South Americian Adventure

Gallery: Buenos Aires

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:49:00 GMT

Gallery: Galapagos

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:49:00 GMT

Gallery: Amazon

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:49:00 GMT

Gallery: Peru

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:48:00 GMT

Gallery: Cusco & Inca Trail

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:48:00 GMT

Gallery: Bolivia

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:48:00 GMT

Gallery: Easter Island

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:46:00 GMT

Gallery: Patagonia

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:46:00 GMT

Gallery: Antartica

roy-sarah — Sun, 14 Jun 2009 11:45:00 GMT

Leave me Breathless (La Paz)

roy-sarah — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 23:43:00 GMT

On the plus side we finally managed to get a plane from Santiago to La Paz. On the down side the flight was at 6am which meant 4am check in and 3am start. So we arrived in the highest city in the world very knackered. We had booked into Loki hostel so grabbed a cab there and had some breakfast before crashing for a while. We arrived on Friday, which we took slowly while we got used to the altitude and polution. It make´s you very short of breath!

Saturday was spent deciding what to do - go to Cuzco the scenic bus route via Lake Titicaca, head to the Amazon Bason or go down to the salt flats. We settled on the sat flats as we both wanted to do that and the amazon was pencilled in for after the inca trail.

First though we had to cycle the worlds most dangerou road! We booked that for Sunday and set off around 7:30 to the start. It begins with a sealed downhill bit where you can really fly (if you are heavy enough - the light people didn´t even have to peddle and were still at the back!). You then get back on the bus to start the unsealed bit. The road basically snakes down a cliff so the drop off is into nothing. The tour leader kept up with the injury´s and deaths which didn´t help my nervousness but kept the gung-ho boys in check! We were kitted out well and the bikes were a dream. Roy is now really wanting to get a bike when back in Aus and even brought a cycle vest! I´m not too good on the unsealed road bit - it´s a control thing :-)

The ride started about 8/9´ish and there were regular stops for water and lunch. We arrived at the bottom (all intact) around 2 where we had a shower and food at an animal sanctuary before the slow drive back up to La Paz.

Monday we had booked a tour out to the lunar flats, unfortantly we got a complete idiot on the bookings desk and this was one of the bits he got wrong - the tour doesn´t run on the first monday of the month. The problem was by the time we got where we needed to be, waited for nothing to turn up and then trapsed back again most of our day was wasted and there wasn´t really time for us to do much else as that evening we were heading to Uyuni to see the salt flats.

We had booked on a night but to head to Uyuni which left at 9. The journey started well and then hit unsealed road. There was no chance of sleeping - it felt as it your teeth were going to be rattled out your head. It was a long bus ride and we arrived in Uyuni at 8am. The problem was the tour didn´t leave until 10:30 so we had some time to kill. Roy curled up on the sofa in the tour office and tried to sleep while I went for a wander and then sat in the sun.

The salt flats are the largest in the world and stretch for miles - it´s a bright white everywhere you look and there are people out there all day harvesting it. We headed across the flats to a cactus covered island (the flats are covered in water during the wet season) where we had lunch and a look around. This tour was a lot of driving with a few stop of points. On of the stop off points was where the water was bubbling below the salt flats and had come through in some places.

We had just chosen to do the day tour and that night dragged ourselves back on the night bus back to La Paz (another nightmare journey with no sleep!). We arrived back in La Paz around 8am and walked back to the hostel. After 2 nights without sleep we were knacked and as our room wasn´t ready we found a couple of sofas and tried to catch up on sleep.

The problem was that the next morning we had a 4am start for a 7:45 flight to Cusco. (We keep trying to avoid these early flights and they always end up being the only option!), so we arrived in Cusco knackered too!

We have now been here a couple of days - I love it, it´s a really laid back place and very picturesque. We have been on a tour of some inca sites around cusco and today move hotel´s to join our inca trip - the thing that started all this!

Although we are just over half way through our travels it doesn´t feel like we have much time left. We are going south through Peru after the inca trail, then to the Amazon, followed by the Galapagos and the Buenos Aires before heading home ;-(

Happy Easter

Sunshine in Santiago

roy-sarah — Thu, 2 Apr 2009 04:39:00 GMT

We have moved on from Patagonia after our Torres del Paine hike going from Puerto Natales to Puerto Montt, Puerto Varas, Petroyue and finally arriving in Santiago. We have both recovered from our bed bug bites (thank goodness - Roy got bitten quite bad!), and have also crammed in a hop to Easter Island, where we hired a 4WD and explored the Island.

On arriving in Santiago we had 4 days before we headed off to Easter Island so we chilled a bit and walked a lot exploring different areas of the city. We had a nice room right in the middle of town so very handy.

Last friday we flew over to Easter Island arriving at lunch time. We chose our hostel from the many lined up in the arrivals hall. Unfortantly the room didn´t match the pictures (dirty and smelly) so we spent the afternoon walking around trying to find somewhere else. Every where we tried was either full or the person that does the bookings was out so we had to return in an hour. We finally found somewhere clean and not smelly (though not as cheap either) and moved our stuff there. It was a lot of walking around in the sun, so we both picked up a bit of colour (Me - nice deep tan, Roy - red!)

The next day we hired the 4WD and drove round part of the island going to the maui nursery (the quarry they were carved from) and a varity of maui sites. We ended at a palm tree lined beach (pacific ocean) for a refreshing swim.

The next day we covered the rest of the island, a crater from one of the significant volcano´s that shaped the island, explored a cave where they would have lived and saw more maui.

We headed back to Santiago the next day and here we still are. We had hoped to head off today, but it is proving very expensive to leave! Flights anywhere out of Chile are at a premium - the LAN stranglehold. We are either going to La Paz (Boliva) and from there (once we are altituded) going to Cuzco via Puno, or we will go straight to Cuzco. Inca trail on the 11th. It´s getting closer ;-)

We have changed our plans slightly and will then head to the Amazon (Fingers crossed).

Will keep you posted.

Roy & Sarah x

Gallery: rio

roy-sarah — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 12:44:00 GMT

Patagonia

roy-sarah — Tue, 17 Mar 2009 08:12:00 GMT

Hi it´s Roy here and my first attempt at the bog, whoops blog...

El Calafate to Puerto Natales via bus was pretty much unaventful and took about 4 1/2 hours. We didn´t have anywhere booked so checked out a few hostels and found a nice one, Bulnes. Dumped our bags and had a quick look around the town to get our bearings and that was it for the first day.

Second day we found the supermarket and purchased provisons and had a good look at our options for the hikes available within Torres Del Paine national park. Found two that we fancied and booked the return trip to the park for the following day.

Third day, up nice and early and boraded the bus to the park, outward journey took 2 hours getting us to the entrance at 11ish. We then had to wait for the minibus to take us to the area where our hike was to begin. Started our hike to Torres Del Paine look out (three big rock towers) at 12.

The first leg was easy, a 1/2 hour walk to a big hotel where the main hike was to start.

The second leg to a little way point was to take us 2 hrs and it was raining. It was hard going, mainly up hill, made it to the way point in the 2 hrs. We stopped to try and dry off and made some sandwichs with the provisions we had brought the day before. We stopped for about 1hr all told with getting in and out of gear and eating.

The next leg was to take 1 1/2 hours to a overnight camp site, the rain had easied of a little so the conditions where a little better but the walk was harder. The footings made it difficult in the bad weather and the inclines where stepper.

The last part of the hike should take 1 hour and take you to the look out point, we should have brought mountainering gear, it was insane, we climbed straight up for about 30 minutes and my lungs where exploding, my knees and calves where killing also. Sarah decided she didn´t want to go any further up and I said I wanted to continue after getting this far. I left the rucksacks with Sarah, grabbed my camera and continued on up. I climbed up for another 20 minutes and I didn´t seem any near to the top. Time was running out for the return leg, so I made the decision to start heading back down. When I got back to Sarah, I fired off a few quick pictures of the view of the towers and we then prepared for a quick hike back to the bus. It was 5pm and we needed to be back at the bus for 7:30, was gonna be close.

We speed back, both exhausted, no stops and as fast as we could. It seemed to take forever but got back to where we needed to be at 7:45 and had missed the last bus :(. We had no choice but go and get a room in the hotel, it wasn´t cheap!! Both exhasuted and full of aches and pains, I jumped in the bath for a long hot soak and then jumped into bed. Sarah decided it was best for her to have a soak to and then also hit the sack. We both now know why they call it Torres Del Paine.

Up at 9:30 for breakfast, back to the room to pack our gear and onto the minibus at 1, back to the park entrance. Jumped on the bus to return us to Puerto Natales at 2:30 for the 2 hour ride back to town...

More Ice (El Calafate)

roy-sarah — Fri, 13 Mar 2009 07:28:00 GMT

We have decided to spend another night in El Calafate for some down time as we had a pretty full on day yesterday and the bus for Puerto Natales leaves at 8:30 am, so need to pack at some point!

We arrived by plane into El Calfate the day before yesterday. We are aiming for Peurto Natales as it is the gateway for Torres del Paine national park, the first place we want to do some hiking in Patagonia, and it was easier to fly here from Ushuaua (1 hour 15) and get a bus (5 hours tomorrow morning) rather than get a bus to Punta Areanas (12 hours) and then another one to Puerto Natales (5 hours)!

We ended up being on a flight with Brandy and Brenton, a couple we had met on the Antartica cruise. I think we are now ocker Aussies as we met all the Australian´s on our Antartic trip within the first day of arriving in Ushuaia! As we hadn´t got any accomodation and we were sharing a cab to the city (´it´s cheap!) we ended up staying in the same hostel. And they when we were exploring different options to get to Los Glaciers National Park the best value option was to hire a car for the four of us.

So yesterday bright and early (6:30! - Mick, this early morning stuff is becoming a habit for Roy!) we headed out for the national park. We left that early as a) we avoid all those pesky tourists and b) if you get to the national park before 8 you don´t pay (it saved Peso´s $60 each). So we had a couple of hours looking at the glacier and were rewarded with a massive carving, where a bit breaks off the glacier - it was an awesome site, as the part of the glacier that broke off had come from in the glaicer so forced it´s way out from beneath causing severl smaller bits to break off and a fair bit of wave impact.

Once we had our fill of the glacier we went to another part of the national park to have some lunch (why do cheese and tomato sandwiches always taste so good in the outdoors?) and then hike up a peak. It was only a smallish one and we walked for about an hour up, which was about half way.

We then explored some more of the park and then headed back to El Calafate stopping at the estansia´s (ranches) to see if any did the lamb barbie that is unique for these parts. We didn´t find anywhere suitable to headed back to town and went to a place in El Calafate instead. There was all different kind of meat - including black pudding!

Today we have just done chores, heading to the post office, to send out bulky antartic gear home and stocking up at the supermarket for our bus trip tomorrow.

The bus tomorrow takes us from here (Argentina) to Puerto Natales (Chile). After a few days there we hope to head to Bariloche or Puerto Montt to do the lakes crossing before we get to Santiago, where we head out to the Easter Islands.

I´m off to do some research about all this, so i´ll catch you at the next update x

I'm not a mermaid

roy-sarah — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 06:26:00 GMT

Hello from Ushuaia - where the world ends and everything begins!

We are back on dry land after several day's at sea having visted Antartica. It was fansastic, despite the sea sicknesses. There are two days there and 2 days back across the drake - force 7 on the return, where if you stand up it means you are sick, which along with the drowsiness fromn the meds was a good excuse to stay in bed (I have lost my sea legs and it is now my new diet plan as I can't even keep water down!). In between though we had 5 packed days in the South Shetlands and Antartic.

We had two activities a day - either a zodiac cruise or a landing. The days went something like this> 6.30 wake up, 7am breakfast, 8.30 landing or cruise, 11.30 back on boat, 12.30 lunch, 2.30 landing, 6pm back on boat, 7pm dinner. And of course I was in bed by 10pm most nights! Every time we would go off and get back on the boat it took about 30 minutes to get dressed/undressed in multiple layers including a thermal layer, coats, hats, gloves. wellies, parka and waterproof trousers [it was a bit nippy].

We went to Aitcho on the south shetlands, draco island, deception island, paradise bay in Antartica to name but a few. Saw millions of penguins - mainly gentoo which are the most inqusitive and very comical, as well as chinstraps, adalie and one macaroni. Also saw Whales, seals of different varities and heaps of birds. There was also a lot of history to the different places we visited which was very interesting.

We landed this morning and am back in Ushuaia for a night before flying to El Calafate tomorrow morning to explore Patagonia. Unfortantly we haven't had much luck with doing our chores today (the post office wouldn't sell us a box to post things home with out us packing it in front of them, when we returned customs is only open 10am - 12pm, the laundry won't do self service and the quickest they can do our laundry is by 6pm tomorrow, etc!) so we will need to spend extra time in El Calafate getting chore's done before working our way to Puerto Natales and Torres del Paine national park for some hiking (we need it after all the cooked meals on board!)

We are in a hostel tonight (Roy's first hostel experience!), and some of the other guys from the boat are also here (including the two annoying one's!) so we are heading to the pub later for a final farewell with those left in Ushuaia.

Hope all are well.

Heading for the land of white

roy-sarah — Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:14:00 GMT

It´s at day after our day of travel and it really knocked us out. We arrived at 9pm and luckily we are staying in a great hotel. The room is clean, spacious and dark and best of all it has a bath - the luxury ;-) and free internet.

We have just had our Antartic briefing before boarding tomorrow. So we will now be out of contact until the 10th of March (so Happy Birthday in advance Aunt Ivy!).

Today we visited Teirra de Fuego national park and the most southerly point of Argentina. The area is right on the border of Argentina and Chile, and there are even some mountains that are split down the middle - 1/2 is Argentina and 1/2 is Chile. The scenary was stunning - with snowcapped peaks in the back ground and glaciers amongst the moutains (But once again I am unable to load photo´s as there is no USB port).

It was actually nice to be colder - especially when walking. I am of course wrapped up like a mummy (fleece, wind proof t-shirt and wind proof jumper) whilst Roy just has a t-shirt!

Off to visit the supermarket to stock up on provisions for the trip (basically lemonade to go with the duty free vodka, and crackers to combat the sea sickness - one has to be prepared!). I have been told that sea sickness is basically caused by the acid in the stomach swilling around when the stomach is empty, which I see as basically an excuse to eat all the time! Thank goodness we have Patagonia after to walk it off.

On that note better go and research some more on Patagonia so we know where we are going next, and how.

Hope all are well?

Sarah & Roy x

Rio

roy-sarah — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 04:07:00 GMT

Hi Sarah & Roy here!

We are just on our way down to Ushuaia after our stay in Rio, doing the highlights; Christ the Redeemer - tick, Sugar Loaf - tick, Carnavale - tick.

It was nice and warm (24 at night!) which meant we took it easy, though we still managed to cram a lot in.

The adventure started when we arrived with a welcoming committee of a cockroach the size of a horse- home from home! I directed operations from on the bed whilst Roy tackled the beast.

As we arrived at night after all that flying, it was a relief to sleep. Saturday we orientated ourselves with Cococabana - found the beach (5 minutes walk up the road) and the supermarket for an endless supply of bottled water.

Sunday was a visit to Corcovado for Christ the Redeemer. Roy was awake first thing in the morning (6am - I didnt know it happened!) so we headed there early to try and avoid the crowds. It was a bus journey there and then a cog train ride up Corcovado. The views were spectacular as the mist burnt off.

Later in the afternoon we picked up our Carnaval tickets and walked from Cococabana round to Ipenema to watch the sunset on the beach (my camera made it look better than it was!) and then round to the Lagoon (for eating places but we didn^t find any) before heading back to our hotel. We were out for about 3-4 hours, it was a bit of a hike.

Monday was a visit to Sugar Loaf - it is a couple of cable car rides to the top, they were a bit nerve racking, but great views again. Not much to do there other than admire the views, so took plenty of photos ;-)

We then headed back to the hotel for a nanna nap so we (I) didnt flag through carnavale (by the way the apostrope isnt working). We headed t the Metro about 9 to find it closed, but we did bump into a couple of Irish backpackers, so the 4 of us walked up the the next metro station. The train was mad - people in costume for the parade, plus those in costume to watch the parade made for a colourful and lively journey.

We had good views of the parade - opposite the judges. We arrived during the first samba school. Each school has several floats and hundreds of participants so lasted for about 1hr 20 per school. Luckily between each school there was a chance to sit down and rest weary feet. We saw 4 schools, leaving during the 5th at about 3.30am. As we got back at 4, and breakfast was at 6am we stayed up, sat round the pool with a beer until breakfast and then crashed.

Monday was obviously a write off, we got up mid afternoon, chilled and then went out for dinner down the beach (Copocabana).

Today we have a nighmare journey, up at 3am for a 4am check-in to fly to Ushuaia via Buenos Aires and Trewlew arriving at 8pm tonight (so 3 flights and 1 coach journey of 1 1/2 hours). Luckily we have 2 nights in a hotel before we need to find our sea legs for the drake passage

Our flight it about to be called, so better head for now. When we have more than 30 minutes will post some pictures.

Hope all are well x