A Year In Motion

Mendoza, Mendoza, the heart of Argentina’s wine country. Yeah, we were looking forward to this – a degustation in the heart of Argentinian wine country. We’re no strangers to wine country, our previous visits reading like an expensive wine list – Champagne, Bourgogne and Alsace to name a few. Mendoza however was to prove a [...]

We had thought of hitting Chile’s coast farther North to break the 24 hour bus journey from San Pedro to Santiago in half. In the end we decided against it considering that Chile’s beaches are not exactly paradise material. As well some Chileans we met in San Pedro told us that Valparaiso (Valpo as the [...]

Santiago, Chile! After an almost 24 hours bus journey (and a day spent in comfort I have to admit), we had arrived. First impressions were more heat – we were in the tail end of the South American summer and it was hot! Our first stop was the hotel and some good news as we [...]

From our final night in the freezing cold of the Andes, and a surreal, deserted border crossing at over 4,000m altitude, we descended almost 2,000m in 20 minutes to the oasis town of San Pedro de Atacama in the baking hot Atacama desert. The contrast was striking between the bare-bones facilities on offer in the [...]

We had completed day 1 of our three day road trip into the Andes, and given our experience in the Himalayas, we knew that it would probably be a case of “no pain, no gain”. We had gained the surreal Salar de Uyuni earlier that day, how much pain was waiting at our overnight stop [...]

We arrived at La Paz bus station in anxious anticipation of what our bus would be like. After all, we were told that due to the heavy rain flooding the south of the country, our journey could take up to 6 hours more than the usual 12 to 14 hour estimate. Unfortunately, the bus met [...]

We spent over an hour under the rain queuing to exit Peru at the Desaguadero border as all the Bolivians who had been to the festival in Puno seemed to be going home at the same time as us. I got fed up and walked across the small bridge to Bolivia anyway, and tried to [...]

We spent three days in total in Puno. The first was entirely devoted to the celebration of the Fiesta of the Virgen de la Candelaria, the second to organising Ninfa’s visa to Bolivia through an application to a very fussy Bolivian consul in Puno, and the third, to a day-trip by boat on Lake Titicaca. [...]

Due to my difficulty adapting to the altitude in Cusco (3,400m), we were contemplating spending an extra day in Cusco to make up for last time and get to know the less-touristed and more authentic parts of the city such as the uphill areas around San Blas, and the Calle de los Tres Cruces which [...]

Having spent my last night in the jungle evacuating the entire contents of my stomach, I was in fragile condition when we reached Cuzco at 3,400m altitude the next morning. The change from almost 100% humidity at 200m above sea level to the exact opposite 3,200m higher was always going to be tough. As it [...]