Stu and Anna's travels

Gallery: NZ part 2

stu_n_anna — Mon, 1 Sep 2008 03:40:00 GMT

Gallery: NZ part 1

stu_n_anna — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 15:43:00 GMT

NZ part 1

stu_n_anna — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 13:46:00 GMT

After 4 months in spanish (or welsh) speaking countries, to land in a country that almost speaks english perfectly was wonderful. We spent the first few days in Christchurch, getting over jet lag and generally just chilling out at Jo and Calvin's house (Thanks for your wonderful hospitality guys). Saturday was Calvin's 40th birthday party which was fancy dress. So Anna got to drag me round the shops looking for outfits to make us look like Eminem and Amy Winehouse. After we had recovered from our hangovers and picked up the campervan we set off round the South Island properly.

First stop was Hanmer springs, where we soaked in wonderful outdoor hot pools in horrible weather (sleet and snow). Next was Kaikoura on the east coast. This is famous for its whale watching tours and the local crayfish. Unfortunately due to the weather no boats were going out and we could sample neither. Instead we walked round the headland and watched some fur seals relaxing on the rocks. Blenheim and the marlborough wine region was the next stop, were we spent a wonderful (and sunny) day being driven round some of the best vineyards in the area (and drinking their wine). The next two days were spent walking round some beautiful coast paths. First it was malborough sound, then the Abel Tasman National park where we did part of one of the'Great walks'.

Next stop was Nelson lakes, where we intended to do some more walking, however we arrived to find the entire area still under a blanket of snow. The local campervan park was completely inaccessible (we camped by the lake) and when we tried to go for a hike we found ourselves fighting through snowdrifts and climbing over downed trees. We gave up and headed over to the west coast and Punakaiki. There we saw the famous pancake rocks and the blowholes. At this point we also realised that the camera was about to explode from all the scenic shots it had been taking, but what else do you expect in NZ!!

Gallery: Buenos Aires

stu_n_anna — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:31:00 GMT

Tango-tastic Buenos Aires

stu_n_anna — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 16:24:00 GMT

We spent our last week in South America hanging out in Buenos Aires. The city has a strangely European feel to it but definitely keeps Argentinian hours. We discovered that clubs only really warm up at about 2am when we went to a horrendous Latino club one night. Better experiences included watching a Boca Juniors home game, attending a tango show and wandering round the cemetery where Evita is buried. We had fun trying to learn to tango ourselves one evening and generally just exploring the city on foot. Overall a fitting end to our time in the Americas and a good way to prepare ourselves for moving on to New Zealand.

Gallery: Iguazu

stu_n_anna — Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:54:00 GMT

Waterfalls!!!

stu_n_anna — Mon, 4 Aug 2008 09:22:00 GMT

After the worst bus journey of my life from Mendoza, we finally arrived in Puerto Iguazu on the evening of my birthday. I was expecting seriously good things from the waterfalls the next day to compensate for the 44-hour bus trip and amazingly the Iguazu Falls made the bus hell worthwhile. I can’t do the waterfalls justice here but I hope the photos will get closer to showing just how huge and impressive they were. Standing at the bottom of one of the falls and getting soaked by the spray was a brilliant feeling. We both left with massive grins on our faces.

Gallery: Mendoza

stu_n_anna — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:54:00 GMT

More wine...

stu_n_anna — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 09:13:00 GMT

We spent a week in Mendoza waiting for Stu to get over a stinking cold so we could go wine tasting. Our time was gainfully employed settling into the Argentinean café culture and adjusting our body clocks to afternoon siestas and late dinners though. We also went horse riding and for a traditional gaucho grill, another excuse to drink plenty of the local Malbec.

Gallery: Salta and Cafayate

stu_n_anna — Sat, 26 Jul 2008 02:09:00 GMT

Steak and wine

stu_n_anna — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 02:26:00 GMT

Our final trip across the Andes brought us down into Salta in northern Argentina. We had heard that the steak and wine were good in Argentina but that hadn’t prepared us for what we ate at Viejo Jack´s grill in Salta. The restaurant was recommended in the Lonely Planet so, being boring, we thought we’d give it a try. We each ordered the bife de chorizo, mostly because the waiter lied to about how big it was. When the steaks arrived, we each had in front of us what in New York they call a double eagle – 2 New York strips! The meat was beautifully cooked (they only cook steak juicy or medium here) and we ate until we could eat no more. What a welcome to Argentina!

The rest of our time in Salta we explored the city, went to watch a rugby game (Salta vs. Belgium – oh dear, Belgians can’t play rugby), climbed the steps to the local saint’s cross on the hilltop overlooking the city and ate more steak. We left Salta on a bus headed south to Cafayate, one of the local wine producing regions.

In the small town of Cafayate they take their wine seriously… there is even an ice-cream parlour selling wine-flavoured sorbets. Unfortunately, the wine they are most famous for (the local torrontes) was not to our taste. It is a demi-sec sweet white wine that to be honest tasted best frozen in sorbet. That was about the right temperature to serve it! We were more impressed with some of the malbecs and cabernet sauvignons that we tasted in the bodegas around town.

Cafayate lies in a rocky desert area that has some beautiful rock formations and fantastic colours in its landscapes. We heard that there were waterfalls worth visiting outside the town so one morning we set off with some wine and a picnic to try and find them. It was much more difficult than we expected! Our walk took us along the dusty road to the river and then up goat paths along the river banks. We crossed the river back and forth using the rocks as stepping stones, always looking upstream to see where we might be best able to make progress towards the waterfalls. Meanwhile the river banks were getting steeper and steeper as the river twisted and turned through what was now basically a canyon! We walked, climbed and scrambled for over 3 hours before we decided that the walk had been long enough and the “path” to the waterfalls might be beyond my climbing abilities. Stu already had wet feet from slipping into the river once and so we stopped on a rock by the river to drink our wine, enjoy our picnic and dry boots in the sun before starting the return journey. It was one of my favourite days so far on this trip.

Gallery: Chile

stu_n_anna — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:14:00 GMT

Chile

stu_n_anna — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 05:08:00 GMT

After our last cold night on the Bolivian altiplano, it was a relief to get down into Chile and below 3000m. We arrived in San Pedro de Atacama at lunchtime and promptly signed up for a star-gazing trip into the desert that evening. The tour was led by a French astronomer who was funny, which helped make some of the technical science stuff more interesting. Although it was nearly the full moon, he showed us stars you can only see with a telescope and how to identify constellations with the naked eye. It was like being at a planatarium but without the comfy seats. We also saw Jupiter through a telescope which was pretty cool in a geeky kind of way.

We spent one day in San Pedro doing nothing (well… laundry, sleeping, buying bus tickets, etc.) before deciding that we could not miss the once in a lifetime opportunity to try sandboarding. On the Friday, therefore, we rented bikes and boards and headed off into the Atacama Desert. Sandboarding proved to be very hard work, mostly because you have to walk up a sanddune for each run, but we both managed to get on to our feet for a few seconds at least!

Chile – tick – the next day we were off to Argentina.

Bolivia - the salt flats

stu_n_anna — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 04:36:00 GMT

It’s difficult to know what to write about the Salar de Uyuni… We left Uyuni on the Sunday and went out to the salt flats, which are just lakes so saline that the surface crystallises into a layer of salt so thick you can drive across it. Consequently you can see for miles across these flat, white plains and the effect is hauntingly beautiful. We stopped for lunch at an island in the middle. It had cacti growing on it that were hundreds of years old and fossilised coral formations to remind you that the whole area had once been under a sea.

The trip down to the Chilean border takes 3 days so after the salar we saw a volcano, lakes full of flamingos, geysers erupting before dawn and hotsprings. There are lakes with microscopic organisms in that phosphoresce when disturbed by the birds and seemingly endless views of amazing rock formations. Our mood was dampened when we heard rumours that another jeep that left the same day as us had overturned on the salt flats and some of the passengers had been killed but the whole trip was so surreal it was difficult to absorb our surroundings let alone information about an accident we didn’t see. I think the photos do it better justice than I can.

Gallery: Bolivia - Part 2

stu_n_anna — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 03:50:00 GMT

Bolivia - Titicaca, La Paz & the jungle

stu_n_anna — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 04:17:00 GMT

After the excitement of Cuzco, we headed south to Puno and then over the border to Bolivia near the shores of Lake Titicaca. Our first stop in Bolivia was Isla Del Sol, the island on the lake that the Inca´s believed was the site of the creation of the sun and their ancestors. We decided to spend 2 nights on the island to give ourselves time to walk the full length of the island and enjoy the stunning sunsets and sunrises. The views are beautiful due to the altitude (clear air and plenty of sunshine) and it´s strange to look across the water at the snow-capped mountain peaks that are low on the horizon. We weren´t overly impressed by the ruins but definitely glad to have gone out onto the lake.

Next stop was La Paz where we stayed in a pretty little colonial-style hotel near the main government buildings and sorted out our next adventure down to the Amazonian basin. We decided that rather than cycle down what used to be the world´s most dangerous road, we would risk the 20-hour bus journey down the new road which is almost as perilous! The journey went remarkably smoothly, a comment I was free to make from my non-window seat whilst I laughed at Stu´s white knuckles on some of the tighter turns!

The bus deposited us in Rurrenabaque, which is the jumping-off point for tours into both the pampas and jungle. We booked a 3-day trip into each area to do some wildlife spotting and warm up after 3 weeks on the altiplato. The pampas was a great place to see animals and birds, mostly from the comfort of a boat. We went on one walk to find anacondas and were rewarded with a sighting of a 3m long snake – a baby apparently! I was impressed by the pink river dolphins (not what I was expecting to see in land-locked Bolivia) and the funny-looking capybara. We also saw loads of caimans, terrapins, cute little squirrel monkeys and various birds. The accommodation was not free from wildlife either as we had bats roosting above our bed and frogs sharing the bathroom - definitely a back to nature experience!

When we returned from the pampas we spent one night in town before taking a boat in the other direction into the rainforest of Madidi National Park. We found it was more difficult to see animals in the jungle but enjoyed visiting the macaw nesting site and also managed to glimpse several types of monkeys and some wild pigs through the trees. Our guide also showed us how to make jewellery from nuts and fruits found in the forest so we got to make our own souvenirs.

Unfortunately the flights that we wanted to take back to La Paz were unable to take-off in the rain due to the runways in the area all just being grass so we had to brave the road back to La Paz again. For our second journey we opted for the quicker jeep transfer but it was still pretty hair-raising when the road got muddy! We made it back in one piece though, finally got the news that Stuart´s an uncle (congratulations Helen and Olly!) and are now planning our next trip south to the Salar De Uyuni.

Gallery: Bolivia - Part 1

stu_n_anna — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 03:35:00 GMT

Gallery: The Inka Trail

stu_n_anna — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 04:05:00 GMT

Inca adventures

stu_n_anna — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 03:51:00 GMT

Following a flight over the Darien Gap via Swansea (congratulations Cat and Toby!), we landed in Peru on Tuesday 17^th. Keen to start adjusting to the altitude before we set off on the Inca Trail, we flew straight to Cuzco on the Wednesday morning.

We knew that the Inti Raymi sun festival was on the 24^th but we were not prepared for the extent of the celebrations taking place in the city. First impressions of Cuzco were of a beautiful old city mixing colonial and Inca architecture and with non-stop parades and dancing. The main square was closed to traffic on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and each day groups of people in different local costumes paraded round performing their variations of the traditional dances. They each carried different props for their dances, like rainbows made of llama wool, pitchforks and machetes or what looked like human skulls and leg bones in one case! The local school kids were also out in force to support their friends so at times the whistling and screaming was deafening.

On Friday we walked up to the biggest local Inca site, Saqsaywaman, where the Inti Raymi arena was being set up, and admired the stonework of the huge fortress. We wanted to try and acclimatise to the altitude so we continued up to the next 3 ruins where we saw Inca altars carved in caves and fountains from natural springs. Our real Inca experience started on Saturday, however, when we set off on the Inca Trail.

So many people have done the Inca Trail that I don´t really know what to say about it. We had lovely weather for the first 3 days (typical!) so we walked and camped and admired the Inca ruins en route. Our second day went over Dead Woman´s Pass (4200m) but then we camped before the next pass so the third day was our longest. On the fourth day we got up really early to be the second group to enter the Machu Picchu area when it opened at 5:30am but the whole of the site and Sun Gate were in the clouds. We power-walked up to the Sun Gate then continued down to the Hut of the Caretaker. Our group sat around optimistically for a few minutes hoping that the clouds might clear but when it became obvious that they wouldn´t, we started our tour of the city. Gradually the sun burnt the clouds off and the view that appeared was breathtaking. We were amazed that the whole city had been right below us and we hadn´t been able to see a thing!

The tour took us round all the famous sites and then left us to our own devices to get some photos in the sun and wander round the ruins at our leisure. Stu and I decided to find a secluded spot on the terraces where we could rest in the sun and admire the view without tourists tripping over us. It turned out that Stu also had other motives for wanting a secluded spot as after we´d been lounging around for about 15 minutes he produced a ring and asked me to marry him. Needlesstosay, I burst into tears and after being told that a nod wasn´t sufficient, said yes. We headed down to Aquas Calientes and on back to Cuzco feeling very happy and in rather a state of shock.

Gallery: Cusco

stu_n_anna — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 03:44:00 GMT