This is where the trip is scheduled to end, flight back to the UK is expected to leave at 22.35 Argentina-time (bit like 'Chico-time', only that li...

Have made it to Buenos Aires, which at first glance is unlike anywhere I´ve visited yet.  SO busy, big but exciting.  More to follow... ...

Arrived in Bariloche late on Sunday (11th)  and plan to leave on 14th to arrive in Buenos Aires on 15th, where I´ll base myself until my retu...

Everyone I had spoken to had advised me not to spend much time in Puerto Montt but to stay elsewhere, and after a brief hour killing time in and ar...

Am heading to this port-town on Monday 5th, which is exactly when I hoped to be arriving there according to my original schedule.  Will have m...

Arrived in this small touristy town on Friday and have acidentally stayed 3 nights, which I don´t really have the time for!  More to follow....

Attempted to ´see´ Santiago in 24 hours.  Had a very good time, including a number of drinks with an interesting British guy called Luke, bu...

Just up the coast from Valparaiso is Vina del Mar, a clean and wealthy town with pleasant green spaces and most importantly access to the coast.&nb...

Let's not hold my sort-of-mugging against Valparaiso, overall it was a charming town and different from anywhere I had visited previously on m...

Everyone had told me how nice Mendoza was so it remained firmly on my planned route into Chile despite equally large cities such as Cordoba having ...

Heresy to say it I know, but I actually found the north of Argentina a little bit boring!  Admittedly I wasn't in Tafi del Valle for very lo...

Oh dear, yet more ruins.  After Machu Picchu they are all rather diappointing, no more for me I hope (and yet the Argentinians are so proud ...

Travelled to the small town of Cafayate from Salta.  A small place dominated by a laid back atmosphere that exudes a ´let´s just sit in a ca...

Now I definitely spent a couple of days in the city of Salta, north Argentina.  However, as I come to write about it just a few days lat...

Nobody expects to be accosted by a clown when sitting in a restaurat waiting for the meal to arrive.  A group of awful local musicians pl...

Ok, so as if the variety of landscapes Bolivia had to offer weren´t enough, the first thing I do in northern Chile is hop on a coach trip to see t...

Day 3 and we were forced to get up at 4.30am in some of the coldest temperatures I´ve been in (yes, colder even than Sheffield in w...

Day 2 and everyone - all the groups with their various tour agency stying in the same complex of run-down buildings - wake up to the sound of a jee...

Day 1 of this much-anticipated tour, and I arrive at the office to find out that my attempt to sign-up to a tour with guaranteed English speakers -...

From Potosi I took a pretty awful (or typical Bolivian) bus to Uyuni.  I had been warned that the journey that was supposed to take 6 hours wa...

Following Sucre I found myself in Potosi, a charming town with even more colonial buildings.  In fact the most notable thing about the town wa...

Left La Paz and arrived in Sucre, the other disputed capital of Bolivia.  Sucre is a very different place, clearly much smaller and without th...

On my return to La Paz from Rurrenabaque, and before I was due to head south, I had just enought time to visit the main square which I had somehow ...

So I signed up to a 3 day tour of the pampas wetlands in north Bolivia, hoping to see some of the wildlife that had been so disappointingly absent ...

Headed from La Paz to Rurrenabaque for a trip into the Pampas wetlands.  I had a great time, but its not the most comfortable trip: 20 hour bu...

A short way out of central La Paz is an area of bizare rock formations known as the Valley of the Moon.  Now I don´t know if the moon reall...

So the coming of the New Year was celebrated in La Paz, with Tom, Beth, Lyn, Ady and assorted other associates picked up along the way! Needless t...

La Paz is a really great city, which helps to explain why I stayed so many nights there in total.  Mostly it is the buzz of the markets in t...

One of the main day-trips offered from La Paz is to bike-ride down the world´s most dangerous road.  This is a road which starts a ...

So after about 5 weeks in Peru it was time to leave and cross the border into Bolivia.  Peru was great to see, the highlights getting better a...

On our way back from the homestay we stopped at the floating reed islands, which were for me the highlight of the whole time spent on and around La...

On Boxing Day (not sure that such a celebration is actually realised in South America) we hopped onto a boat that took us from Puno to a couple of ...

Suffice to say that the copious amount of alcohol consumed on Christmas Eve meant that this was a pretty awful bus journey, and the main good thing...

I made my way down to the centre of Cusco on Christmas Eve somewhat unsuspectingly.  I knew that there was due to be some sort of market but w...

At 4.30am on Day 4 we were harshly awoken to mixed feelings: eventually our time had come to see Machu Picchu, but did I have to get up still feeli...

We set out on the third day knowing that this was to be the last day of serious treking (some 7/8 hours of walking ahead of us) and thinking that t...

Day 2 and we awake to find that somehow none of the guys binging on rum the previous night are hangover, and we set off for what promises to be the...

So the Inca Trail had been a long-time coming, and much anticipated by all in our group.  And of course my own ankle worries had only added to...

After a couple of days to enjoy Cusco we were taken on a guided tour of the Sacred Valley, which turned out to be a wonderful and unexpected highli...

Following Arequipa we took a flight (cheating I know, but not entirely my fault) to charming, wonderful Cusco.  Everyone I´d previously met h...

On the second day of this trip we got up early and headed out in the bus to get to the mirador from where we were hoping to spot some condors. The...

So on the first day of our trip to the Colca Canyon we travelled out of Arequipa and up to a very high (or at least it felt pretty high) mountain p...

Arequipa is a lovely old colonial city which we used as a base for our trip to the Colca Canyon, spending a couple of nights here.  It is know...

Travelled to the town of Nazca which is really only famous for one thing - the lines that were etched into the desert thousands of years ago.&...

Huacachina was a lovely place to stay - relaxed, loads of sun, surrounded by sand dunes - especially as a contrast to Lima.  It´s a really sm...

The Ballesta Islands lie a short distance off the Peruvian coast south of Lima, and we made a trip to see them on a speedboat  which...

Our first stop after Lima was Huacachina, which is famous for the sandboarding available on the many surrounding sand dunes.  This was a gre...

I've signed up to go on a 21 day trip that will take me from Lima to La Paz via all the major sights and attractions along the way (of which there ...

I hadn´t heard many positive things about Lima, but as I was due to meet up with my tour group here I thought I´d give it a couple of days and st...

These ruins are really old, dating from 1200BC-200BC.  Guess what, that puts them into the familar ´pre-Incan´category that has linked all t...

We (me, Ade# and Lyn) decided to go to the Llanganuco lakes, a little distance from Huaraz.  A good plan, but perhaps not such a wise ide...

Took a day trip to the Pastoruri glacier with Tom and Beth, and although it didn´t look like the traditional glacier I´d been expecting - a steep...

Following Trujillo I travelled by quite uncomfortable night bus to Huaraz, back up in the Andes at 3100 metres.  So after a day´s recove...

After all my time travelling, including many hundreds of kilometres supposedly along the coast of Peru, I hadn´t seen the sea since I had flown ov...

Yet more ruins seen as a day trip from Trujillo, but this time I signed up to a tour which covered all the major sites of interest in one day....

Trujillo is the second or third biggest city in Peru (depends if you ask someone from here or Arequipa!),.  It´s a good base for exploring th...

At Tucumbe you can see examples of the large pyramid structures built by the ancient cultures from around 11AD. Ok pyramids seems a little st...

Accompanying the site at Sipan are two museums located at a small (I´m sorry that all places are reduced to simply descriptions of ´small´or´la...

Back in the day these areas of fairly dry desert appear to have been occupied by pre-Inca tribes (precise names forgotten sorry, for further i...

Now in Chiclayo, another large town close to the northern Peruvian coast (not seen the sea yet, I think it´s a few km´s away, but shoul...

Piura is the first town I´ve visited in Peru, having taken the easier and safer border crossing via Macara (recommended, no hassle at all getting ...

A short distance from Loja (another wonderful bus ride through the undulating Andes) is the small town of Vilcabamba which has, according to my tru...

Well Loja turned out to be a small version of Cuenca, but less ostentatious in its showing of wealth and more of a normal small-town feel, so I lik...

A day trip from Cuenca I visited the Inca and Cañari ruins at Ingapirca.  These are described as the most important and largest ruins of this...

Arrived in Cuenca and have spent a few days here.  It´s nice - many colonial buildings and interesting looking churches in the central area, ...

The guide books tell you that the train from Riobamba to Alausi only leaves 3 times a week, and that it is a popular ride, so I was prepared for di...

Having confidently predicted that the one-day strike in Baños wouldn´t affect me because it was only one-day (and not the day I wanted to leave),...

Have now spent a couple of days chilling out in Banos and recommend it as a very good place to come to reacclimatise to normal life after weeks spe...

Left the jungle today and was very sad to leave.  My initial impression had been that the community was perhaps smaller and less traditional t...

This weekend we made a trip to a neighbouring Shuar community, even deeper into the jungle.  After a tough near-5 hour walk I´m not sure that...

A year ago the Shuar community at Arutam formed Fundecoipa, an organisation that aims to protect the rainforest through developing volunteering and...

This weekend the volunteers were shown the waterfall that lies in the Arutam reserve, and made a trip to Ernesto´s other wife´s community and wal...

Well I made it.  And I`m still alive!  Getting off the bus in the middle of nowhere and watching it disappear along the dirt track as I w...

OK so after I'm all Spanished-up I'll be heading to the voluntary placement I've signed-up to.  It is with a small indigenous community (the S...

On Sunday the presidential elections took place here in Ecuador.  It´s been very interesting to follow, with a huge amount of propaganda and ...

On Saturday  we travelled 2 1/2 hours to Mindo, a village set in the cloud forest on the western slopes of Pichincha.  It was a beautiful...

We (me, Peter and Susie - 2 Australians I´ve met here who have worked in Oxfordshire for a couple of years!) went down to have a look around the o...

On Monday three of us (me, Will and Sybil - friends from the language school) successfully climbed Pichincha, the volcano overlooking Quito.  ...

After we had vivited the Otovalo market we passed through the small leather-market town of Cotacachi to a nearby waterfall.  We walked up past...

On Saturday we visited the famous market at Otovalo, where indigenous people from all around descend to sell their crafts to locals and tourists al...

On Friday Carlos took us to see his local team (Liga de la Universidad)  play in the Ecuadorian premier league.  It was a great experienc...

On Tuesday we went on a brief excursion to see the old part of Quito by night (too dangerous to do on your own by night apparently).  There we...

The view of the lake on Sunday morning was beautiful as the sun rose above the crater, much clearer sky than the day before.  We had the optio...

On the way back from Quilotoa we stopped at a village called Chugchilan where a small trek led us to a series of steep canyons.  The walk down...

At the weekend we travelled to the beautiful lake Quilotoa south of Quito (more of that in a minute) and passed through the small town of Pujili.&n...

So eventually we arrived at the lake Quilotoa!  It is a large lake filling the crater of an extinct volcano, and is beautiful.  In partic...

Also on the way to Quilotoa we passed through an even smaller market town called Zumahua.  Unfortunately the market as just packing up as we g...

Visited a traditional market at a small town about 2 hours from Quito.  It was full of livestock (pigs, cows, llamas) and brightly colour...

On the way to Saquisili we passed the Cotopaxi volcano.  It was a beautiful day and the views were superb, the whole mountain just appeared to...

Hello.  I´ve arrived safely, no problems, just a little tired after 21 hours travelling!  The flight was fine, beautiful in places when ...