Costa Rica felt like we were cheating!  After the adventures of the Amazon, it was a huge surprise to see so many amazing animals without any of the anxiety I faced before!  The 12 days we spent in Costa Rica were extremely different to the rest of the year.  We decided to treat the last month of our travels as a holiday rather than travelling, and we splashed out on an incredible place to stay for our first three nights in Costa Rica - Peace Lodge. Peace Lodge is set within

As we landed in Florida, I felt a sense of relief I wasn't expecting. As much as I enjoyed Bolivia, the effect it had on my tummy really did make me crave Western food and good hygiene. The excitement of knowing that all public toilets would have a flush (rather than a bucket of water to 'flush it yourself') and that toilet roll could be put down the actual toilet were luxuries I had never previously considered luxuries! So to arrive at the villa Sam's parents had booked wit

Having spent the majority of the past year in the countryside and wilderness, our first impressions of La Paz were a little overwhelming! The city is set in a kind of bowl surrounded by mountains. It’s impossible to get the size of it in one picture, so here are a few photos from the drive down to the city. The traffic was like nothing I’d ever seen - it almost made Bangkok seem quiet! Although strangely, people don’t use their horns that often. Before we got to the hotel,

‘Is it bad?’ ‘Yes, it’s biting!’  Probably the number one thing I did not want to hear from our guide, Juan Carlos, when I had an insect on my actual eyeball that Sam and I had failed to remove!  Thankfully Juan Carlos got it out with his t-shirt and my eye is fine.  The Amazon rainforest is an amazing and terrifying place all at once!  I’m keeping this blog post as a diary while we’re here as I have a feeling we’re going to be learning a lot.  So here we go... Day 1 We took

At 4,086 square miles, the Salar de Uyuni is the world’s largest salt flat. Thankfully we had acclimatised to the altitude the previous day where we reached 4,400m, so the 3,656m altitude of the salt flats wasn’t a problem. The salt crust (which you can see in the photo below) covers a pool of brine which is rich in lithium. Because it is the rainy season we couldn’t do many perspective photos, but we attempted a few fun shots! The great thing about visiting the salt flats i

The highlight of the past few days has to be the incredible scenery we’ve been treated to on our journey through Argentina. As we approached the Quilmes ruins, the landscape changed and we appeared to have entered cactus country! The Quilmes ruins date back to 850 AD when the Quilmes people settled there. It is thought that 5,000 people lived there. They faced invasions by the Incas in 15th century then by the Spaniards who they fought off for 130 years. However, eventual

After spending three days on a huge estancia (6,500 acres to be precise) we have certainly learnt a lot about the gaucho way of life! I enjoyed learning how to horse ride gaucho-style. This involves a lot of slouching, holding the reins in one hand and pulling them from left to right over a certain point of the horse’s neck to make it turn (and boy, do they have good turning circles!) Meanwhile, Sam learnt how to do a fantastic Argentinian barbecue and won a bottle of champ

The full day we spent in Pucón was my favourite day of our time in South America so far. The town of Pucón itself has lots going on and has an incredible backdrop of beautiful mountains and an active volcano. Some of the braver members of our group climbed the volcano and looked into the crater. This involved crampons, gas masks and plastic sheets to slide down on... it looked terrifying! You can just about see them zigzagging up in the photo below. Meanwhile, we took the

Despite covering 1150km in five driving days, we’ve managed to pack a lot in over the past week.  We wild camped in the middle of a canyon, I was slightly concerned as Sam found lots of bones in a cave nearby that had been left by a puma - somewhat scary! The following day we went to the ‘Cave of Hands’ followed by Puyuhuapi National Park where we saw the Colgante Hanging Glacier.  We enjoyed taking our time as we strolled along the river whilst looking at the flora and fauna

We had a great time rock climbing in El Chalten. Because of our insurance for this part of the trip we had to climb with a guide but it meant we could try some different things. Sam climbed his first 6b+ and I climbed a 6a+. Some of the starts of the routes were particularly tricky because since they were put in eight years ago, the wind has worn away a lot of ground so you start 1-2m lower than originally planned! Below - my excitement after coming down from a route I tho

The photo above shows my favourite bit of the 97 square mile Perito Moreno glacier (or at least what it looked like yesterday) because I thought it looked like a lady looking out. As Sam said yesterday though, my photos are already out of date - we saw so much ice melt off and fall into the lake yesterday. Some of the chunks were so big they created waves! The front of the glacier is 40m high, although the average height above the water is 74m, and it is 30km long. Between

We’ve just completed an incredible four day hike in Chile called the ‘W Walk’ (because the route is shaped like a ‘W’).  One of my most Googled questions prior to this trip was ‘can you do the W Walk with bad knees?’  Well the answer is yes!  As long as you do it reeeeeally slowly.  But with this view on the last day, it’s well worth it... Wild camping is illegal in Torres Del Paine but there are campsites along the way.  There was a bit of a mess up at the start of the walk

Despite a rather stressful start to our time in Argentina involving a mix up with which airport we were meant to be at on Christmas Day, we arrived safely in Ushuaia and are already having an incredible time. Having searched Norway and New Zealand for whales with no luck, we finally saw some humpback whales! Humpback whales travel from their breeding grounds as far south as Antarctica (up to 8000km). We also saw lots of magellanic penguins. There were hundreds of cormorants

One thing’s for sure... we haven’t spent long enough in Northland! We’ll start with our favourite day - a voyage on the R. Tucker Thompson tall ship around the Bay of Islands. It’s illegal for the tall ship to chase after dolphins, but we were really lucky and they approached us as we were stopped for lunch! We weren’t allowed to swim with them as there were some babies there. They get easily distracted and if they miss a couple of feeds it can cause starvation. It was a w

With Sam being a bit of a Lord of the Rings fan, we decided to go for the Evening Banquet Tour rather than the standard tour at Hobbiton - a decision well made! Our evening started with a guided walk around Hobbiton while it was still light (and once other visitors who weren’t on the banquet tour had left). The guides told us about the history of Hobbiton. Belonging to the Alexander family, the 1250 acre sheep and beef farm was scouted out by air to be the location of the L

Waiheke Island was named as one of the world’s top 10 regions to visit by Lonely Planet a couple of years ago and is known for its numerous wineries, vineyards and beaches. Most tourists were getting the Waiheke Island hop-on-hop-off bus tour which is 65 dollars each. But we’ll let you in to a little secret... the public buses, which run just as regularly, are only 3 dollars per journey or 10 dollars for an all day travel card. Our first bus took us to Onetangi beach but w

With the exception of the Coromandel Peninsula, we only saw a handful of other tourists along the Pacific Coast Highway.  It was a great place to experience true Maori culture and was quite different from Rotorua where you can pay to go to Maori ‘shows’. The road begins in Napier, a place that was destroyed by an earthquake in 1931 but as a result is now full of Art Deco buildings. We followed the road through the famous wine region, Hawke’s Bay, and drove to Gisborne - the f

The more we travel, the more we truly understand the meaning of sayings and proverbs, and this weekend was all about making hay while the sun shines! We had a brilliant time on Tom and Julia’s farm in the Hawke’s Bay region. Unlike the other farms we’ve visited on this trip, this one has been passed down through the generations. It was really interesting to see what a difference this makes and the farm has had (and continues to have) lots of long term plans. It was also i

Ok New Zealand, we give in, we love you! Despite the majority of people suggesting we spend longer on the South Island than the North Island, we are so glad that we did a 50/50 split in the end. The North Island is incredible. We’ve spent the last couple of days driving along the Thermal Explorer Highway making numerous stops along the way. Yesterday looked something like this... (Mud pools) Above - a Maori village (complete with geothermal steam), below - our private nat

Following the suggestion of a friend (thanks Jenny), we decided to take a detour to the Forgotten World Highway. A quick look on the map showed that the start of the road wasn’t far from a national park with a volcano in. I found a free place where we could camp overnight so presumed that meant the volcano was no longer active. Finally we had found a free camping site with incredible views and no other tourists! As the sun set, the colours of the clouds and mountain were b