This is finally the end. After traveling some 17,500 miles I have finally come full circle and reached the exact point where I star…

So today is the last day of my trip, after 8 months of traveling around South America I have finally reached the end. It´s…

It was strange to be back in Bogota, for the first time in almost 8 months of traveling I was going somewhere that I had been before, somewhere at …

Leaving Merida early in the morning I caught a mini-bus for San Cristobal a five hour ride through some winding mountain roads. A quick change of m…

From Cumaná I had wanted to visit a few other places in Venezuela such as Caracas, Parque Nacional Pittier, and Coro, before heading to Merida but…

Despite my best intentions to arrive at the small fishing village of Santa Fe before it got too late I of course didn´t end up arriving until almo…

Angel Falls is the highest waterfall in the world and supposedly one of Venezuela´s highlights. Like everything else in Venezuela, the trip is now…

I arrived in Santa Elena from Brazil hoping to hike to Mount Roraima, one of the most famous tepuis in Venezuela and the world. The mountain sits a…

To get to Guyana from Manaus you have to take a 12 hour bus to Boa Vista and then another bus to Bonfim, the Brazilian town on the border. The …

Manaus is a city of over a million people located right in the center of the Amazon. Although this would seem to conjure up images of a city nestled …

The trip from Rurrenabaque to Manaus started off nicely enough with the bus showing up three and half hours late and then everyone promptly getti…

Rurrenabaque is the gateway town to the Parque Nacional Maldidi, supposedly the most diverse bio-habitat on the planet due to its range of altitudes,…

La Paz is a very interesting city, sort of a meeting ground of two cultures, that of the indigenous Aymara indians that have inhabited the altiplano …

From the very beginning I was pleasantly surprised by Sucre. The weather was certainly a big improvement due to the 1000 meters of altitude drop from…

Officially, Potosi is the highest city in the world with about 140,000 people at an elevation of just over 4,000m. Although when I was in Peru I st…

For the four day three night trip to Uyuni I was the fifth person in a group consisting of an American and Canadian couple that are both sailors and …

When the bus from Paraguay dropped me off in Villamontes I found my way to what they consider to be the bus terminal and quickly found out that there…

Unfortunately the journey to Bolivia didn´t start off so smoothly as I arrived at the bus terminal in the morning and all the buses to Bolivia don´…

The five to six hour bus ride from Ciudad del Este to Asuncion was appallingly slow. Even after leaving Ciudad del Este the bus stopped in a dirt lot…

Iguazu Falls is located about 20km east of the triple frontier between Argentina, Paraguay, and Brazil. The triple frontier lies at the confluence of…

The decision to change what money I had and cut through Brazil to the Missiones province of Argentina proved to be a wise one as I never encountered …

The bus left Montevideo behind and with it most of the signs of civilization as buildings gave way to empty fields and cattle. Except for a few small…

At first impression Montevideo seemed like a smaller, dirtier, and poorer version of Buenos Aires. The numerous old buildings of varying colonial sty…

The ferry slowly pulled out of the docks at Buenos Aires to cross the Rio Plate to Uruguay, a 3 hour journey to Colonia del Sacramento. As the ferr…

Arriving in Buenos Aires on Argentine Labor Day was probably not the most ideal day to arrive as almost everything was closed. But after a 36 hours b…

From El Calafate it is actually 40 hours by bus to Buenos Aires, but you after the four hour bus from El Calafate you have to wait about 3-4 hours in…

As disappointing of a town as El Calafate is, the sight of massively sprawling Perito Moreno glacier nestled between snow capped peaks certainly make…

So from the actual southernmost town of more than 50 people I was successfully able to cross the Beagle Channel (after several days of waiting) to vi…

After four and a half months of continuously traveling south I have finally reached the end of the road, literaly. Puerto Williams consists of about …

At this time of year, or perhaps at the others as well, Punta Arenas doesn´t really have much to offer. By mid-April all the penguins have gone and …

Fresh off the four days on the ferry from Puerto Montt I was looking into planning my hiking trip in Torres del Paine. The cold and rainy weather o…

After spending the last several days on Chiloé waiting for the boat to leave for Puerto Natales the day had finally arrived, as had the time for the…

So I arrived in Puerto Montt on Monday afternoon, pretty much an entire week before my ferry was set to leave for Puerto Natales. This was rather unf…

The road from Pucon to Bariloche was very pretty, a winding paved and unpaved road that crossed the border at the base of Volcan Lanin. After changin…

Pucon is a very pretty lakeside town on Lago Villarica on the nothern end of the Lake District in Chile. It´s a convenient stopover point when headi…

Of all the cities that I´ve visited I would have to say that Valpariaso was probably the most interesting place to walk around. It has such a great …

In many ways, Santiago very much resembles Los Angeles. It is a sprawling modern metropolis spreading out to fill the valley floor defined by the sur…

Coming from a city like Mendoza and being in Santiago right now, Puente del Inca is about as different as it gets. There is one hotel and one hos…

Mendoza seemed like a very pleasant city, one of those places that are very nice to live in but don´t really offer much to the tourist. Sure there a…

Chilecito is a small town in the foothills of several mountain ranges. Travelling south from Salta you need to go to La Rioja first, the biggest city…

It was a relief to finally be leaving San Pedro, just way too touristy and expensive for my tastes. While I was there I met a couple, an American man…

With the coast road closed I headed through the driest part of the Atacama desert on the way to Tocopilla. In most deserts you see the places where w…

Iquique is one of those cities that is so dramatically set that you will never forget the first time that you see it. It is located about 4 hours sou…

If you are ever going to get altitude sickness it will certainlyhappen during the one day tour to Parque Nacional Lauca from Arica.The trip starts ou…

Not long after leaving Arequipa the road descends quickly and you are soon in the middle of a landscape similar to what Mars must look like. There ar…

Of all the Peruvian cities that I have been in, Arequipa was definitely the most modern. The highlight of its modernity had to be the movie theater…

Everywhere you look the tourist people are advertising Colca Canyon as the world´s deepest canyon, which is in fact not true. Personally, I dispute …

Compared to other forms of transportation in Peru, it is amazingly expensive to visit Machu Picchu. The only official way there is on the train, that…

My first impressions of Cuzco, after walking around the main plaza and the central area, was what a hassle it was to move around and accomplish any…

Leaving Huancayo, again in the early morning to finish the 10 hour bus ride before darkness, I was rather ready to get to Cuzco after such a long tim…

Leaving Huaraz was actually quite pleasant seeing that the road was actually paved and in quite good condition. Amazingly, this continued all the w…

Leaving from Tayabamba the bus made its way up higher into the mountains on the start of the 8 hour trip to Sihuas. As the road climbed higher we lef…

Heading south from Cajamarca, the road is briefly paved then you leave the pavement behind for a very, very long time. About four hours south of Caja…

Cajamarca is the first real city of any size that I have encountered since Cuenca on my trip south from Ecuador. This is good because it has given …

The town of Leymebamba was a crumbling mess of a place perched up on hillside about two hours south of Tingo. Half of the streets in town had been …

From Tingo I bought some water and had the woman in one of the two restaurants in town make some sandwiches for the hike up which was about 6 miles a…

Gocta, is actually located slightly south of Pedro Ruiz, where I spent the night after arriving from Jaen, but Pedro Ruiz is so small it isn´t in th…

From Vilcabamba south towards Peru most maps show a road going only as far as Zumba, a 5-6 hour bus ride away. In fact, there is a road, or more ac…

Vilcabamba is a tiny little town of 5,000 people in the far south of Ecuador. It has a much warmer and wetter climate due to its lower altitude and i…

Cuenca seemed to be at the heart of the tourist trail through Ecuador. I suppose that the UNESCO world heritage site designation, agreeable climate, …

Riobamba has the crumbling colonial character and air of a half-hearted revival that only a railroad town past its heyday can have. It is hard t…

Danger is all relative and every place has its dangers. Colombia has the FARC and kidnappings as part of its ongoing civil conflict, Q…

Two hours south of Quito by bus is Latacunga. Not a very charming town in any regard but a convenient one for visiting nearby Cotopaxi Volcano, the h…

To me, Quito was less than impressive, it seemed to be the charmless result of the aftermath of the collision between the old and the new. Don´t get…

Sometimes they say that life is stranger than fiction. As I stood outside the bathroom next to the cock fighting pit looking at newspaper clipp…

Coming in from Colombia, Otavalo was certainly a big change. The look of the people was vastly different, as there are loads of indigenous people…

Ipiales is definitely a mountain town. At about 9100 feet it gets cold in the evening but the sun is quite strong. In the morning I went to see the…

Departing from Popayan was not that difficult, after two days of the carnaval, everything was covered in flour dust, my clothes and backpack were a…

So with my plans to make it to Pasto foiled I decided to stay in Popayan for the carnaval which was supposed to begin on the 5th and 6th, with th…

The next morning I dragged myself out of bed at dawn and made my way down to the main square where I waited for the bus with four other Colombians.…

After an overnight bus ride south of Bogota I arrived in San Agustin around 8am and after resting for a little bit I headed out to see the archaeol…

So on New Years day I headed back to Zipaquira to finally see the salt cathedral, assured that it would be open by the posted schedule that I saw. …

The first day after arriving in Bogota I hiked up to the top of Monserrate, the church on the mountain that borders Bogota to the east. Considering…

After a few days of recovering in Cartagena it was off to Bogota on what was supposed to be an 18 hour bus ride which cost 130,000 pesos since it is …

I am deep in the Colombian jungle, 10 minutes from where we spent the night with the Colombian military, and this guy is showing us how to make cocai…

The journey started with a taxi ride to the bus terminal which took about half an hour and was an experience in its own. The beginning of the journey…

Cartagena is a very beautiful city. The old city is enclosed in thick walls and protected by several old fortresses. In some places the walls are 40 …

Before setting out from El Porvenir for Cartagena we dropped off four of the group from the boat at the airport so that they could catch a flight bac…

After finally arriving following our toruous sailing trip, forever clinching the fact that I´ll never make my living working on the ocean, we are in…

My brief stay in Panama City was supposed to end today as I was to meet the boat I was scheduled to take to Colombia this afternoon since it was…

So this is the first entry of my travel journal for my trip to South America, beginning with a flight to Panama City, Panama. As the plane approached…