We headed to Uyuni, ready and excited for what we hoped would be one of the best sights of our whole trip. Uyuni was a funny little town, there’s not much there although it does have some good food and beer places! It was just used as a stopover for people waiting for Uyuni Salt Flat tours and that was what we were doing too. We had read the reviews about drunk Uyuni drivers (one Read more…
The Quilotoa Loop was something we had been really looking forward to since our planning days back in the UK; a 3-day hike ending at an active volcano crater. It looked stunning, and in real life it didn’t disappoint. We arrived in Latacunga (the base for this hike) from Quito. This is a great place; lots of good food and coffee options. Day 1 | (6 hours) We caught an early morning bus to Sigchos. Read more…
We arrived in Puerto Madryn after another long, long bus journey from Puerto Natales. This included a 7 hour layover in the tiniest, greyest town we’ve been in so far; Rio Gallegos. There seems to be lots of buses leaving from this tiny town and teeny bus station, so thankfully we could get a bus out that night and didn’t have to stay over! Puerto Madryn was HOT and SUNNY. Such a welcome change to the freezing Read more…
Argentina… Polo, steak and WINE! We chose to visit the wineries in Maipu, just outside of Mendoza and, although we weren’t sure how strict South American rules are with regard to drink driving it’s always better to be safe rather than sorry, so we went on bikes. Not my most favourite sport, but everything is better after a couple of wines! We took the local bus from Mendoza to Maipu (instruction below). The bus driver, Read more…
Before visiting Chang Mai, I did a lot of research on which the ethical and decent elephant sanctuaries were. My main concern was not paying to visit an elephant park which was mistreating elephants behind the scenes and therefore funding their misery. There are the main contenders such as ‘Elephant Nature Park’ and ‘Boon Lott’s’, which seem to be pretty safe bets with regard to how they treat the animals, however we opted for the Read more…
We try to organise everything independently when travelling but ultimately, when the cheaper option is an organised tour, we go with it! Therefore, we booked a trip to the Cu Chi tunnels where we were staying, at Pioneer Hostel in HCMC. At 8am our hotel owner walked us down to another hostel to meet the bus. Our guide, Ken, was on the microphone immediately, introducing himself and telling us about the day. Coming from such Read more…
I am a keen runner at home and frequently enter races so I was on the look-out for something in South America which worked out with our travel plans. We found an event in Lima. It was advertised as Lima 42k, but it also had a 21k and a 10k on the same date. I signed up about 8 weeks prior for the 21k at a price of 80 soles / £19. I don’t know Read more…
We had already read about Colombia’s love of Tejo (less of a drinking game as such, but a game that goes hand in hand with drink), so when we saw a bar advertising ‘gunpowder and beer’ we just had to go in. It was actually quite daunting, but that was exactly the reason it was so cool. The front bar was dark, smokey and very local. I asked for two beers so that we could Read more…
We came to Salento from Medellin; seven hours in a decent mini-bus. When we arrived in Salento’s main square on Saturday evening it was so cute. This is coffee region, and where Colombians come for weekend breaks. It’s very picturesque, and there are even more poncho and cowboy hat wearing men than usual. When we go out to find something to eat we end up at one of the food trucks in the main square. Read more…
When we were planning our Vietnam trip I looked at accommodation in Ha Long Bay and my eyes nearly popped out of my head! Even the cheapest room was more expensive than our entire daily budget. I knew we could go to Hanoi and take day(s) trips from there but then I read online about Cat Ba island. It’s slightly more effort than going via organised tour from Hanoi but I’m glad we did it Read more…
