Author: Alex

Traveller, muddy gardener, carbon consultant

Colonia and Montevideo

After Iguazu falls we spent a few days in Buenos Aires before heading off to Uruguay. At this point we had just over two weeks of our trip left, time for a little exploration of Uruguay before heading back to Buenos Aires for our final weekend.

Crumbling colonial architecture in Colonia
Crumbling colonial architecture in Colonia

We started our Uruguayan travels in the town of Colonia-del-Sacramento, known locally as Colonia. It’s a small town with a beautiful historic centre, a nice place to spend a bit of time relaxing after hectic Buenos Aires.

We arrived by boat from Buenos Aires on the Colonia Express ferry, covering the 27 miles of the Rio Plata between Argentina and Uruguay in about an hour and a half. We arrived at a fairly run down looking port, heading through old shipping containers made into a makeshift walkway and past some sad looking buildings. Then suddenly we came into a new terminal building, very smart but unfinished and not quite connected to the port just yet! From this arrival we weren’t quite sure what to make of Uruguay yet.

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Iguazu Falls

It’s now been just over a year since we returned from South America and as the last few posts are nearly ready to go and we’re about to start a new chapter in our lives we thought it was time to get a move on closing out the last one………..

After returning from Antarctica we had a couple of days of transit right up to the north of Argentina. Having spent about two months travelling down Chile and Argentina from San Pedro in Chile to Ushuaia in Argentina and then down to Antarctica, it was surreal to travel so many thousands of kilometres in just two flights. We arrived to a warm and humid day in Puerto Iguazú, the main town for access to the famous Iguazu Falls on the Argentina-Brazil border.

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Thoughts on Chile

Being back home and back at work has both given us a new perspective on our travels but also severely limited the amount of time that we have to reflect on our trip. The next major post, Antarctica, is a big one and it’ll be a little while before we’ve gone through all the photos and videos to pull out something to illustrate this incredible continent. In the meantime, in our last post we left Chile for the final time so here are my thoughts on Chile.

Time for a little recap and summary of our thoughts on Chile. We really enjoyed our time in Chile, and it is somewhere that I would love to return to and explore further one day. Even though we spent around a month there altogether, I feel there is a lot more we can come back to. Chile is the long thin west coast of South America, it has a huge range of landscapes and some really interesting cities too.

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Tierra del Fuego, the Land of Fire!

The 'Fin del Mundo' road
The ‘Fin del Mundo’ road

After spending five days hiking the W-trek we had one final day with our Wicked van Amanda. It was time to drop her off in Punta Arenas, a small town only a few hours drive south. It was a pleasant, uneventful drive, listening to music and driving down a road signposted as the route of the end of the world! The landscape was huge and open and really did feel like the very edge of the world, but the signal was great and the lines from https://www.outdoor-surface-painting.co.uk/road/white-lining.

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Santiago & Valparaíso

Our bus to Santiago, not so Rapido thanks to a 3 hour delay at the border
Not so Rapido thanks to a 3 hour delay at the border

Alex here again to tell you about Santiago and Valparaiso. We were back in Chile after a bus ride that took the best part of 10 hours (4 more than advertised!). We met two really nice English girls on the bus and swapped travel tips to pass the time whilst waiting at the border, this part of the journey took 3 hours waiting in a queue of buses! We’d heard mixed things about Santiago, most backpackers we’d met skip it, or just pass through in transit, but I’d had recommendations from my parents so wanted to spend more time there. We weren’t disappointed and really enjoyed the city.

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Wine Tasting in Mendoza

View across Mendoza from the hotel
View across Mendoza from the hotel

Hi all, its Alex back again to describe our time in Mendoza. Unfortunately two days before the end of the last post, I dropped my camera and it eventually gave up and stopped working, this means all the photos from Mendoza are taken on our mobile phones. We replaced the camera in Santiago so will be back to better quality shots in the next post.

To get to Mendoza we took our first overnight bus from Tucuman, where we’d dropped off the rental car. This bus was a better experience than I’d expected as the seats were comfy and we were served surprisingly good food.

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New Year’s in Salta & a Road Trip in Northern Argentina

Alex here again to describe our second road trip and new year’s eve. We hadn’t made any advance plans for New Year’s Eve, and were persuaded by Ellory, an American we’d met whilst travelling, to come to Argentina. So we hopped on a bus from San Pedro in Chile to Salta in Argentina. The border crossing was very easy and the bus pretty comfortable, although a large section of windy mountain pass reminded me why I don’t like to travel by bus!

Vegetarian sushi in Salta
Vegetarian sushi in Salta

We arrived in Salta in the early evening and realised we were totally unprepared for this new country, having not really done any research. We found the hostel, dumped our bags and went to explore the city. We were pretty hungry and thirsty but had no money. After searching the town for a while we were getting concerned, all the cash machines had queues (the Argentinians are ones to rival the British for queuing!) and only seemed to accept local cards. Then we managed to find a row of international banks, no queues, and they accepted our cards, phew! We went for an unconventional first meal in Argentina, at a very nice vegetarian restaurant with huge portions and some artesanal beers.

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New Perspectives in Uyuni

We’ve just got back from an incredible 11 days in Antarctica on the Ortelius. We saw some incredible wildlife and scenery and got some great photos. That will have to wait for now though as we have a lot to publish first! In the meantime here’s one we prepared earlier….

Back during our Spanish course we’d been told about a “must see” place in Bolivia called Uyuni. We didn’t know much about it but saw some amazing photos of what is apparently the world’s largest salt flats, and we knew we wanted to go. A few weeks later we bumped into a couple who told us we had to travel there before Christmas (due to partying locals being dangerous on the roads over the festive season, and also the Dakar rally in early January). So we started to do some research along the way, and as has happened with most things here, in the end we booked a tour just the week before going. We booked a place for me, Chris and the three Dutch girls and managed to get a great deal with a recommended company (Al Extremo) by having five of us together which almost filled a van. The company was also about $100 cheaper than their rivals as they only offered Spanish speaking guides.

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Sucre

One of the beautiful buildings surrounding Plaza 25 de Mayo, Sucre
One of the beautiful buildings surrounding Plaza 25 de Mayo, Sucre

Hi Alex here, taking over again to tell you about our stop in Sucre.

Sucre is the official capital of Bolivia, although the Government is based in La Paz and it is the much larger of the two. Sucre is a lovely city though, a small university town with lots of old colonial architecture and beautiful countryside all around.

From La Paz we’d decided to catch a plane to Sucre, this was a 35 minute flight as opposed to a 12 hour bus and only cost us £50 so not too difficult a decision! We arrived to a much more temperate climate and a lower, more manageable altitude. We were met by Jorge, the owner of the place we’d be staying in for the next few nights. We found the room through Esmee, whose friend had stayed with a friend of Jorge’s previously. Don Jorge’s Rooftop Rooms has a big roof terrace with a great view over the city and had space for all five of us.

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Train travel and Titicaca

Bright and early on the Monday morning in Cusco we packed up and headed for the train station. Since I normally get travel sick on long distance buses and Chris doesn’t particularly like them either, we decided to go for a much more interesting option of a train from Cusco to Lake Titicaca. The train took 10.5 hours, a few more hours than the bus and was much more expensive, but it was a great way to spend a day travelling.

The train stopped at the highest point of our journey
The train stopped at the highest point of our journey

We arrived at the station and passed our bags to the porter, aware that ours were the only backpacks being loaded amongst the smart suitcases. We went for a drink in the waiting room and realised we were probably the youngest passengers by about 30 years too! The other passengers were mainly made up of an older tour group from Tazmania with their Chilean guide, and we had a nice chat with a few of them.

We boarded the train and, as it pulled off we went to explore. The seating carriages were very plush, old fashioned with armchairs and proper tables with little lamps and tablecloths. We had a four person table to ourselves. The toilets were also very smart, more like a nice hotel than a train. Then there was a large bar carriage with windows curving up so you could see out of the roof too. The back end of the train was open air so you could lean out and watch the world passing by.

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