask some locals where we should buy our tickets from and which gate we should use! They don't have allocated seating here, you just buy a ticket and then the seats are first come first serve. We chose to sit in 'The Strongest' end, they were the underdogs with Bolivar sitting at the top of the league currently. It was still 3 hours before the game but the queues were huge, everyone wants the best seats! We decided to join them and queue up. There were people selling squares of polystyrene too and almost everyone in the queue had about 3 or 4 in their hands. We figured the seating must be uncomfortable so we bought some too. When we got into the stadium we realised that we really didn't need to be in 3 hours early and much to Freddy's dismay, no alcohol was allowed 😂 The seating was the worst Freddy had ever seen, no seat backs and just concrete bum shaped seats. They were actually alright comfort wise but the polystyrene came in handy to shield our faces from the sun and also as a warmer seat as the sun went down. The 3 hours up to kick off actually went quite quickly as we watched a marching band do a lap of the stadium followed by cheerleaders. By the time kick off came all the seats were pretty much filled and the two ends were alive with chanting and music from the fans. It was a great match, one all at half time and then The Strongest scored a winning second goal. It was very scrappy with a LOT of diving and rolling around on the floor 😂 The atmosphere was great and when we left the stadium everyone was very well behaved, no issues between the fans which we were surprised about! I guess the alcohol ban helps with that. What a great way to end our time in La Paz, tomorrow we set off by bus to Uyuni where we are staying one night and then we disappear into the Salt Flats for 3 days. I don't think we'll have any signal out there so I will catch up on the blog when we return :) 🦩🤞

A bus with a curtain to divide us if we wanted 😂

Our kind of pharmacist 🤭

They love the Simpsons here!

Views from the gondola!

Baby in a box 😅

Wondering if Button Moon is nearby

At the beginning! 🚲

Wonky knee pads 🙈

The road is in there somewhere

Lunch stop 😋

The Strongest' biggest fan 🐕

Polystyrene sunshade 😎

Puno, Peru

Fri, 01 Mar 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 400 - March 1st We had a looooong old bus journey to Puno today. It took half a day and was on probably the grimiest bus we have been on. Luckily though we had great seats at the front of the top deck which gave us panoramic views of the landscape. We were travelling along valleys of the Andes and it reminded us both of Iceland. Green and white with hardly any towns or villages. Every now and then the bus would stop to let food sellers on. Unfortunately the food they sold smelt very graphic, at one point a lady was hacking up some joint of meat at the top of the stairs, filling bread rolls with it and passing it around the bus. It proved very popular with the locals but the smell was too off-putting for us 👀 When we arrived into Puno we walked to our hotel and found that the road was closed. It was full with crowds of people and loud music could be heard. We wondered what was going on and it turned out it was Puno festival or something. One night of the year spent celebrating and dancing traditional dances in the street. We were starving so we headed straight out to grab some food and had intended on watching the festival afterwards as apparently it went on until around midnight. We saw some of it and it looked like a great party! We found a restaurant that was open and had some food, when we went to leave we found that it had started hailing extremely hard outside. The road was a torrent of water and sadly the festival and been brought to a close. We had no coats as the weather an hour ago had been fine! We had no choice but to leg it to the hotel, we got completely drenched and frozen 😂 Then came huge thunder and lightning, we love a storm so we huddled into bed and watched from our window. It was rather dramatic and the thunder shook our window panes. What a start to Puno! ⛈️ Day 401 - March 2nd This morning we had our breakfast in the hotel and then spent most of the day resting. Actually we spent the morning plunging our hotel toilet but I won't go into that too much other than the plumbing in south America doesn't cope well with toilet paper 😆🙈 We walked down to the lake this afternoon via the markets. It's quite rough here, not in a dangerous way but it's very poor and run down. We found a cafe which sold sandwiches for lunch, it's been ages since we have found a decent sandwich! We spent the afternoon organising our trip to Bolivia and catching up the blog! Then we headed out for dinner. We've been enjoying the food in Peru and I have forgotten to write about it recently. Tonight Freddy had smoked trout which is super popular here, probably because the trout comes from the lake. We've also enjoyed a spicy stuffed peppers dish, lots of quinoa and also they love potatoes in this country in all sorts of varieties. My favourite 😋 After dinner we went back to the bar where we had eaten last night and had a few drinks, no Pisco sours this time though! Day 402 - March 3rd This morning we went on a boat trip to see Lake Titicaca and the floating islands where small villages of people live. The islands are made completely from a reedy kind of plant that grows near the shores of the lake. The houses on the islands are also made from this plant and so are the boats that they use. Very versatile plant! The tour was ok, it was nice to be on the lake and to learn about the wildlife. Apparently there are just 7 types of fish living in the lake and none of them are very big. They have ginormous frogs living in the central part which grow up to 60cm long 😵 I can't imagine a frog that size! We were taken out to the islands and whilst it was interesting to see these unique villages it did feel like a bit of a tourist/money making trap. We were first told the trip was 10 soles each, which then doubled when we paid. This is still only about £4 each so we didn't argue as we thought well it's still cheap. Then when we got to the island we were sung to by some villagers who actually sang the nursery rhyme row your boat 😅 and then kind of guilt tripped into buying souvenirs. We then got a ride on one of the traditional boats that they built but it was just pushed along by an engine powered speed boat 😂 which kind of spoiled the authenticity. We were told we had to pay for this too which was fine but we were very low on cash and hadn't been warned about extra fees 👀 Whilst on the boat ride, 3 little girls in traditional dress did some dancing and then held their little knitted hats out for coins, so of course we had to give them what little cash we had left 🙈 Once our pockets were emptied the guides didn't really have much else to say to us and just ferried us back to shore. It was interesting but when tours do this with extra fees it always ruins the fun. It hasn't happened to us that often though which is good and we are learning from each experience 😅 The altitude here is affecting us a bit, I'm not sure if it's just that or all of the stress and journeys of the past few days but we were feeling really exhausted again so we headed back to our hotel and flopped for the afternoon. This evening we popped out to pick up some dinner and found that the dancing parade from our first night was back! The streets were full of dancers, musicians and singers and in the main town square there was a big crowd all enjoying the festival. It was great to see and everyone was having a lot of fun. Today was our final day in Peru! Tomorrow we are up bright and early for another bus journey to La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia and the highest capital city in the world ⛰️ Altitude pills at the ready 🤞

Snowy Andes in the distance

On the road to Puno

Lighthouse at Lake Titicaca

SS Ollanta - a flat pack or 'knock-down' ship originally built in Hull, England and put back together here on the lake

All this boy wanted was a hug.. eventually a dog gave him one 🤭

The Uros village people singing us some songs

The plant that the islands are made of! Very squishy after a night of rain

Cusco, Peru

Wed, 28 Feb 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 398 - February 28th This morning I had planned to have a lie in as so was so tired from the previous few days but Cusco had other plans. At 7am there was loud banging coming from outside, it sounded like gunfire to me. I thought no it can't be... But I had done so much reading about Peru and risks and all sorts over the last few days I had come across some level of terrorism threat here 😅 I thought well if it was gunfire there would surely be screaming etc but I heard nothing else. Just then Freddy phoned me and said he might have to get the train down because there had been more rain in the night, I said that was probably the safest option anyway and so he set off for breakfast with his plan to find out about the path and if not then get the train. Meanwhile the loud noises outside my hotel room were getting very close, so I decided to get up, get dressed and go and find out from reception. I was cleaning my teeth in the bathroom when suddenly loads of 'shots' went off so close to my building that I actually ducked in the bathroom 😂 I threw on some clothes and went to reception. The woman there was very friendly and explained that it was fireworks and happens every day in Cusco 🙃 why they set them off in daylight at 7am I do not know but my frayed nerves were very relieved and I scurried off back to bed. Next I had a message from my Mother to please call her, fearing she had had another accident I called straight away.. she was fine, it was just about a run we had signed up to 😂 By now my nerves were very fractured and I had no hope of getting back to sleep. I had planned to go to the post office today to send home a load of clothes and presents because we have a flight coming up which has a lower luggage weight allowance than usual. Whilst I was organising my things I heard from Fred that the police had completely closed the path and so he was getting the train back. I was happy to hear this as it was much less risky. I went off to breakfast feeling happier and didn't really mind when I poured hot coca tea on my sugar puffs instead of milk 😂🙃 (i ate it anyway). After a very successful trip to the post office and a quick look around the market for a warm jumper I came back to the hotel, made myself some lunch and set about organising transport for our trip to Palcoyyo mountain tomorrow. Freddy managed to make it back to Cusco around mid afternoon and even caught the second half of the Chelsea match 😂 After our stressful few days we took ourselves out for a nice meal to celebrate being back together and Freddy making it to Machu Picchu and back, unscathed. We couldn't help but wonder what had happened to the missing people and Freddy said that walking past the area felt very sombre. It turned out that a mudslide had actually partly destroyed a small settlement where people lived. It had landed on a group of tourists on the trail and three people were knocked into the river. One of them has been found alive, unfortunately one has been found dead and a 12 year old girl is still missing. I'm not sure tourists should ever have been allowed to continue walking on that trail, not only because of the risk but it also seems disrespectful to those people. They have since closed the path until at least the end of March. Day 399 - February 29th On to better days! Today we had a great time at Palcoyyo mountain. There is a famous mountain near Cusco known as Rainbow mountain and it's very popular with tourists. It earns it's name from the bands of coloured rocks. However we researched it and heard from other travellers that there is an alternative place you can visit which is just as pretty and far less crowded - Palcoyyo. We hired a taxi to take us there and wait for us and then bring us back to Cusco. It was about 3 hours each way but it was worth it. We had a fair bit of elevation to climb as Palcoyyo sits at 5040m above sea level. We had stocked up on coca leaves and chocolate which both help with altitude sickness. Chocolate I'm overly happy to eat but I don't like the coca leaves they're very bitter and give you terrible breath. They're the leaves from which cocaine is made and chewing them settles nausea from altitude sickness by essentially making your mouth and stomach numb. As we climbed higher and higher the weather changed and the temperature dropped. We passed through various villages along the way and saw hundreds of llamas and alpacas. One group of them had funny pink tassles hanging from their ears, like some kind of fashionable ear extensions 😂 We think it was a way of the farmers marking which animals belonged to them, perhaps we should adopt this at home instead of ear tags, they're much prettier and they keep flies out of their ears! When we reached the carpark it was hailing outside and there was noone else up here. We got out and layered up in our hats and waterproofs. Our taxi driver found us a guide who would take us on the walk around the mountain. It was very misty but also windy so every now and then the clouds cleared and we got glimpses of the view. We stopped at three view points and also walked up to a huge rock formation known as the crystal forest because the rocks look like trees. Our guide, Benny, was great. He didn't speak any English but he took photos for us and carried a little medical kit which seemed to consist of a bottle of Gatorade and some other liquids. Luckily the weather cleared just long enough for us to get a stunning view of the colours of the mountain, it was beautiful! We got a quick picture with Benny, gave him a tip and then jumped back into the taxi. It was very chilly up here! Our driver gave a lift down to one of the villages to a local woman and her child. They sat in the front and we tried to say hello in Quechua which is the language they use. They both wore traditional dress and the woman carried a huge colourful sack around her back, the contents of which were unknown to us. I would guess at crops or something. We had some lemon mentos and we offered them some, the little girl took the packet, unwrapped them all and gripped them very happily in her little hands 😂 We arrived back into Cusco for our final evening. I had some food left from yesterday and so we ended up cooking ourselves a bit of an odd dinner of delicious avocado on ciabatta with a rather too rich pasta. I think we had bought concentrated pasta sauce by accident 👀 oops! Tomorrow we leave Cusco and set off for our final stop in Peru, a town called Puno which sits on the shore of the famous Lake Titicaca!

Look what I found 🤭

The squintiest photo ever, the sun came out! Us with Benny 😊

😋

Very happy to be back and eating mushroom fettucine 🥰

Benny and his medical kit

Santa Teresa, Peru

Mon, 26 Feb 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 396 - February 26th This morning we took a 7 hour bus journey up to the start of a trail we planned to take to a town called Aguas Calientes. This sina very small town situated at the base of the huge rock that Machu Picchu sits on. The bus journey was very hairy as we got within 5 miles of the trail. We climbed up a very steep and narrow road which was littered with fallen rocks and had no side barriers. It was a rough journey, we were very squashed at the back and the bus was boiling with no ventilation. When visiting Machu Picchu there are a couple of routes you can take. You can go by train direct from Cusco, which costs around US$120 per person or you can take transport to Hidroelectrica which is the start of a two hour trail that you can walk to reach Aguas Calientes. From Aguas Calientes you can then either climb the stairs or take a 30 minute bus ride up to the entrance gate of Machu Picchu itself. You can also get the train from another town called Ollyantaytambo. Our plan was to walk from Hidroelectrica to Aguas Calientes, stay the night there then in the morning get bus up to the entrance for our ticket time of 8am. It would take us a couple of hours to do Machu Picchu, then climb the stairs back down, hike back to Hidroelectrica and catch another 7 hour bus back to Cusco. When we arrived at the trailhead we were dropped off at a basic outdoor restaurant where lots of people were having lunch. We had no phone signal up here. We were waiting around to go and then it appeared that the trail was closed. A woman in charge was explaining in Spanish to the crowd what had happened. As we had no phone signal we couldn't translate what she was saying. Luckily there was an Irish guy there named Colin who kind of translated for us, he explained that there had been a landslide, two people had been swept into the river, were subsequently missing and for now the trail was closed. Everyone was stressed because tickets to Machu Picchu can be hard to come by and they are very strict with your entrance time and some people had planned to go there today. People were understandably not very willing to translate too much for us so we had to kind of guess what our options were. At first we assumed the bus would just take us back to Cusco as we didn't think they would be opening the trail any time soon considering two people were missing. We waited and waited for this to be confirmed and then the lady in charge shouted Frederick and passed us her mobile, she had our bus company on the phone. With broken English and broken signal, he explained that we could either be taken back to a town called Ollyantaytambo, where we could catch the train to Aguas Calientes, or we could wait and see if the trail reopened this afternoon and if it didn't we could stay in a nearby small town called Santa Teresa. We could then hike up very early in the morning, do Machu Picchu and then come back down and catch our pre-booked 2:30pm bus back to Cusco as planned from Hidroelectrica. We couldn't afford the train ticket and so we opted for option two, stay here and go back to Cusco tomorrow. Colin and a few other tourists set off to the trail despite the advice not to, most people went to Ollyantambo and just me, Fred and a Japanese couple were dropped off to Santa Teresa and taken to a very cheap and fairly nice hotel. Luckily the hotel we had booked in Aguas Calientes for tonight were understanding and cancelled our reservation. We decided we weren't going on the trail today as it sounded too dangerous and unlikely to reopen so we took the afternoon to explore the area. We walked down to see the river which was absolutely raging and brown with mud. People in the town here were very friendly, lots of them asking if we needed help or anything. We found a restaurant to have dinner and kept trying to find out updates on the situation. Freddy was in contact with the bus company who were saying that the police and other people were trying to build a bridge for tourists to use to bypass the landslide area. He also told us that Colin and party had made it up to Aguas Calientes that afternoon safely, which was good news for them but annoyed Freddy as he had wanted to go with them. The advice from tourist information was that the trail was closed. The problem was that the trail was also a railway line, another section of the line that goes to Aguas Calientes, but that the train from Cusco or Ollyantaytambo bypassed. All we could find out was that the railway was closed, it was very unclear if the walking path was open or not. Whilst we were eating, a guy came over to us who spoke English and asked if we were headed up to Machu Picchu, it turned out that he was in the same boat as us but had driven himself and his family up here. A while after chatting with him he came back and said that he'd found an official announcement that the trail was closed and wouldn't be reopened for at least two days. I was relieved to be honest because I didn't like the sound of the risk, plus it was continuing to rain so I thought there was a chance of further landslides. Freddy and I have quite different perceptions of risk though and so I knew he would want to do further research. We went to bed with a plan and a compromise to go to the trail head at 5am, with the Japanese couple who wanted to come with us, and find out from the staff at the checkpoint if the trail was open. Day 397 - February 27th I didn't sleep very well 😅 I woke up at 3am and did a lot of reading, eventually finding the WhatsApp number of Peru's tourist information. I messaged them to ask for the current situation and they said the advice is to not go. I decided that unless a miracle had happened overnight, I wasn't taking the risk and would wait for the bus back to Cusco. I knew Freddy might still want to go though and so I agreed to still go in the taxi and find out the information from a reliable source. The Japanese couple were ready to get the taxi, even carrying with them a tiny washing line which they had pegged their underwear to 😂 this lightened the mood a bit! I don't think I'd ever be brave enough to walk around with my bra and pants on display 😂 The taxi first tried to take the public route to the trail, it was still dark and we found that more rocks had fallen in the night and were blocking the road. At this point I really wanted to turn around and go back to bed 😅 but the driver got out and moved some by hand, we got a little further and found huge boulders completely blocking the road. We turned back and I breathed a sigh of relief. Until he announced there was another route we could take, but we had to get permission from the land owner to use it. We got it and set off, by now there was another car full of people on the same mission as us. They drove ahead and more rocks littered the road, eventually we came to another impasse and had to give up. The people in the other car got out and started walking, I thought they must be mad, what if more rocks fell 🫣 We went back to Santa Teresa and said goodbye to the Japanese couple who were going to go back to Ollyantaytambo and get the train. I assumed we were just going to spend the day here and then get the bus back to Cusco, but Freddy wasn't going to give up so easily, he was determined to make it to Machu Picchu.. As it was so early, nowhere was open and so we wandered around the town for a few hours, visiting the river again which we could see had calmed down a bit. Freddy wanted to see if the trail opened this afternoon and then go up, stay tonight in Aguas Calientes and come back tomorrow. We already had accomodation booked for tonight back in Cusco and our luggage was there also, we had just brought a few clothes with us for this trip. For me, Machu Picchu wasn't worth the stress, risk or time so I said I would go back to Cusco today whatever happened and if he wanted to go up that was his choice. Obviously I didn't want him to go as I thought it was very risky, but it was his decision to make. A cafe eventually opened and we had some coffee and tried to find out as much information as we could about the trail. The news kept changing and it felt like the tour companies were being under cautious and the tourist information was being over cautious. Reports of who was missing kept changing depending on who we asked and what we read and it was very unclear what condition the path was in. We went down to the police station in the town square and after a lot of conversing in bad Spanish and English their advice was to just go up there and see for ourselves. So we got a taxi back to Hidroelectrica. We actually bumped into a guy who was from our bus yesterday who was doing the same thing and he shared the taxi with us. The road had been cleared by this point and so we made it back to the trail head. The latest news was that the bridge they built yesterday that Colin and co used had washed away but they were building another one. Freddy checked in at the check point, the staff didn't say that the trail was closed so at this point he was just going to try and see. I went back to the restaurant to wait for my bus back to Cusco. It was a bit of a scary goodbye for me as I was quite worried about the chance of further landslides, but Freddy backed himself to make his own judgement and off he went. The guy we shared a taxi with also came to the restaurant with me to wait for a group he was supposed to be walking with. The restaurant was empty apart from a few ducks, chickens and a little dog. We sat down and had a bit of a conversation in our broken languages. He was from Mexico and we chatted about travelling. Eventually a man appeared in an empty minivan and came over to us. Him and the mexican guy chatted and it seemed this man was in contact with someone on the trail. He got a phone call and the mexican guy told me that apparently the path was definitely closed and Freddy had been sent back. I couldnt help but be relieved. Then about 5 minutes later another call came in. The man spoke very animatedly and was waving his arms around, I waited for the mexican guy to tell me what had happend but he suddenly stood up and was shaking hands with the guy. I said what's happened, thinking Freddy had gone in the river or something. He said no, the bridge is built and the path is open and he has to run to meet up with his group. I shouted good luck as he disappeared around the corner, leaving me alone with the guy who spoke no English. We gave each other a friendly smile and tried to occupy myself by playing with the dog. I had about 4 hours to wait until the bus arrived and there were horrible biting flies here. I did my best to cover up but they got my forehead quite badly. They weren't mozzies but they did draw blood, horrible things! After a while another minivan turned up and it was the restaurant staff and the lady from yesterday who had been in charge. They all came over to me speaking in Spanish very animatedly. They all sat around me and I tried to explain I was waiting for the bus, they couldn't understand why I wasn't going to Machu Picchu and it was hard to explain 😅 eventually they got the message and also found my name on the list for the bus. I was grateful to know that the bus was definitely still coming, though I thought it was a bit odd that the tours were still bringing people up here considering the situation. The bus arrived and only 3 of us got on board. Noone had made it back down from Machu Picchu, we weren't sure why. At this point I just wanted to get down to an area where I had phone signal and could check on Freddy. The bus left and it was very slow going. There were diggers clearing more boulders off the road and so we had to keep waiting for them to finish. Our driver was very impatient 🫣 A very horn happy guy! We eventually made it back to Santa Teresa where I got signal and messages from Freddy came in that he had made it and was in Machu Picchu. Hallelujah! Now I just had to get back to Cusco on this road of death 😂 I eventually got back to the city around 10pm, I legged it to our hotel, dumped my bag and then legged it to McDonald's. I hadn't eaten since 10am and was feeling exhausted. I just wanted something quick and safe to eat. I took my food back to the hotel and warmed myself up in bed, the bus journey had been freezing on the way back! Freddy had found somewhere to stay and so for now everything was fine. Just had to try not to think about how he was going to get back tomorrow and get some sleep 🫣

He made it! 🥳

Does this count as Paddington? 😆

The river raging through Santa Teresa

Machu Picchu is up in those clouds

Cusco, Peru

Sat, 24 Feb 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 394 - February 24th We're staying in a self contained Air BnB for a couple of nights now before we head up to Machu Picchu. It's fair to say we need a few easy days of rest after our time in the Amazon! Today we just sorted out our rather stinky laundry 👀 popped out to San Pedro market to have a look at souvenirs and presents. Then this evening we went out for a poshish meal for Freddy's birthday ☺️ it's tomorrow but we are celebrating tonight as we have to get up early on Monday. We went to a restaurant that did Peruvian/Italian tapas, it was very tasty and different! After dinner we had a wander around the streets as there seemed to be a bit going on, people were playing music and generally sitting about socialising in the square. There was an impressive African drummer playing which we enjoyed for a while too. Day 395 - February 25th We had slightly sore heads this morning from our Pisco sours last night, we only had one but they are very strong 😂 Freddy watched Chelsea play against Liverpool in the league cup final and I popped out to buy him some birthday pastriesbfor breakfast 😋 After eventually getting over his heartbreak 👀 (Chelsea lost) we went out to go for a couple of walks in the countryside around Cusco. First we went to a waterfall where we walked through a forest consisting of eucalyptus and pine trees. It was very peaceful but we were suffering from the altitude a bit so every step was a bit of an effort. Fred then phoned home to speak to his parents for his birthday and then we went off to another location where we visited a huge cave and the 'devil's balcony'. It was basically a hole in the cave where you could look down over the river. Again it was a beautiful place but we were struggling with the altitude and I think still recovering from the last few days! Tomorrow we have to get an early bus

Birthday pisco sour 🍸

Brownie with lemongrass icecream 😋

Birthday pastry arrangement 🎂

Chelsea shirts at the ready 👀

Atalaya, Peru

Tue, 20 Feb 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 390 - February 20th Day 1 of our Amazon adventure. We were picked up from Cusco by our tour company at 6am. When we got on board we saw that the couple we were told who were accompanying us, were actually two separate men. They say at opposite ends of the minibus and neither of them looked up from their phones as we got on the minibus👀 eek, could be an awkward few days we thought to ourselves. We stopped shortly after our pick up at a bakery where they bake traditional Peruvian breads. We've had some of this bread and it's not very nice to be honest, very dry 😂 but we politely nodded as our guide told us about it. When we stepped out of the van, the older of the two men shook our hands and introduce himself in Spanish as Antonio. The other guy then also introduced himself as Sean, he was American and was sure to tell us how he spells his name 👀 Luckily this broke this ice though and we did get chatting to Sean during our breakfast stop. Unfortunately Antonio didn't speak English and neither Sean nor we speak enough Spanish to hold a conversation. Our guide also introduced himself at breakfast, his name was Cleber and he looked a little younger than us. He spoke fairly good English and seemed very friendly and easy going. After all the introductions and ice breaking was complete we set off to the Amazon rainforest. We took a very winding and steep road down the mountains. Cusco is 3400m above sea level and our destination was about 300 so we had a lot of downhill to do! The landscape became very green and it was extremely misty. We couldn't see much of the view but we did stop several times along the way as Cleber spotted various birds sitting in the trees. Our favourite today was the golden headed quetzal, a beautiful bird mainly shimmering turquoise with a red belly and a golden head. Cleber carried a scope on a tripod that we used to take photographs through on our phones, cheating a bit but it's the best way to get a clear image! We stopped to have our packed lunch at a waterfall. The lunch was provided for us and consisted of chicken and rice or a veggie omelette and rice in my case (have opted to go veggie for this tour just incase). They provided some condiments and we discovered our new favourite sauce ever - chilli cream. It's like a mustard/mayonnaise/chilli mix and we've vowed to try and recreate it when we get home 🙌 Our final stretch of today's journey took us through a tunnel where we had to wait for a huge long lorry to come through first. The road is barely wide enough for cars to pass each other and the tunnel actually turned a fairly tight corner so I have no idea how this lorry managed it but all the guys got out of the van to watch closely 😂 I'm the only girl on this tour including the staff, help! It was impressive though I must say. We stopped a few more times and watched some woolly monkeys in the trees from a distance. We weren't quite all the way down yet and so this habitat was a bit different to where we were headed and we wouldn't see the same animals. Tonight we stayed at quite a nice lodge right next to the river. It's rainy season here in Peru and so the water was flowing furiously. After a long day of travel we got early nights and fell asleep to the sound of the river. Day 391 - February 21st We got up early this morning and enjoyed a jungle breakfast of fruit and eggs. Then we started our journey further down the mountain and into the rainforest, leaving the cloud forest behind. On the way we stopped again at various points to walk along the road and watch birds. We turned a corner and there was a spider monkey sitting on the roadside next to a fence. Cleber seemed to know this monkey as he went over to it and almost shook its hand in a way! The monkey was very inquisitive and climbed straight onto Freddy. It investigated his pockets and started making hoo hoo nosies in his face, then it climbed down and tried to take Freddy somewhere pulling him by the hand. The monkey then span him around in a dance before climbing back up and settling herself around his neck, resting her head on top of his 😂 Another monkey appeared, this one was a woolly monkey and it decided it wanted to climb on me. It was very warm and it's tail was so strong! At one point he was swinging from his tail which was wrapped around my neck 😂 It was like trying to hold a wriggling toddler that had 5 limbs instead of 4. Cleber explained that behind the fence was an animal rescue centre where orphaned or injured animals come to rehabilitate. These monkeys were from there and they had freedom to roam wherever they wanted. We would be visiting the centre properly on our final day. Our next stop was at a kind of gardens I suppose where they had a bird lookout and an area with lots of hummingbird feeders. We first watched some vultures from the lookout. They were perched in low branches overlooking an old cow carcass that was almost just bones. Very creepy looking birds and the smell meant we didn't stay to watch for too long! The hummingbird garden had a seating area with a roof and as I was watching the hummingbirds I heard a loud tapping noise coming from the roof. I looked up and there was a toucan sitting in the rafters, bashing his beak on the wood! This was Pancho, a toucan that comes here regularly to be fed and also steal the sugar water from the hummingbirds it would seem. Along the wooden railing of the seating area were little plastic pots full of sugar water with a lid that had a small hole in, just big enough for a hummingbirds beak or tongue. Pancho had figured out that he could pick these pots up, turn them around in his beak and then shake the water out! Genius bird! After the hummingbird stop we continued on to a small town where we loaded all of our luggage and food and water for the next few days onto a long boat. We were given a pair of wellies each which we would need for walking in the rainforest, it's very wet and the wellies provide protection from all sorts of creatures. Once the boat was loaded up we set off down the river. The water was very muddy and flowing very fast. After about 30 minutes we landed on a kind of beach, we climbed out and carried everything up into the forest where our lodge was. This was starting to feel like a real jungle adventure. We arrived at our lodges which were wooden huts on stilts and had a little explore around. We had some free time before our next excersion and we were all feeling quite exhausted so we went for an afternoon nap. In the afternoon we went back out on the boat. Antonio discovered he had a hole in one of his wellies at this point, and so we gave him a plastic bag to put over his foot whilst he waded in the water, hence his new nickname bagfoot 😆 We travelled up the river and made our way to an oxbow lake where we climbed onto a wooden raft. Cleber punted us along and we searched the banks for signs of capybaras. Unfortunately we had no luck but we did see a lot of birds and fish. After our dinner this evening we went out into the rainforest for a night tour. We were covered head to toe in clothes and DEET to ward off the mosquitos but there weren't actually that many. We all carried a torch each and set about spotting what we could. We found huge crickets the size of my hand, frogs, lots of massive moths and stick insects and at one point I just looked to my right and a snake was right there in the low branches. Luckily it was a non-venomous fellow as somehow Cleber had walked right past it and it was about a foot away from my head 😂 it was brown and very long and just casually posed us as we took photos 🐍 Day 392 - February 22nd The plan this morning was to get up at 4:30 to go down the river to see an area of cliff where parrots of all kinds come to lick the clay. They do this because their diet of fruits and nuts doesn't provide them with all the minerals that they need and the clay supplements this. Our alarms went off but Cleber didn't arrive, this meant that we weren't going due to rain or mist. Back to sleep! When it was time for breakfast I went outside to put my boots on and a frog hopped out 😂 It startled me and I made it 'jump' and it took refuge under my bed 😆 We managed to take a photo of it to show Cleber and ask if it was dangerous or not. He said no it was harmless and we could pick it up and put it outside. Well I tried to but it was such a horrible cold squish texture I was afraid to grip it hard enough to stop it leaping out of my hand. Eventually we had to give up and I think it's still under my bed now. There was a gap between the top of the wall and the roof of our rooms so it was essentially open and a small bird or bat managed to fly into Sean's room and then into ours 😅 it too took refuge under my bed 😂 We were starting to build a bit of a menagerie! After breakfast we set off for a long hike up the hillside to the top of the forest. We didn't see a huge amount of wildlife along the way, but the views out over the forest and river were amazing and the plant life was really cool and Freddy was very happy with the variety of mushrooms that we found 🍄 We stopped where there was a clearing and had some fruit to eat. I can't remember what it was called but it was like a large passionfruit and you had to suck the juice out. Was a bit graphic and slimey but quite tasty. After another afternoon nap we set off to do a few random zip lines. This wasn't in our original itinerary but it was a fun activity, we just did 3 shortish ziplines through the jungle and then abseiled down a tree. Freddy wasn't overly keen for the final part but he did it 😁 Following the ziplinin we went out on kayaks onto a small tributary of the river where the water was very still. We were on the look out for capybaras again but had no luck. Instead we had fun skimming stones for a while, Freddy showing off his skills. This evening we went out for our final night tour. We saw a tarantula this time the size of a dinner plate 🫣 another snake! This one was very venemous but luckily the guide of another group spotted it before anyone else did. It was on the ground and for some stupid reason he poked it with his machete and it tried to escape, but as it was surrounded by oggling tourists it had nowhere to go but towards someone. We had stayed a safe distance back so we weren't in danger but a few people had to jump out of it's way. It wouldn't have got through a welly boot but still, bit scary! On our walk a moth had landed on my coat and stayed with me the whole time. It even came back to our room and slept on my coat overnight. Now we had a frog a bird and a moth, anything else to add before we leave tomorrow? 🐍 Antonio hadn't joined us for the last night tour as his knees were bad, but he was waiting for us back at the lodge with a huge bottle of rum. Cleber told us that he had invited us all to join him for a few drinks on this, our final evening. Sean declined but Freddy and I said we would stay for one as we were pretty tired and tomorrow we were getting up at 4:30 again for the parrot clay lick. We sat down with Antonio in the outside seating area and he poured us some drinks. We cheersed our glasses and then sat back and listened to the sounds of the forest. There are all kinds of noises at night here, frogs, birds and monkeys all seem to like to make a bit of a din. We all suddenly became aware of a loud rustling noise coming from behind us and we turned to see a large shape on all fours, coming towards us in the dark. At first I thought it was a pig or a warthog, Freddy thought it was a bear or Cleber 😂 Then I realised it was a tapir! It was sniffing around the fruit trees and coming over to us. There was a box next to our table that had been used as a bin and had old food in it. The tapir came over to investigate and poked her long nose straight into the box and pulled out a half eaten fruit of some kind. It was hilarious, she didn't seem to care that we were there at all. Cleber appeared and said that he had seen her once before in the camp and that she had raided the kitchen 😂 We watched her in awe as she sniffed around. She became very interested in Antonio, she went right up to him sniffing his shirt and face with her long nose 😂 She disappeared after finding nothing more to eat and we went and sat back down, not quite believing what had just happened. She was only about a year old so it was very strange that she seemed so tame! After a few minutes she appeared again, this time coming right over to our table. We patted her and it turned out she enjoyed a good scratch, even lying down and rolling over like a dog for belly scratches 😂 It was so funny and she seemed so attracted to Antonio that we named her Antonia 😆 a love affair had really begun. Deciding she had had enough of being scratched by us, Antonia disappeared again into the bushes. After a while, Freddy and I said we would go and check the kitchen because she had raided it before so we were suspicious. We went round the back where all the food was kept and sure enough there was Antonia, munching on a cauliflower 😂 she had overturned the rice bags and there were half eaten vegetables everywhere. We called the others and they came over. All of us rather merry now this was hilarious. Cleber didnt even seem to care that the food supplies were being demolished in seconds and even encouraged her eating more cauliflower and tomatoes 😂 It was a hilarious evening and we ended up staying up past midnight and when we eventually went to bed, Antonia followed us to our lodge and tried to get onto our room. We had to close the door on her and she headbutted the wall in anger 😅 Eventually she got the message and went on her merry way. What a crazy final night in the rainforest! Day 393 - February 23rd Somehow we managed to get ourselves out of bed at 4:30 after about 3.5 hours sleep 🫣 We pulled on our boots and wet clothes (nothing dries in the rainforest) then set off down to the boat. We joined a few more groups of people on a little island in the middle of the river where we sat and waited for the parrots to arrive for their breakfast. Eventually they did come, the bright green parakeets flew in in large flocks and the blue and scarlet macaws travelled in pairs. They all sat in the trees for a while waiting for the first brave birds to fly onto the clay. Whilst on the clay they are exposed to predators like eagles and so there is a lot of bickering in the trees before anyone gets the short straw to go first. Once a few were on the clay the rest soon followed and we watched this strange event through our binoculars. Though we were tired and a little hungover it was an amazing thing to witness. After a few hours we headed back to our lodge for our final breakfast, pancakes with caramel sauce what a fantastic treat and well needed this morning! After a final freezing shower we were ready to board the boat again with all of our luggage and wave the lodge goodbye. We headed back to the town where the minibus had dropped us off and flopped into the bus. We just stopped twice on the way back to Cusco, once for lunch and once at the animal sanctuary where we had previously seen the monkeys. Freddy's spider monkey pal seemed to remember him and climbed straight back onto his head and accompanied him as we walked round the site. They had scarlet macaws here which I had really been hoping to see in the jungle, we did see them but from a distance and it was amazing to see them close up. They were just in the trees and not in cages. Every now and then they croaked out an hola 😂 They also had capybaras here! So we were finally able to see some. We enjoyed feeding them and watching them munch up long plants with their huge front teeth, they're funny animals. They also had tortoises and pigs here, all rescued and ok their way to being released where appropriate. We arrived back to Cusco about 7 hours later, completely exhausted but having thoroughly enjoyed our Amazon adventure!

Countryfile we are coming for you!

How many monkeys?

A hawk watching the world go by

The cloud forest living up to it's name ☁️🌳☁️

Golden headed quetzal

Spot the woolly monkey 🐒

I think he's almost a twitcher now 😁🤭

Sean, Cleber and Antonio watching for monekys

This butterfly licked my finger for about 15 minutes 😂 salty!

Cock of the rock! National bird of Peru

Our room at the lodge

River view from our room

Pancho!

Our lodge was in there somwhere!

Mostly safe from mosquitos!

Our lodge on stilts

Jeremy Fisher 👋

Freddy slightly destroyed his fruit 😅

Antonia the tapir

Antonia enjoying lots of attention!

Capybara!

Not sure I agree with this advertising 👀

Cusco, Peru

Sun, 18 Feb 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 388 - February 18th We had a bit of a long day today. First off we got an email late last night to tell us that our hold luggage had not been accepted by the airline for our flight to Cusco today 🫣 It was about 10:30pm when I received the email and we were tired from sandboarding. We responded asking what we should do and were advised to get to the airport early and hope that we could pay there... Oh joy 😅 We first had to get back to Lima which was a 5 hour bus journey, then it was an hour in a taxi sitting in Lima traffic to the airport. We did arrive early but we had to wait an hour to find out if we could add our luggage. Eventually we got to the desk and it was all ok 😅 We're not sure what happened but it ended up being cheaper for us to pay for it at the airport 🥳 We had quite a bit of time to kill at the airport then but we didnt mind so much. We caught our flight to Cusco and landed around 9pm. Cusco is 3300m above sea level and we were a bit apprehensive about how I would react to that altitude. I ended up being fine, just a little light headed. We're staying in a hotel nearby just for two nights. Tomorrow we're going to have a rest day to let our bodies acclimatise to the altitude and then the following day we're off on a four day excursion to the Amazon rainforest! 🌲🌳🌴 Day 389 - February 19th We had a day of shopping and rest today. Cusco is an interesting place! Quite run down in some areas, clearly very historical going by some of the buildings, lots of dogs roaming around, very busy with traffic, posh shops selling alpaca clothing and lots of very cheap markets! We managed to get Freddy some cargo trousers for our jungle trek and a long sleeved t-shirt. Not sure how he's going to cope wearing trousers again, I don't think he even wore them in Canada 😅 We also found cheeeese, delicious real cheese! We bought some to have on Freddy's birthday on Sunday 🤭 We visited the office of our tour company for a run down of the next few days and to arrange our pick up times etc. Now we are all packed up and ready to explore the Amazon! We'll be offline until we return to Cusco on Friday 🙌 Wish us luck!

They use llamas for everything here 😅

Bricks of cheese!

Heaven 😍

Car of my dreams, perhaps a little less rusty

Ica, Peru

Fri, 16 Feb 2024 19:40:00 -0500

Day 386 - February 16th Today we got a 5 hour bus journey along the coast to a town called Ica. It's so incredibly sandy along here, the views from the bus were just sand sand sand, and not in a very pretty way, more of a huge pile of aggregate kind of way, it was an odd journey! A bit like being on a different planet. Ica seems to be a huge town with a bit of a divide between the poor and the not so poor. We're staying in a small guesthouse on the outskirts and the walk into town was a bit grim at first. The houses here seem to be built on dust and piles of rubbish. There are poorly dogs roaming around, chewing on old plastic packaging and children playing football in the dust piles. A long straight path took us down the hill into the main town and the view from the top of the hill revealed the huge sand dunes that surround us. Tomorrow we're going on a sand boarding tour, because what else do you do in the desert? For dinner we tried a national Peruvian dish called Lomo Saltado, which is a stir fry of veg and meat served on a pile of chips in a tasty salty sauce, with a huge serving of rice. Very tasty, pretty unhealthy 😅 Freddy's favourite local dish so far! Day 387 - February 18th Today we went sandboarding! Near to the large town of Ica is a natural desert oasis around which a small village called Huacachina developed. It used to be home to local people only and the water oasis was used for all sorts of religious rituals. Now it is a massive tourism hot spot and the waterhole is refilled artificially. Before we went sandboarding, Freddy went on a quick quadbiking trip around the sand dunes. I'm a bit too small to drive them so I stayed behind with a few dogs for company. He had a great time zooming around, going down steep slopes and drifting around corners. We had some lunch at a restaurant next to the oasis and watched people pedal boating around on the water. Then we met up with our group and walked a short distance up the dunes to where a huge fleet of sand buggys were parked. There 10 of us on the buggy and the driver. I wasn't really expecting much from this buggy ride as I thought it was simply our transport up to the top of the dunes. It ended up being quite the adrenaline rush as we drove at speed over the steep hills and down the slopes. It was very bouncy but great fun! We reached our first slope for boarding down. We don't have any snowboarding experience so we just did the laying down on the board option. They just use wooden snowboards with handles at one end for you to grip and you can drag your toes to steer and brake. The first dune was pretty steep! Our guide waxed our boards and we went down one by one. I waited until almost last which was a mistake because I was a bit nervous and then the lady who went before me had a bit of a panic. She got about 3 metres down and chickened out, putting her hands into the sand to stop herself sliding. Doing that was probably scarier than just going down. Luckily I managed to not chicken out 🫣 It was so much fun! You go really fast and so long as you keep your head up then you've no danger of falling off the front. We had our glasses and our snoods to protect us from the sand too. We spent an hour or so going from slope to slope, whizzing down the sand and enjoying buggy rides between. Then we stopped to watch the sunset. Fred and I climbed up to the top of the highest dune and walked along the ridge. It was very beautiful from up here and we got a little imaginative taking photos with the sun ☀️

Antique television 👀

Some dogs here are friendly 🙌

Lomo Saltado and my first red wine of South America 🍷

Keepy-uppies with the sun

Lima, Peru

Wed, 14 Feb 2024 17:10:00 -0500

Day 384 - February 14th We had quite an interesting taxi ride to the airport this morning. Our driver spoke pretty good English and told us about his life in the Colombian army when he was 19. He trained in the jungles and learnt about all the dangerous animals that live there. There is a very aggressive snake that is quite small and apparently very hard to see, it actually killed a few of the training soldiers. They trained in the jungles because their main mission was to tackle the drug trafficking that occurs. The people they were searching for used guerilla warfare tactics and were very difficult to win against. Apparently the main drug that they traffic here is cocaine, and the amount of cocaine in Colombia now is much much higher than in the days of Pablo Escobar, but according to our driver, there is much less violence surrounding the drug scene because the gangs are 'smarter' and more sophisticated. Our driver even told us that there is a remote village where cocaine is the currency. You don't buy water with money, you buy it with cocaine 😵 crazy! Our flight to Lima was only 3 hours but it was a fairly bumpy one! When we arrived we were just getting our luggage when Freddy got a message from our hotel telling us that they couldn't host us today because the previous guests had ruined the room, eek! Luckily it was only 2pm and we were in the capital city so finding another place to stay wasn't a big deal. We ended up getting a late deal on a nicer hotel anyway which came with heavenly Aircon 🤩 it's 30 degrees here so we were very happy after having slept badly for the last few nights. We caught a cab and headed to our hotel. The streets of Lima are wild! It felt like being back in Delhi or something 😆 drivers seem to ignore traffic rules, have one hand ready on their horn and drive as fast as possible. The city has some hench speed bumps so I think they're at least trying to calm the traffic 😅 After a rest in our room we went out for some dinner. We had forgotten about valentine's day, not really our thing to be honest 👀 but we found ourselves in a restaurant adorned with balloons and flowers and we were sat there in our scruffy travel clothes 😆 they didn't seem to mind though. Peru is home to the Pisco Sour, a drink we've enjoyed a few times in Brighton so we ended our fairly long day with one each, cheers!🍸🍸 Day 385 - February 15th It was very hot and sunny in Lima today so we decided to head down to an area of the coast called Milaflores. It's very popular for surfers. First we stopped off to see a smart, black and white striped lighthouse that sat on the upper section of the promenade. It's a bit like Brighton here, where there are upper and a lower sections of the prom but on a much larger scale. It's very sandy here, it's almost like the whole city was built on a sand dune, we were quite surprised when we saw it from the plane window! We walked a long way along the seafront, heading down to the beach. There were hundreds of surfers in the water and loads of people trying to get us to have a go, not today unfortunately. The waves crashed onto the stony beach and the smell of the sea air reminded us of home a bit. We walked further along to where the beach became sandy and was crowded with sunbathers. We had our lunch and also enjoyed a little pot of battered prawns with spicy sauce we bought from a street vendor for £1 - it's extremely cheap here which bodes well for oir budget 🙌 After the beach we took a cab back into town. Freddy organised today and wouldn't tell me where we were going so I assumed we were going to see the catacombs. He's quite interested in anything underground! I'm not overly keen 👀 We pulled up next to a big city park adjacent to a church and I thought yes this must be the catacombs, but as we walked through the park Freddy asked me if I had noticed why we were here yet. Confused I looked around and suddenly realised that the park was full of cats 😂 It was a cat park! They had bowls of food and water scattered about and cardboard boxes and beds for them to use. Most of them had hidden themselves away amongst the fuscias in the flower beds, you couldn't see them unless they had left a little foot or tail poking out 😆 There were a few roaming around that wanted some attention and we sat and played with them. I was very happy that catacombs had become just simply, cats 😸 We went for a quick drink at a rooftop bar around the corner. It was such a high building that it moved slightly in the wind, though Freddy couldn't feel it which was probably for the best or we wouldn't have stayed long enough to finish our drinks 😅 This evening after dinner we went to a water fountain show in another large park which was actually right next to the national football stadium. There also happened to be a match on so Fred was a bit gutted we didn't know as we could have gone and seen what ended up being quite a match. The fountain show was pretty spectacular though, not only did they have the usual jets of water and music and colourful lights, they actually projected a short film about the history of Peru onto a wall of spraying water, it was very different. The park had so many fountains, we walked around to see them and then found ourselves in 'Ths Carnival of Love' 👀 A tunnel took us under the busy road and into another park. Here they had set up a big light show for valentine's I think. There were all sorts of heart decorations and various photo props. It was all very tacky and a bit cringe but we enjoyed ourselves. Lima seems like a cool city with lots going on and the people are all very friendly and happy. I think we've done our big cities stint for now though, tomorrow we escape to a town called Ica which is further south and further into the sand dunes 🐫

Statue of Peru's Felipe Pomar, 1965 World Champion in big wave surfing

View from the rooftop

Medellín, Colombia

Sat, 10 Feb 2024 17:10:00 -0500

Day 380 - February 10th We travelled back up to Medellin today on the bus. We're staying in a bit of a big standard hotel here on the outskirts of the main city. We had booked the cheapest room and were very surprised to find a ginormous jacuzzi in our room 😂 It's boiling in the room and there is no AC so I highly doubt we'll be using it, we'll turn the whole thing into a steam room otherwise 🥴 This evening we went out to watch a football match at the stadium! It was Medellin Vs Santa Fe, a big game for the locals. Before the match we had a nice meal at a random Lebanese restaurant, falafel and humus made a change! 😋 After dinner and a couple of drinks, we bought some Medellin shirts to wear so that we would fit in with the crowds. The stadium was pretty big I think it holds about 35k. The game ended 1-1 but it was quite entertaining. The crowd down at the home end were having a great time! They had a brass band in the middle of the upper stand and they were singing songs for the entire match, even when the opposing team scored 😆 We were in a quieter stand luckily, but there was still a great atmosphere. We've realised that the Medellin team initials are DIM, so our shirt badges are quite funny 😅🤭 Day 381 - February 11th After chasing a few cockroaches out of our room we went down for breakfast this morning which consisted of a little frankfurter-ish sausage, scrambled egg and arepe and a slice of cheese served with a hot chocolate. Not too bad! We pottered around sorting out some things before heading into town this afternoon. We had intended to go and see some street art, which we did but it was on a very small street and only took us a couple of minutes to view. We had some lunch at a German food place, the European influence is very heavy here. Then we had a wander around. It's Sunday today and almost all shops were closed, most people were in church and everyone else was sitting outside bars in the sunshine having a beer, we decided to join the latter. We actually found a shop with tables outside and so two beers cost us just £2 🤭 We were best to a bar that had some entertainment going on. We could hear singing from inside and eventually realised as they came outside to dance, it was a drag act! Wasn't expecting that in Colombia have to say. They were very good and did a funny rendition of My Guy from Sister Act 😂 For dinner this evening we went to a local place near our hotel where they had Ajiaco on the menu. This is a national dish I've been wanting to try but haven't come across yet. It's a huge meal that Freddy and I shared and consisted of a massive bowl of chicken and potato soup, corn on the cob, half an avocado, a banana, rice and some corn bread. All served with lime, coriander, picanto salsa, capers and double cream randomly. It's a bit of an odd mix of components but it's all served separately so you can make whatever you want out of it. We really enjoyed it! Day 382 - February 12th We are not sleeping very well here as it is so hot and the fan in our room is very loud. Good thing there isn't much for us to do in themic city! We had a lazy day sort of. Freddy sent home a huge box of things that will hopefully make his bag a lot lighter. We have a few flights coming up that have a lower luggage weight allowance than we are used to! We got our laundry done and found a sports bar that had the Chelsea match on. This evening we finally organised the big trek we're doing in Chilean Patagonia, it has taken some organising but we're really looking forward to it! I won't give away too many spoilers 😇 🏔️ Day 383 - February 13th We had a day of being city tourists today. We walked about 45 minutes into the centre of town to Plaza Botero. The walk took us through a very busy market area which reminded us of the sprawling, narrow markets of India. They sold all sorts of things from envelopes and stationary to hunting gear and of course football shirts. Freddy is still on the lookout for a few more! We also walked through a very industrial area that seemed to consist of endless car and motorbike garages with tyres piled up all over the pavement. Eventually we made it to the Plaza. Plaza de Botero is a public square adorned with 23 sculptures created by the renowned Colombian artist Fernando Botero. These sculptures depict exaggeratedly rotund figures 👀 Some of people and also of animals. There is also a museum here dedicated to the artists work. We had some lunch in one of the little restaurants that had tables and chairs out in the sunshine. We people watched for a bit and then having had enough of city-ing, made our way to the botanical gardens. Unfortunately we didn't realise that the gardens closed at 4 and by the time we got there it was already 3:15! We were able to stay long enough though to sit and watch some huge iguanas swimming in a river and climbing trees. It was a shame we didn't get to explore as it looked like a very impressive gardens. This evening we went out for our final meal in Colombia - Mexican food 😂 We're looking forward to heading to Peru tomorrow!

I think the jacuzzi is bigger than the bed 😅

My new badge 😅😆

Ajiaco!

Found a crepe for pancake day! My first nutella in WAY too long 😋

Rather Trump-esque 👀

Guatapé, Colombia

Wed, 07 Feb 2024 17:10:00 -0500

Day 377 - February 7th Another day of buses for us! First one to Medellin which took 3 hours. We went passed one of the biggest natural pyramids in the world which is apparently found on all bags of exported Colombian coffee. It looked like a huge shark fin to me! From Medellin we took another bus to a smaller town called Guatape. After our time in the sleepy towns of Salento and Jardin, Guatape seems quite noisy and touristy. We only popped out briefly for some dinner and it was dark so hopefully it all looks a little nicer in the light of day tomorrow 🙌 Day 378 - February 8th We spent all of today researching Peru and booking our time there. We did pop out for an absolutely amazing lunch at a little french place around the corner. I had a crepe with egg, tomato, cheese, avocado and basil and Freddy had a crusty, baguette filled with cheese, sun-dried tomatoes, olives, basil and tomato. It made a change to our usual ham and 'cheese' 😋 Day 379 - February 9th We're not too keen on Guatape, it's full of tourist shops and the people don't really seem too chuffed that we are here 😂 we've nicknamed it Guatacky 👀 But there is one attraction here of interest and the main reason we came. It's called La Piedra del Peñon - The Rock of Peñon. It's basically a huge random rock sitting in the middle of a watery landscape that you can climb to the top of via a 700 step staircase. We got the bus over to Peñon, just 15 minutes down the road and got dropped off right at the bottom of the rock. It's a huge tourist trap and money making area but we enjoyed the climb up and the views from the top. It's an odd place here, the land is broken up by a huge reservoir that has a very irregular shape. You'll see what I mean by the pictures. We stopped for some lunch at the bottom before heading back to Guatape. We went out for some dinner at a nice restaurant that had an upstairs balcony area where you could peer out over the street and people watch. Made me feel like an Italian grandma 🤭 Today was our last in Guatacky! Tomorrow we pack up and head back to Medellin before catching a local football match in the evening which should be fun! ⚽

How is something natural so pointy?

French food!

Jardín, Colombia

Sun, 04 Feb 2024 23:40:00 -0500

Day 374 - February 4th We had a big journey up to Jardin today! We started out early because Sebastian had told us that the bus leaves town at 9:45am but we should get there an hour early to ensure we got a seat. We arrived at 8:40 to find the bus was leaving in 5 minutes, he'd got the timetable wrong 😆 luckily there were plenty of seats so all was well. This was the first of two bus journeys today and took us to a place called Riosucio. Unfortunately Fred was feeling a bit sick and as it was going to be a 5 hour journey he took one of our travel sickness pills that we had bought in Belize. We've not needed them until now and so we didn't know the side effects... Well it pretty much knocked him out. He wanted to see the views of the journey though so he managed to fight the sleep but by the time we arrived into Riosucio he was rather away with the fairies 😂 He wasn't feeling sick anymore though so I guess they do 'work' 👀 We had a 3 hour wait until our next bus and so we managed to walk across the town square to a diner to have some lunch. It was a local place and the menu was up on the wall all in Spanish. Luckily they had pictures too so that helped us make our choice. I managed to order our food but then the waitress was offering us something else and as I was trying to translate it on my phone Freddy decided he understood exactly what she was saying. According to him she was going to bring us a bowl and some soap to wash our hands 👀 trying to maintain a straight face, I explained to the waitress that no thank you we wouldn't like the fish soup to start 😆 Lunch was delicious and super cheap, local places are usually the best places to go so long as you have Google translate to hand! We walked back to the bus station and waited for the bus to arrive. We had read a travel blog where they had taken this bus before and so we were aware that it was going to be a bit of an 'adventure'. The bus rolled in and confirmed what we had read online. It was a huge multicoloured thing, with wooden benches and no glass in the windows. We were warned that it would most likely rain on this journey and to wear our coats due to the lack of windows. It did start to rain and luckily they put our bags inside the bus instead of on the roof, though this did mean there was less room and we ended up squashed between two other couples. The benches at least had some cushioning so it wasn't going to be as uncomfortable as we thought. We set off on our journey to Jardin. The road took us up over the mountains and was incredibly bumpy, narrow and muddy. The views were amazing and it was actually one of the most fun bus journeys we've done. About 2 hours in, Freddy's pill had worn off and he was back in the room 😆 We stopped at the top for a bathroom break and to stretch our legs. We found a friendly dog and more cockerels, Freddy kept his distance today 🤭 Luckily a few locals had got off at their houses along the way so we could spread out a bit once we got back on board. We descended the mountain as the sun went down which gave us great views of a pink misty sky. After about 5 hours we arrived into Jardin, a quaint little town with a huge Christian church in the middle. It got pretty cold on the journey and so we made our way quickly to our accommodation to warm up and get some hot food 😋 Day 375 - January 5th Today we took ourselves out for a walk up to Cafe Jardin which sits on the side of the valley. It was quite a steep hike up and very muddy and slippery at times. The views over Jardin were amazing, we could see the whole town and across the entire valley. It was a bit drizzly and cloudy today but the weather goes with the landscape. Once we made it to the cafe we found that it was actually closed so we carried on following our map, hoping to reach a waterfall. We wandered along passing farmland where lots of fruits were growing, some we recognised like bananas and oranges and other we're not sure about! There were hundreds of birds about too, we even heard a barn owl! They have very colourful birds here, but they're so quick and elusive! After walking about an hour we came across a farmhouse with two signs up warning us of the dogs.. They soon appeared at the low fence, barking very aggressively. A man came out of the house and was shouting in Spanish, we weren't sure if he was trying to control his dogs or he was telling us to go away, but we decided not to risk it and turned back. We had passed another cafe and decided we would go back there and have a drink. The cafe had a stunning garden and we sat outside as the sun had decided to show it's face. They had some lovely dogs here too, there's dogs everywhere in Colombia! These ones were friendly though and happily accepted our strokes. I just had a coffee but Freddy tried a national dish, arepa with cheese. An arepa is kind of like a crepe with sides but thicker and tasted a bit like a Yorkshire pudding. It was filled with what we think were cheese curds and was served with two types of jam 🤔 bit of an odd combo but Freddy enjoyed it. As the way up the valley was so steep and slippery I didn't fancy walking back down it and so we got a tuktuk back to town. It's been a while since we rode in a tuktuk, it was fun to be back bouncing around! This evening we went out for some dinner in the town square. It's a beautiful square with trees and the unique church stands at one of the edges. There are cafes, bars and restaurants with tables and chairs outside, it reminds me of the streets of Barcelona a bit. The atmosphere is very relaxed and again there are dogs milling around, wandering in and out of the restaurants hoping for scraps. They're all a bit overweight actually so I think the people are too generous 😆 Day 376 - February 6th It was a very sunny day today and we had a big hike to do! After picking up some sandwiches from a cafe in the town square we started our walk out into the countryside. We went by a few out of town houses and a couple of dogs shot out of a house and greeted us like they were expecting us. We said hello and it seemed like we had some company for our walk again! The dogs distracted us for a good while, but after a few hours we realised this whole walk was going to be straight uphill 😅 and in today's weather it was pretty hard going. We plodded on and the dogs were really enjoying themselves, disappearing every now and then into people's farmland for a roll around on the grass. We also learned that they liked to bark at cows 😬 which wasn't great as they were both quite small and so could fit underneath fences and run straight into the cow's fields. There wasn't much we could do about it as they just ignored us. Luckily none of the cows were pregnant and we found if we walked past quicky the dogs soon followed 👀 We stopped for a break and had our sandwiches, shared with our companions obviously. The views down over the valley were stunning up here, we didn't realise how hilly and green Colombia would be. We continued on up the never ending hill and came to another field with cows in. The smallest dog legged it straight over to them and we lost sight of him. The other dog actually stayed with us this time, whimpering a bit which made us wonder what was different this time. This field was very uneven and the path we took, took us behind some trees and up to a house. We lost our way a little and a man appeared at his gate and directed us the right way. By this time we hasn't seen the littlest dog for a while and we worried he might've been kicked by a cow. We walked on a bit hoping he might be ahead but we saw no sign of him and the other dog was still whimpering so we decided to go and look back in the cow field. We couldn't go in too far as we didn't want to get in between the cows for fear of being trampled. Freddy climbed up to higher ground so he could see the whole field but he saw no sign of our friend. As he wasn't anywhere to be seen all we could do was continue our walk. By this time we had walked about 5 miles away from their home and we worried too that we might have got them lost 😬 Hoping the little one would have made his way home we carried on to our destination, the 'cave of splendour'. The cave is privately owned and you have to walk up to a property to register with them and pay entry. Then a guide takes you through a locked gate and down to the cave. First we took a break and had a drink in the shade. We also asked the guide about the dog that had followed us up. Thankfully he told us that the dogs are always following tourists up here and back down to town, so we didn't need to worry! Hopefully the little one just had enough and decided to take himself home. The dog that followed us all the way up here went off for a snooze in the shade and didn't try to follow us any further. The cave was amazing! It has a hole in the ceiling where a waterfall flows through, it's quite a sight. The sun was shining straight in through the cave's entrance which mde the water glow. We stayed for a while and then hiked our way back up to the house. It was exhausting and we bought ourselves some homemade melon ice creams, going they would be really refreshing and delicious 👀 they turned out to be salty 😂 what on earth?! We politely pretended to eat them until we left 👀 Originally we had planned to get a jeep back down to town as we had read that they wait at the top and leave when they are full, but we were the only people up here! It would have cost us about £20 for a lift. We decided we would walk instead as it was all downhill and we could take an alternative route to the one we took up. We flopped all the way down the hill, enjoying the breeze and the cool shade from the banana trees. The dog we left behind had gone home by the time we returned from the cave, it was a comfort to know they knew their way back. We never saw the little one again and we hope he made it home safely! Once we got back to town we were exhausted, having walked about 13 or 14 miles in total and fretting about dogs being kicked by cows 🥴 we had showers and then took ourselves out for a well earned delciosi meal. There is a heavy Italian and French influence in this town and we found a very nice Italian restaurant where we could sit out in the town square and eat. After dinner we popped to a supermarket to grab some breakfast for tomorrow. We came here yesterday and I bought a yoghurt, the lady at the till asked me if I wanted a spoon in Spanish and then asked what spoon was in English. We told her and she repeated back 'spewn', close enough. Today she remembered us and asked again if I wanted a 'spion' 🤭 this must be what everyone experienced every time we try and speak Spanish 😂😆

Struggling to stay awake 😅

The dog that went missing 🐮

The one that stayed with us 🐾

Stepping stones to the cave

Not sure?

Bananas!