Going Out on a High in Argentina

I'm now able to count on two limbs the number of days left we have on this amazing trip, which isn't at all depressing...

There's one more blog entry to come after this one, which will be a rundown of various Top 5 lists (many of you will know my affection for lists), but this entry is all about probably the best 5 weeks we've had on this trip. This is largely thanks to three things: The people we've been travelling with (shout out to Mick, Jeanine, Jon, Kat and Kev); the amazing country that is Argentina (read on), and leaving Bolivia!

Reaching Argentina after 4 weeks in Bolivia was an ethereal pleasure - the two countries are so different, though I do find it slightly depressing that arriving back (arguable) in the first world was really nice.

2 cities + 2 much wine = Good Times

Our first stop in Argentina was the city of Salta. Arriving in Salta and seeing rubbish collection/bins, clean streets, flat roads, healthy (and happy!) people and a variety of great food was a shock to the system. This was before we went to the supermarket's wine aisle - which was an epiphany due to the abundance of good wine for under £3 a bottle.

In Salta we did very little other than drink too much ridiculously well priced wine and eat too much red meat (two very distinct and highly repetitive themes over the past month). I got a couple of smashings at ping-pong as well - thanks Mick.

Never too much?

It was here in Salta that I learnt WE WOULD HAVE to change our original plan of hitting Buenos Aires only at the end of the trip, learning that River Plate would be playing Boca Juniors in El Super Clasico in less than a week... A good part of my next few days were dedicated to sorting tickets, but that didn't stop the travelling.

A quick word on our main method of travel over the past 6 months - the humble bus. They take them to a new level over here... With seats better than Business Class, food, wine and champagne (sometimes), a 15 to 30 hour journey became a pleasure!

Our enforced and mandatory detour took us next to the lovely city of Cordoba - Argentina's second city and a lively student hotbed. Again, we passed our time taking in the city's architecture (both modern and colonial), and had a couple of close-to-epic nights out with our Irish friend Kev.

We also encountered one of those totally random but really lucky moments on one of our walks through the city, coming across a light / fountain show in a city square that would have been at home in Vegas.

Main Square at night

Aforementioned fountains

Having sorted tickets out to El Super Clasico through some spurious online agent (were they real tickets?! we'd have to find out on the day...) we had a couple of days to kill before we had to be in BA, so we factored we'd squeeze in a cheeky trip to Iguazu falls (20 hours there, 18 hours down to BA) - to give us a bit more time at the end of our trip to relax...

Not Much Water

Our one night stopover in Argentina's extreme north-east was for the sole purpose of seeing Iguazu Falls - bordering Brazil and Paraguay.

The falls are nothing short of immense... truly immense. I've never seen so much water making so much noise and creating so many rainbows as on that day. The moment we reached the falls after walking through jungle (with about 300 other tourists) was one of those 'wow' moments that totally takes your breath away. There's nothing more to say really...

Going Loco in El Monumental

Next stop - a very quick one in Buenos Aires (we would be back) for the small matter of El Super Clasico - the biggest game in Argentine football and arguably one of the biggest in the world (No.1 Sporting occasion to see before you die according to the Guardian), between River Plate (apparently a rich, elitist club from BA's north) and Boca Juniors (working class from BA's south).

The rivalry and hatred between the two teams' fans are obsessional - and on our way to the game on the bus we got our first taste... A policeman dragged a Boca fan from our bus for screaming abuse at some River fans. I was glad I made my decision NOT to wear my River Plate T-shirt at this point...

We spent a good hour trying to get in to River Plate's stadium - the 60,000+ El Monumental. Our tickets did prove to be genuine, and genuinely right in amongst River's hardcore faithful - obviously no seating and 100% terraced, where we were strangely given a massive wad of used paper... We had no idea why.

The atmosphere in the ground was getting ridiculous, and all came to a crescendo when the teams came out: Fire crackers went off; flares went flying and more paper than I've ever seen was thrown skywards - it was an amazing moment. Not as amazing as when River scored the only goal of the game at our end and the stadium erupted - followed by Boca's fans lighting 50+ flares and throwing them down at the River fans beneath them (good idea putting the away fans on the tier above the home fans... really).

Biggest flag ever...

Boca's Flares

Our £300 detour was massively worth it, topped off with an amazing steak at BA's best restaurant (surely!), called La Cabrera (we are definitely going back), at 2am. The next day we were to fly to Mendoza, heart of Argentina's wine production, for yes, more wine.

Mayhem in Mendoza

Mendoza is a beautiful city, in a valley under South America's highest mountains with a hot hot hot climate (in the summer). We were staying with our friends Mick and Jeanine in a lovely hostel with an incredible kitchen - which was the site of some inspired cooking, including my first curry for months...

The unquestionable highlight of our 3 days in Mendoza was our day out in Maipu (small town nearby), where we hired bikes from a complete hero (Mr Hugo) and rode from winery to winery, tasting (drinking) wine and taking in the general beauty of the area on our bikes.

Upon returning the bikes Mr Hugo sat us down and plied us with very unhealthy amounts of chilled Torrontes white wine (unheard of outside Argentina, it's delicious).

On this day I drank more wine than probably ever before in one day - and it was all topped off by an almost immemorable mexican meal (home-made Tortillas, thanks Mick and Jeanine!) at god knows what time back at the hostel...

Tasting tasting tasting

Us with the legendary Mr Hugo...

It was time for a break from quick travelling and too much drinking, so we headed down to Bariloche, in Argentina's lake district, for 5 days of hiking around some of the most sublime scenery.

The Start of Something Special...

The Lake District is in the north of Patagonia, a vast area we would fall in love with over the next two weeks. In the winter the Lake District and Bariloche are rammed with skiers and snow-boarders, but in the summer it's all about the hiking, biking and other outdoor activities.

The area is ridiculously beautiful, with azure blue lakes, green hills and snow-capped mountains - ideal for 5 days of hiking and some amazing barbecuing (thanks again to Mick) in our campsite, on a lake... bliss. What also helped was the arrogance of our so-called 'tent' - with a permanent cover, beds and a heater (it got down to freezing at night).

We even stretched to hiring a car for our last day in Bariloche, taking in some further-afield lakes and mountains... well worth the price we paid for our 'Silver Bullet', or Chevy Corsa.

Refreshed, enlivened and renewed we embarked on an epic, 28-hour bus journey which really was too easy, down to Southern Patagonia and a town called El Calafate.

One of many lakes

The End(ish) of the World - Southern Patagonia

Ice-fields ending at huge blue glaciers, falling into bright turquoise lakes, surrounded by lush green forests all in the shadow of rough, jagged mountain peaks goes some way to describing Southern Patagonia, but not all.

This part of the world is stunning, undoubtedly up there in terms of natural beauty (and importance) with anywhere we've been.

Our first day here was spent in El Calafate visiting the brilliant tourist attraction that is the Perito Moreno glacier (one of only a few that are actually advancing) - at more than 60m high it's pretty mind-bending, especially watching huge chunks fall off into the icy lake below.

We then proceeded to head to the small town of El Chalten, Argentina's trekking capital. El Chalten is on the border of the massive Parque Nacional Los Glaciares - which remarkably for it's amazing beauty and scenery is totally free to hike around, provided you don't set fire to anything or p!ss in the streams... (the water in the streams is drinkable and delicious). The park's most famous mountains - Fitzroy and Torre - dominate the skyline when they are not covered in cloud, which is, in our experience, very rare.

Behind the park, source of the glaciers, is the Southern Patagonian Ice Field - apparently the third biggest ice field in the world after Antarctica and Greenland, so it's no surprise that the weather here is mental. In one day there's sun, wind (unbearable on one day), rain and snow - but that didn't stop us from hiking... much.

In four days we covered more than 100km, taking in snowy forests, many remarkable lakes, great condor sitings and some amazing views of both Fitzroy and Torre... Unfortunately our bus back to El Calafate was on the one day when not one cloud was in the sky but we still squeezed in a 2 hour hike that morning.

Torre and Fitzroy

Rubbish glacier / lake

Our last night in Patagonia (my favourite place so far, I think) was spent devouring all you can eat Lamb Asado - having cooked for as long as we could remember we unleashed ourselves on Patagonia's famous lamb grills... That night's sleep wasn't the best but the meat was unreal.

Beach Life

Which brings us up to the present, with only just more than a week left the budget has almost gone out of the window - so we thought a few days of sun and rest on the beach was in order. The past two days have been spent doing very little other than strolling and pic-nicking on the beach and staying in our first actual hotel (where I'm writing this) in Villa Gesell, 5 hours south of Buenos Aires.

Tomorrow we head for our final week to Buenos Aires, where we are renting an apartment with our friends Ryan and Cynthia, and where we've pencilled in a curry-off, pizza-off and a final trip to La Cabrera... Seafood is very much on the cards tonight as well, not a bad way to go out.

Watch out for my Top 5s next week, and as always all photos can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fernando.nilanga

UnBOLIVIAble

Bolivia - a land of incredible natural beauty, dizzying altitudes, loose rules and tough people - at least that's our conclusion after spending the last month taking in its best and worst. What is for sure is that, now we are in Argentina, there cannot be many more neighbouring countries in the world that are so strikingly different.

Bolivia really was the experience of highs and lows, aside from the obvious 'high' of it being, well, very high - we've seen South America's (or the World's?) most unique landscapes in the Salar de Uyuni, had incredible experiences in the Amazon Basin, had crazy nights in La Paz and enjoyed Sucre's fine colonial streets.

At the same time we've endured some terrible food (not many Bolivian restaurants in London are there?!), fairly regularly sampled Bolivia's national dish (food poisoning), witnessed some of the most unimaginably bad working conditions in Potosi's mines and generally had our hygiene standards considerably withered!

The people of Bolivia's altiplano (the high, flat area between the two Andean ranges encompassing most of our travels) are tough, hardy and sometimes slightly miserable people - fair game given their life seems a constant struggle. Especially, the women, who always seem to be working. When they are not working, they are carrying ridiculous loads (and any number of babies) on the side of the road, sometimes hitching rides in buses. It's a fairly wide generalisation, but I didn't see that many men helping out...

Exactly a month has passed since my last update, and we have exactly a month left until the fateful 'end' - so appreciate the symmetry and read on...

As always some photo highlights included below, but all can be found here: http://picasaweb.google.com/fernando.nilanga

Birthplace of the Incas

Our first stop in Bolivia was the town of Copacabana on the shores of Lake Titicaca - a marvel of a lake at nearly 4000m altitude. The town isn't really much more than a row of below par tourist restaurants, but it is the launchpad to the Isla Del Sol - an island with huge importance to indigenous people as the place of emergence of the first Inca King and his sister, who he later married and thus created the Inca dynasty, apparently.

The island itself is beautiful - surrounded by a clear-blue mass of water it's a bit bizarre to think you are 4km above sea level, and the clouds seem kind of close-by. We hiked from the north of the island to the south with our friends Jon and Kat, shortly before an episode involving rum at £1.50 a bottle - to keep away the cold.

La Paz (means 'peace') - Intense, crazy, dirty

We got the bus (obviously) to La Paz from Copacabana, no real highlights from the journey other than a comical 'will it / won't it topple' viewing of our bus crossing some of the lake on a wooden barge.

La Paz is famous to 'Gringos' for three things: Altitude (the highest capital city in the world), 'Death Road' (a bike-ride down 'the world's most dangerous road') and partying. Death Road was closed for most of our time due to striking coca farmers, who decided that a road block would be a good idea (I think it worked), and there's not really a huge amount I am willing to say about the partying...

One 'unique' thing we did do was to go and watch some Bolivian wrestling - unique it was, as we saw some pretty amateur WWE-type arguing and 'fighting'. The main attraction was 'Chulita' wrestling - basically crazed, overweight women going hell for leather against amongst other things a ninja, a werewolf and a soldier:

Anger...

(Fake blood obviously)

Some other photos of La Paz's nicer views:

Learning to be a Real Man - The Amazon Basin (Jungle)

After a few days in La Paz we caught a flight to Rurrenabaque, gateway to the jungle. The Amazon Basin covers almost half of Bolivia, and our 40-minute flight could not have taken us further in terms of a change in altitude (back to sea level), weather (HEAT at last!), and culture... We wasted no time in booking a tour into the jungle - in Bolivia's Madidi National Park - no place in the world is richer in terms of biodiversity.

With excitement and trepidation (mainly Jo's fear of spiders) we left on boat, along the Rio Beni, deep into the jungle.

"The jungle is our home, the rivers are our roads"

We were to spend three days and two nights trekking into the jungle, the last night sleeping under nothing more than a tarp ceiling and a mosquito net - as deep in the jungle as you can get in one day's hot and sweaty walking.

We couldn't believe how much we enjoyed it - being surrounded by so many noises, so many signs of life, in truly unspoilt jungle. We went on night-walks encountering some pretty cool bugs, awoke to a snake attempting to eat a frog under our lodge, saw howler monkeys, plenty of birds, jungle pigs and many bugs... But the best thing wasn't spotting animals, it was learning how communities have lived in the jungle for generations - using its immense wildlife without constantly taking from it.

(Sorry Mum)

Our guide, Alcide, was one of my favourite people we've met so far - 26 years old, speaking Spanish only for four years, he'd grown up in the jungle and it was all he knew and loved. In order to become a guide he had to pass a test: Dropped in the middle of the jungle with nothing but a mosquito net and machete - the first one out in 5 days got to be a guide. He nailed it (piece of cake).

His knowledge of the effects various trees and plants (that's a contraceptive... that's an anaesthetic... that's good for treating malaria... that will kill you...) was astonishing - they all looked the same! We tried some anaesthetic and within 10 minutes I couldn't feel the right-side of my mouth.

Two real men...

We also took in some spell-binding views, where nothing but nature could be seen for hundred of miles...

When the time came to return back to our lodge and then to Rurre, our guide and chef built a raft and we coasted along the river, taking regular dips after our 3 days of trekking - what a way to get back! Our feel good factor was complemented by the fact we were staying in a community-run venture, so felt good about the extra money we were spending. Our only regret was not staying longer...

Cities of old fame and fortune

We flew back to La Paz from the jungle (back to cold and altitude), and continued our journey south to the cities of Sucre and Potosi.

Sucre is without a doubt Bolivia's 'nicest' city - i.e. colonial architecture, cobbled streets. It's also the judicial capital, which went some (but not all) way to explaining just how many lawyer-practices there were. The Spanish, upon finding Bolivia's riches (silver, gold etc), built some incredible churches and plazas - we took in some fine buildings and finer food poisoning before continuing our travels...

...not before we visited the site of 68 MILLION year old dinosaur footprints (!), accidentally discovered by a cement factory - which had over millions of years, been shifted from horizontal ground to vertical cliffs. That's what I loved about Bolivia - here you have something truly amazing and a real historical relic, and they only started protecting it a few years ago!

Which took us to Potosi. I was especially keen to visit this city (the highest city in the world) having read some Latin American history. Back in the 16th century, it's 'Cerro Rico' (Rich Hill) was discovered to contain stupendous amounts of silver - this almost entirely bankrolled the Spanish conquests and the city grew into the RICHEST and LARGEST in the entire world.

Cerro Rico in the background - stripped bare

As soon as the silver veins ran dry it was largely abandoned and what is left now (of course) is a poor city, still dependent on mining, but with some lovely old buildings.

Miners amazingly still work in conditions that actually have not changed since the 16th century! As they are cooperatives (so, so poor), they buy their own dynamite and work in small groups with basic tools - none we saw were electric/pneumatic - and work in 12 hour shifts in horrendous conditions. Drinking, smoking and chewing coca leaves is their only refuge (as is worshipping the 'devil' who they claim owns the mountain's riches)...

Entering hell...

Our tour was enlightening and depressing at the same time - the miners are proud of their work and they appear to live a 'happy-go-lucky' life, albeit a tragically short one as silicosis-pneumonia restricts their lives to only 10-15 years from when they start in the mines.

We ended our tour with the compulsory dynamite explosion, and a final few sips of 96% proof alcohol. That night was spent (genuinely) reflecting how lucky we were to not have to work in or enter those mines ever again...

Truly mind-blowing Salar de Uyuni

From Potosi we took the bus down to the town of Uyuni - launchpad for the mind-blowing Salar de Uyuni and nearby high altitude lakes. The Salar de Uyuni is the largest salt flat in the world - formed millions of years ago by the withdrawal of the inland atlantic ocean.

This was the location of the famous 'photos locos' (crazy photos) where you can play havoc with perspective...

The 3-day tour involved being driven in 4x4s from the salt flats to numerous high-altitude lakes, in the process turning one's brain into strawberry milkshake - so much we were shaken about. It didn't help that our jeep was a liability, and our on our third day we could not stop for fear of not starting again. Despite a broken radiator, no clutch, low battery, no fuel (we had to siphon some) we made it back thanks to some miraculous driving and repairing by our driver.

An all too familiar site

That's the rant over (DO NOT GO WITH OLIVOS TOURS!) - now for the good stuff...

The landscapes we took in I can honestly say cannot be found anywhere else in the world. At points we hit 5000m altitude, and at this height the lakes are filthy rich in minerals - attracting the famous flamingo and turning the lakes into crazy colours, including the famous red Laguna Colarada...

WOW

Some of the mountain landscapes were also crazy - this one below is known as the 'Fields of Dali' and you can see why:

The final 'f*** up' from our tour company was to book us on the wrong carriage for the 3am train from Uyuni to Tupiza near the Argentinian border. It was well below freezing and there we were sitting on a crowded bench in the unheated section - it's never good when you see Bolivians with a lot of blankets (especially when you have a raincoat and not much more). Anyway, I managed to sleep a bit (Jo none), despite a local lady putting her aforementioned heavy load on my head....

Red rock country - and happy people

Our train episode scarred us (and our wine-making friends Mick and Jeanine who, thanks to us, booked on the same fated tour) for a while - but we recovered well in the lovely town of Tupiza in the south. There's some fantastic hiking around proper 'cowboy country' here, once you can navigate out of the town.

Our last few days in Bolivia were spent hiking, enjoying some welcome warmth and dreaming of Argentina's relative development, famous steak and wine, and silky smooth paved roads. Having been here for a week we weren't wrong, on any count.

So - we have one month left, and after the mind-altering, emotionally exhausting and eye-openingly 'real' experience of South America that is Bolivia we have Iguazu, Mendoza, the Lake District, Patagonia, Buenos Aires and hopefully Uruguay to look forward to - that and the small matter of a rushed detour to Buenos Aires for the biggest (and ugliest?) football rivalry in the world: River Plate vs Boca Juniors.

If I blog again, we will have survived...

Incas, road-side ditches & wine from a glass... Oh, and Machu Picchu

£1.50 for a bottle of Rum - such is the cost of living in Bolivia, the poorest country in South America yet one of its richest in terms of natural resources (oh the wonders of exploitation). Anyway, I'm not complaining about this one particular aspect seeing as between the four of us (ourselves and some friends - Jon and Kat) two bottles have been devoured tonight with surprising ease and very little impact on our ever-decreasing budget.

We successfully crossed into Bolivia from Peru along the banks of Lake Titicaca yesterday, the 12th October. What we expected to be a routine bus journey turned into a minor adventure as an axel on our bus broke in the middle of an overtaking manouvre (naturally?!), and our bus ended up front first in a ditch... Kudos to our driver as another two feet and the bus would have totally flipped.

Eeeeh...

All was well in the end so I'll start where I last finished, sometime around the end of September. As always, some photo highlights included below, but all can be seen here: http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/fernando.nilanga.

Cusco's charms

Our mammoth 52-hour bus voyage from Cuenca in Ecuador to Cusco in Peru ended without a hitch, and we had a few days to explore the wonderful (yet obscenely touristy) city of Cusco - heart and capital of the Inca Empire and the longest continually inhabited city in South America.

The Incas were the first real invading power in this part of South America - expanding their empire in the 14th-16th centuries to stretch from Argentina up to Ecuador. That was until the Spanish came and desimated them with horse-back troops, lies, more sophistated weaponry and a not an insignificant amount of smallpox. Hardly anything is actually documented about the Incas, thus many of the historical pretexts are vague, contradictory and based on word of mouth in Quechua (the indigineous language still spoken in these parts).

Cusco is a city located 3,300m above sea level amid dazzling golden hillsides. Much of the city is built atop immense Inca walls - some built without any mortar with stones the size of houses, all carved into perfect crazy paving. You cannot even get a razor blade between the stones in some cases - quite incredible for 500+ years ago.

Big bricks

We were welcomed on our first night in Cusco by the owner of our Hostel - Coco - and his famous Pisco Sour cocktail. After a few of these, many more beers, and the worst game of darts ever known to man, we thoroughly enjoyed getting horizontal for the first time in four days.

Plaza de Armas

Plaza San Blas

Cusco really is a picturesque city but it is frustratingly touristy: I do not want to buy any paintings, carvings, pots, sunglasses, hats, gloves, jumpers, ponchos etc etc! Fair play I guess given its proximity to one of the New Seven Wonders of the World, I am of course talking about Machu Picchu.

Fat Nilly would have taken the train

We were fortunate enough (thanks to Jo) to book onto the Inca Trail a few months ago - as is required - so we embarked on our 4 day / 3 night trek early on the 29th September. Our two guides, Frank and Jose, picked us up at 5am from our hostel and we were off - along with 7 other merry trekkers (Irish, Americans, Kiwis and an Australian) and 17 other-worldly super-human porters. Our group was great and we hit it off from the start.

Our merry band of trekkers

The Inca Trail is understandably over-subscribed, and numbers are controlled heavily for a reason... It's incredible and needs to stay that way. Except for the toilets - which are incredible in another way. We were to walk the next 26 miles over four days, up and down three mountain passes, through various different terrains and viewing at least four Inca sites before the big daddy.

This involved, for those of us NOT clever enough to hire a personal Porter, carrying the best part of 10kg for up to 8 hours a day - reminding me of what it felt like to be Fat Nilly again, except of course he would have got the train. This also involved sitting (thankfully) in our tents during of all things a hailstorm (very rare I'm told), getting beaten consistently at cards, eating incredible food (how the hell can you bake a cake in a saucepan in the middle of forest?!) and learning a lot about Inca and Quechua history thanks to Frank.

One of many incredible views along the way

After 3 great days of hiking (and surprisingly decent sleep) we woke at 4am to hike the final 2 hours to the Inca's infamous lost city - Machu Picchu. Nobody is 100% sure why the city was built - theories include a university, a refuge for the virgins of the sun (interesting...) and a secret city only known to very important people. What cannot be disputed is its magnificence; built in the least accessible place possible, surrounded by a huge ravine, a gushing river and immense mountains. It is no wonder it was not discovered by the outside world until 1911.

It is the most amazing thing I've ever seen (I'm sure many who have been will agree), and the four days of trekking along the path the Incas walked and/or ran was undoubtably worth it - an unbelievable all round experience. Especially when we finally got back into Cusco very late that night and had a long hot shower and got into a bed. With a pillow.

Setting out on the last morning - myself and Frank

The first glimpse of the Lost City

Wow...

The next few days were spent nursing hangovers, getting full body massages and eating a lot of curry (we found an Indian buffet run by the ONLY Indian family in Cusco). After this period of rest and indigestion it was time to move on, and we headed south to Peru's second city - Arequipa.

A taste of luxury and then MORE hiking

Arequipa, or 'Cuidad Blanco' (the White City) is dominated by three substantial volcanoes - the most famous being 'El Misty'. It is also famous for its white walls made of volcanic rock that glow in the sunshine. It's a pretty enough city and the glow of the setting-sun on the volcanoes is special, but the real highlight was a long Ceviche lunch over wine (our first bottle consumed in public for well over 3 months), with cutlery that didn't bend and cloth napkins, a real luxury.

Ceviche!

A day or two in Arequipa was enough before we moved onto our next (and last) destination in Peru, the second deepest canyon in the world - Colca Canyon.

The sun-setting on El Misty

Colca Canyon is famous for two things: Trekking amidst magnificent scenery, and the iconic Andean Condor. Not content with our trekking to Machu Picchu, we got stuck into a two-day trek up and down this huge canyon, hiking 1,000m uphill and downhill no less than twice and destroying my knees in the process.

On the first morning we saw something we'd never previously encountered - a rainbow AROUND the Sun, believe it or not it was quite remarkable...

The views, thermal springs and oases were well worth it - as was the pizza, beer and hot pisco cocktail on our return to our hostel in one of the canyon's small villages.

Up and down and side to side:

Things in South America routinely run late - it's a fairly reliable premise. That is, until something actually leaves on time, well, ahead of time actually. The next morning we rose early to get the 06:30 van to the Condor viewing point - to find that it had left before 06:30, most likely because it was full with local women and their wares to sell to tourists. Who they were going to sell to was a mystery to me seeing as all the tourists that intended to catch the van couldn't and were left in Cabanaconde, alas the Condors will have to wait...

The following days were spent travelling south to cross over from Peru to Bolivia - this involved sitting on the dashboard of a bus for 2 hours as it hurtled through numerous mountain passes (see below) and the aforementioned ditch-related incident.

Which brings us back up to now - a £4 hostel room, rummed-up blogging and a sense of excitement as to what our last two months of travels will bring. I'll leave our adventures in Bolivia for another time but as a clue the two main adjectives most used in the past two days have been 'cheap' and '****ing cold'.

Hasta luego amigos!