Tropical rain and sun!
Since my last post I really haven´t moved much, we spent just under a week in the glorious Taganga sun and tropical storms.
Most of our days were speant sat around a pool trying to get that killer tan before we go home. I even managed to do 3 dives in the small fishing village, one of which was a night dive which really added an extra element of fun to the whole experience. My favourite part to it was the phosphorescent particles in the water that glow when you move.
On probably the wettest day we have experienced in South America we decided to go to Tayrona 
national park and walk through the jungle for nearly 2 hours to a camp site where we would have a hammock under the stars for the night….. bad idea!! The path was bogged with water and mud that would slip up to mid shin height. Some clever thinking meant that we had no waterproofs and minimal change of clothing so when we finally made it to the basic of basic camp sites everything was soaked! The air was so moist that nothing dried and stuff actually got wetter. Who would have thought the air could get so moist that cloth would catch it all… Maybe I should have, but it meant to have some dry clothes to sleep in then we would have to wear the clothes to dry. We actually 
discovered that we didn´t have enough money to get back to Tanganga either as the kind security guard checking our bags had stolen about $15 worth of money… probably because we didn´t have any drugs to bribe money out of us with.
The next morning we woke up and went for a walk along the beach, this was actually the reason we came to the park. The beech meets jungle and it looks amazing! The beech´s that we saw as we walked about were amazing and dare I say it, the best I have seen all trip!
Thankfully there was a kind boat captain who took us back to Tanganga on the basis that we would pay when we arrived.
We have now left Tangana for Cartagena, which is this beautiful old colonial walled city that the Spanish built. Every street looks amazing and presents you with a photo oppotunity. There are even a Botero sculpture of a reclining fat lady.
So thats it for now, im in the last 2 weeks of my trip. How crazy!
Don´t forget to check out my Panoramic pictures at. http://s348.photobucket.com/albums/q326/nuthead53/
Colombian beach´s and lots of fish…
Since the bum braking 4 day ride to Colombia we have been soaking in the atmosphere and experiencing the coastline.
We spent a few days in Bogota, Colombia´s capital cities. Like most other capitals it kinda seem´s weird that your in the country your in. Our first few days in Bogota were wet… its the 3rd highest major city in the world so the weather wasn´t great. We headed up to Santa Marta (northern coast) and things started to change, mainly the heat! Its friging boiling up here! It kinda remind me of being in south India with the hot wetness. The city has tiny little streets with lots of people just chilling out road side. It really excites me to be here as this is my first experience of the Caribbean sea and this is the Colombia I was expecting.
Today we left our posh hotel and headed to Taganga a authentic fishing town, it is a great place for scuba diving, and it has beautiful beaches nearby.
The plan is to spend a lot of time here and get a killer tan that Mic Dundee would be proud of. I´m also going to do some more diving.
So thats it for now, if you dont know already I am into the last month of my travels. We have a lot planned so we can finish with a bang and im really happy to be doing it in Colombia!
Adios amigos
4 days of hell and im finally in Colombia
Last time I posted were were in Huacachina celebrating Gudges birthday! The day was spent relaxing, drinking Pisco Sours and taking a jeep ride through the desert. The la-tor being complete insane and definitely making it a day to remember. So because I haven’t said it on here already. Happy Birthday Gudge!!
I’m now in Bogota - Colombia, we got the bus from Huacachina to Lima (5 hours) then onto a bus that went from Lima to Bogota… which is a 4 day bus ride (72 hours worth) Surprisingly it was that bad… although I wouldn’t want to repeat it! The scenery on route was amazing and no I didn’t fear for my life like some people thought I would taking this journey! It was perfectly safe and I would recommend it to anyway who didn’t want to pay for a flight. Bogota at the moment is rainy, I guess we hit the rainy season but the north should bring sunshine and amazing beaches that that’s where we are heading after recovering.
I’m in to the last month of my trip now… scary to think it will all be over so soon.
Gudges Birthday - Huacachina
Hey, since my last post I have been to Cuzco and I’m now in Huacachina… aka Wacka Fucking Chena.
We arrived in Cuzco really early in the morning, I had found a hostel that sounded nice on the net but when we turned up they didn´t have any space. This was a real bumma as we had barely slept! and we didn´t really know where we were. Luckily we managed to find a 3 star hotel just down the road and got them to half there room price… The hotel had porters and everything, luxury that we usually can´t afford. So the first day was spent recovering and planning our adventure to Machu Picchu. We decided to get colectivos to Ollantaytambo (about 3 hours from Cuzco) and then get on the worlds most expensive train to Machu Picchu (saving about half of the train fare) Ollantaytambo was a nice little town that had some interesting Inca ruins.
We set off at 05:30 to get to Machu Picchu so we could be the first people there… that and it was the cheapest ticket we could get. Machu Picchu is set on the top of a mountain with amazing scenery around it, we decided to get the bus to the top because we are lazy. The site is huge and it looks absolutely amazing, we had a good wonder around trying to take in every angle and get some amazing photographs. Unfortunately we didn´t have a guide… we were trying to do this on the cheap and we probably should have, but we did learn some things by listening in to other groups.
From Cuzco we had one of the worst bus rides I have ever experienced to Ica (then a taxi to Huacachina). My
height is the major problem here… they just don´t design buses with a 6,3″ person in mind. Huacachina is a amazing place, its like being in a Arabian desert oasis. The tiny town is set around the oasis lake with vast sand dunes surrounding that. My days are generally spent chilling by the pool enjoying the local pisco sours. You can take dune buggy rides through the desert or rent a sand-board and practice falling face first into sand at speed and generally lodging it into every part of your body.
Today is Gudges birthday and we are going to take a trip through the desert, then spend the evening drinking some home-made pisco sours. We have to get up early tomorrow as we travel to Lima to start our epic 3 day bus journey to Colombia… It´s going to be hard enough without the added affect of a hangover.
So that brings me up to date, check out Gudge´s and my photos and if you don´t already know, we have exactly a month left of our travels!
Dressing like a Peruvian
Firstly a bit of catching up to do as usual. We never made the flight to North Bolivia to do the Pampas tour… The flight was cancelled but we weren´t told this before turning up to the airport. It turns out that the political situation in Bolivia got even more unstable and it really wouldn´t have been safe for us to go. So this means we had to leave Bolivia early and miss out on a great jungle trip, oh well. I do plan to make it into the Amazon in Colombia though.
Our last few days in Bolivia were spent in Copocabana next to Lake Titicaca 
and on the island Isla de Sol or as a smelly hippy told me… ´the end of the earth´ I think he had just read Hitch Hikers Guide to the Galaxy. So yeah, that was fun we got scorched by the sun and generally chilled out. Its kinda weird that Bolivia is a land locked country yet has this massive lake at 4000m. We saw some Aztec ruins which i’m sorry to say were unspectacular… Maybe my eyes have been ruined by all that I have seen but a wall and some house foundations were not worth the climb.
This brings me to the other side of Lake Titicaca in Peru. This trip was 
actually pretty funny, there were so many characters on the boat that we couldn´t stop laughing at everyone. The worst and actually not funny at all was this German bloke who just wasnt happy with anything!! The poor guide took so much rubbish off him, I kinda wish I said something now like. ´shut up you big baby!´ He wasn´t happy that the village we stayed in didn´t have electricity or showers……. crazy.
So anyway, on the trip we got to visit people who actually live on islands 
that they’ve made them self out of reeds! Its insane, you just see these little communities of about 30 people going about there day. Everything is made of reeds including their boats. They all have a chief who is generally in charge and that’s about it. From there we went to the island where we would spend the night. Gudge and I got this lovely young lady who had a family of 4 including herself and her husband. She would walk around with her little bambino in a cloth on her back, the baby never left her! I guess in England it would be frowned upon but I thought it was cute, the baby has constant contact with its mother… We climbed the biggest hill on the island to watch the sun go down in spectacular fashion! I got a series of photos that hopefully I can animate so that you can see. Once it got to the evening 
Gudge and I were presented with some local clothing… I thought this was to keep warm but it was actually because we were going to a village party! It was hilarious, people would come up and ask us to dance and I was particularly rubbish! It all got a bit hectic when the dance floor all joined hands and everyone started running around trying to just skim the opposite side of people, whilst yanking me about and generally recreating a scary roller-coaster ride. The evening was excellent!! The trip finished the next day with visiting another island before returning to Puno.
Since then we have been in Arequipa. This city is just beautiful, it has so much amazing architecture. Most buildings are just 1 floor in height because of all the earth quakes that they get here.
So that brings me to today, we have the evening bus to Cuzco where we will see the Sacred Valley & Machu Picchu. I can´t wait!!
Check out all my new pictures + Gudges.
P.s Inca Cola is amazing!
Salar de Uyuni - Bolivia South West and Salt Flats
This part of the trip will be rememberd as blowing the budget! Bolivia has so much to offer that its just impossibly not to get involved in something.
Our first day was spent feeling like Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. We were to go on a horse ride through the Bolivian desert. At the stables we were on the horses within 2 minutes, saddled up and ready to go… I guess they thought we were expert jockeys and didn´t need any training. I felt like a proper cowboy as we had some authentic fake cowboy hats. The trip was breathtaking, I saw scenery that I never expected to see, like real cactuses… Yeah that kinda sounds silly but in Europe you just don´t get hills full of cactuses. The ride was 3 hours long and took in some of the local attractions, the horses were generally well behaved till we got to the end of the ride and the trainers decided we weren´t going quick enough. We got into a full gallop and for any guy who has rode a horse badly you will remember how much it hurts! My line to the guide was ´hueves mala´ which means bad eggs.
The next day we were to embark on our 4 day jeep ride through the Bolivian desert where we would see lagoons, towering volcanoes, smouldering geysers and deserts of blazing white salt as well as a wide variety of plant and animal life.
Day 1, we started early-ish as there was so much to cram into each day. Within a few minutes we were at the Sillar our first photo opportunity. The site was a massive valley that stretched out bellow. The day was spent mostly driving higher and higher till our end point San Antonio de Lipez at 4260m. To try and warm up (the wind is super cold at this altitude) James and I challenged two 10 year olds to a game of football… They of course won, we were left trying to catch our breath. The smallest amount of movement at this altitude can take your breath away so chasing a 10 year old for a football was a bit ambitious. As it got darker we got a breathtaking view of the night sky because of the altitude and no light pollution.
Day 2, after awaking from a surprisingly warm nights sleep. (maybe those 4 blankets came in handy) we were off again. Today we had a lot of driving ahead of us. The scenery kept changing as we went through places like: The abandoned ghost town of San Antonio… apparently the devil ruled here and a lot of people died, so everyone packed up and moved to a new town, Laguna Morejon where you see volcanic rock, several towns and our first lagoon - Laguna Kolpa where they actually extract minerals to make soap. After lunch we drove deep into the desert and near the Chile boarder where you could see mountains that looked like something Salvador Dali had come up with. The final site was the Sol de Manana geysers at 5000m! If the lack of oxygen wasn´t enough there was a distinct smell of egg in the air due to the volcanic sulphur. Tonight was meant to be the coldest night of the trip with temperatures getting to -20c, but again I was nice and toasty… Gudge even broke a sweat with her hot water bottle.
Day 3, Today we saw masses of flamingos, we visited several lakes of varying colours: Some blue, some turquoise and one was even red. I managed to sneak up to the flamingos and get some great pictures, it was actually really relaxing to just sit there and watch them. Other sites were the Desierto de Siloli where a apparently famous tree shaped rock resides… it was kinda unimpressive but made a cool picture. What I was more interested in was climbing up some big rocks next to it and getting some Europe esc air guitar/Cherokee shots.
Day 4, Our final day and the day of the Salar de Uyuni (Salt Flats) the largest salt plain in the world at 
10,500km2. So far the trip had just been getting better and better! The last day didn’t disappoint. We got up early to watch the sunrise over the salt flats. It was really cold and you could feel the heat slowly warming you as the sun got higher and higher. The sunrise was spectacular but unfortunately no picture could do this justice! We stopped early to have lunch on a islands in the middle of the flats. The island was made of reef remains and loads of cactuses… the oldest of which was 1000years old, apparently they only grow a cm a year!! The view from the top of the island was amazing, a complete 360 of the breathtaking whiteness around you. We had a few more stops just in the middle of the flats and took some silly pictures playing with perspectives.
The tour was amazing and I will never forget the amount of scenery and animals that I saw! It was a bit worrying to start the trip as over the last 2 months almost 20 people had died. Thankfully we had a excellent driver who I couldn´t praise enough.
Unfortunately due to all the striking in Bolivia we were unable to go to Potasi so we had to make our way to La Paz (Highest capital city in the world at 3600m) This bus ride was one of the most uncomfortable trips I have ever taken, not because of the bad bus but because of the -c temperatures you experience at night. (3 jumpers just doesn´t cut it)
So I have been in La Paz for the past 4 days. Yesterday I road the worlds most dangerous road, which was amazing. Not nearly as scary as people make out and just beautiful. You go from about 4600m down to 1300m, which means at the top you can barely fill extremities and at the bottom your in shorts and a vest. Thankfully the road isn’t used that much anymore so we didn´t have to dodge much traffic. (pictures + videos to follow)
So that brings me to today, we were meant to be getting a 7.20 flight to the North of Bolivia but again because of the striking things haven’t gone as planned. Our flight has now been confirmed and the delay was only 10 hours, i’m just thankful that we are actually leaving today. So the next 3 days will be spent on a canoe floating through the Amazon.
That’s all for now, check out the new pictures! and a Amazon blog to come soon.
Bolivia South West - Salt Flats
Just a tiny update to say that I completed a 4 day jeep tour in the southwest of Bolivia, big post to come and only half my pictures have been uploaded.
Tomorrow I do a bike ride down the worlds most dangerous road, then its a short flight to the north of Boliva to spend 3 days canoeing through the Amazon.
A full update will come afterwards, sorry for the delay.
The beautiful one - Salta
Just a quick update so you know i’m still travelling.
I´m still in Salta trying to learning Castellano (Argentinian Spanish). It´s fairly hard for me, I think being only a English speaker makes learning a new language tricky. The whole gender thing and changing verbs is hard to get your head around. Still we have a amazing teacher called Mercedes, who is not only teaching us her mother tongue but also some history lessons. Today we even went to school with her to get some pictures with kids she is teaching. They were so excited! Apparently its like a celebrity walking into the school as they don´t get much contact with travellers.
We have spent the past 5 days in a loft apartment just at the bottom of a hill overlooking Salta. It was beautiful and we didn´t want to leave! So now we are back at our great hostel Inti Huasi. We spent over a week here before moving to the apartment. There is still loads to do and see in Salta, its the kind of city that you can easily spend a lot of time in because its just so charming. The main attraction though is “Train to the clouds”, “Tren a las nubes”
Apart from that we haven´t been doing a great deal apart from enjoying ourselves.
I have a recommendation for you though. Firstly google chimichurri for recipes on how to make this sauce, it goes soooo well with steak!! Seriously, your life isn’t complete until you try this! Second, Empanadas are a snack food in Argentina that taste amazing, its a bit like a English pasty without the potato and more tasty. Again look it up and try it out.
A random thought and something I should have mentioned about Brazil. They do hotdogs that have ketchup, mustard, mayonnaise, sweetcorn, peas, peppers, crisps and a quails egg… From the mustard onwards it was all a surprise. Weird but tasty!
Ciao para ahora chicos
Back to Argentina
So again I haven´t updated in ages…. no surprise.
Since my last post I have been to Iguazu and experienced the worlds widest waterfall. I have travelled to Rio Janeiro and sampled the amazing beaches and had a spot of culture visiting the Christo. I am now back in Argentina taking Spanish lessons and relaxing for 2 weeks of study.
I´l start with Iguazu. We arrived in the town and had already made the decision to go to Rio since we were 
only a 24hour bus ride away. Unfortunately I think everyone has this idea and it meant the next available bus was 5 days away. Iguazu is not a big town and it seemed like we would have 5 days of twiddling our thumbs. It actually turned out to be a great place to relax, the weather was the best we had experienced so far in South America and the town was pleasant. We even found a little area that just specialises in olives, cheese with wine and beer, you sit outside in the sun and consume. This is actually my idea of heaven and it has been one of my favourite parts of the South America eating olives and drinking wine.
The waterfalls are the main attraction in Iguzu and the waterfall itself actually straddles 3 countries, Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. It was a bit like walking into Disney Land with trains and boats to take you everywhere. There are walk ways over and under the waterfalls, it was still a great experience! You get to see the waterfall from loads of angles and get right into the action. We even took a speed boat trip under one of the smaller parts of the falls and got thoroughly soaked!
So onto Brazil, the place that I really didn´t want to leave! The weather miraculously got hotter and was 
pretty much everything you would expect from Brazil. i.e. there winter is actually better than our summers! We stayed in a great hostel for 8 days and by the time we left everyone knew each other and we were all leaving at the same time. Whilst there we spent several days relaxing on the amazing Rio beach´s, where you can watch Brazilian´s living out there lives which seems to consist of posing and exercising on the beach all day… The thought really dose go through you mind that it would be so easy just to live here and pop down to the beach on your lunch break. From our hostel you could see Christo up on the hills looking down over Rio, again another great spectacle and the main thing I wanted to see in Rio. Actually getting up close to the Christo you realise just how big it actually is! The view from the top was great, overlooking the city and the km´s of beach´s. If you don´t already know, Samba is big in Brazil, so we went to a Samba club. It kinda looks easy to begin with just doing a little step shuffle, but its actually a lot harder than you think! The music was great and just had so much energy and beat to it. Something I have to mentioned about Brazil as well is these guys know how to snack! I really don´t know how they manage to stay in shape as its not healthy at all but it tastes great! Fried cheese and ham toasties and pasty type fried things, all great and a staple of our diet along with the great fruit shakes.
Going back to Argentina was long and painful. We knew we were back once we got off the bus as it was so cold but we had just travelled over 3000km to the north east. So this is where I am now, we are renting a apartment and we have already started Spanish lessons. I’m rubbish but hopefully over 2 weeks I will improve. The town is just what you expect from Argentina which hasn´t really been something we have seen elsewhere, everyone looks really local and completed different to the bigger cities. Salta means ´the beautiful one´and it really is. We are going to get the train to the clouds and visit the museums and sites around the city.
That brings me up to date, again im sorry it has taken ages for me to update and everything was a bit rushed.
Gunung Rinjani
So guess what I finally got round to doing this post, I hope you find it worth the wait!!
After several bus´and a ferry ride, we arrived in a little village just off the main trekking route. The next day we were up at 6.30 in the morning to be on our way by 8. Things took a little longer to get going because of the legal paper work needed to be signed and payed for… basically signing your life away should anything go wrong, which it turns out is incredible likely as the safety on the trek was… scary, that’s probably the best word.
It was a 3 hour trek across stunning meadow like fields and a slow incline to our first stop. It was hard and hot but enjoyable to watch the scenery pass us by. We came to our first lunch stop just at the bottom of a rocky incline, nicely shaded by a hill and overlooking the meadows. I had a go at lifting one of the porters bamboo carrying baskets and nearly collapsed under the weight. These people carry 40+kg up and down mountains everyday of the week and sometimes don´t even have a day off before starting the next trek! After a massive lunch we set off again for another 2 hours up a lot steeper inclines and into the misty and refreshing clouds, things started to get considerable harder at this point!! Once we reached the top we were presented with a breathtaking view! It made the past 5 hours feel totally worth it. Since it was my sisters and Gudge´s mum´s birthday we took a few happy birthday shots with stunning scenery in the background. It was now just 30minutes to base camp, which is at the foot of the volcano we would be climbing the next day. We were treated to a spectacular sunset and a massive dinner.
So at 2.30am we awoke and stuffed our faces with crackers and sugary tea to give us that little boost needed for 5 hours of pain! Like the first day the start of the trek was a little deceiving with a steep but manageable start. We reached the top of the manageable part within a hour, it was now only 2 hours of progressively steeper and steeper climbing till you reach the back braking, teeth chattering and about to collapse in tiredness summit. This climb felt like it would never end! Either side of you in pitch blackness there was a drop to nothingness a few thousand meters below, we were literally walking up a 2 metre wide ridge to the summat. The ground was like being on loose grit / pebbles that made the going hard. We would take 5 steps then stop to catch our breath and even be on our hands and knees at times because the incline was so steep. Things got a bit emotional but we pushed on and with the help of Jimmy our 19 year old guide we reached the summit in record time!!
What a view the summit presented us with, we could see a thousand metres below where we had camped 
and taken pictures on the first day. You had a 360 view over the whole of Lombok and could even see the Gili islands in the distance, as well as the smaller volcano that is actually inside the crater of the mountains and next to the lake. We were just shy of 4000 metres to watch the sun rise, this was the whole point of setting off so early and climbing in the dark. I took loads of pictures which hopefully you have seen by now, if not check out the panoramic ones! The journey down was a lot!! easier, at times we were even running what we had been crawling up a few hours early. We reached base camp for about 9am and only had a 45minute brake before setting off again to climb down the side of almost vertical mountain!
This part of the trek will be remembered as the pain section! From now on everything got progressively more painful! What should have been a hour climb down took us 2 + a hour of walking across reasonable flat ground to the lake that sit´s within the crater. We stopped for lunch and I actually felt pretty fed up! I had been walking for 8 hours already and it was only lunch time… The view again was amazing! High up in the heavens was where I had climbed in the early morning and now I was sitting 2000 metres below, wondering why I had just climbed down so far and why we were going up the opposite mountain and partially down it again for the next 3 hours.
Thankfully before our next climb we got to rest our tired bodies in the natural hot springs and regain some 
composure. The climb up the next mountain took 2 hours and I was actually thankful to be going up. Its hard but it dosen´t hurt as much as slowly and painfully going down! Again we made record time which helped as we made a slow decent to our camp for the night. The sunset was breathtaking and we knew that we would be having a full nights sleep. We ate dinner in bed and were asleep by 8.
Our last and most painful day started at 7am. Like usually we had a big breakfast and set off for home and where people wouldn´t be forcing us to walk so much!! Decent took about 4 hours, we started in the clouds and progressed into steep jungle where every root was a trap waiting to get you. I decided to run at this point, maybe because I was delirious from being so tired or perhaps I just really wanted to reach the end but it was actually easier!! I ran the last half of the treck and when we finished I could barely walk!! I had a can of coke which felt like drinking fizzy acid! 3 days of just drinking water and feeling fairly parched anyway made the coke feel like eruption in my mouth.
It really was one of the most hardest and best experiences I have ever had, possibly the hardest physical thing I have done!! The pain didn´t stop with completing the treck, it went on for the next few days as my muscles slowly loosened and I began to be able to walk again.
I’m sorry this has taken a month to do! It seems like a lifetime ago, its funny how easily you forget the painful things in life and just remember the good parts. I am now in Argentina at the border to Brazil, we are going to see the Iguazu falls tomorrow then cross into Brazil. The past few weeks have been spent in Mendoza where we went skiing for the week in the Penitentes - Andes back in the city we enjoyed a cycling wine tour!! and stayed at a hostel that provides free wine….. as the owner said ´English people cost me a lot of money` We also sampled a famous Argentinian buffet. Its like walking into a all you can eat contest if you are a guy, I managed to polish off 5 steaks which I am very proud of! We have also been to Buenos Aires and Rosario (check out the pictures).
As usual, I hope everyone is well! Stay tuned as i´ve got a exciting few months ahead!
