Chile: 2 days 6 hours in a bus
We arrived in Santiago de Chile after spending a length of time on a bus that I had never before imagined was possible and be honest - it was fine. I spent probably half the time staring out of the...
View ArticleChile: Santiago from Cerro San Cristobal
High above Santiago is the Cerro San Cristobal, a Andean foot-hill that towers over the city from where you can see everything on a clear day. Both our days in Santiago were clear days, so we were...
View ArticleChile: The Metro system of Santiago
The metro system in Santiago shows what a disgrace the London Underground is. The trains and platforms here have air-conditioning. Each platform has several plasma screen TV´s entertaining passengers...
View ArticleChile: Santiago City Streets
These photos show some of the streets near the Rio Mapocho near Bellavista. It surprised me how like London it was. We even have the same traffic lights and taxi´s are black.
View ArticleChile: Santiago Centro
Our first stop was the Plaza de Armas where our first sight on ascending from the metro was a dead homeless man having prayers said over him by a city official with a bible. Not at all what I expected...
View ArticleChile: Santiago’s Cerro Santa Lucia
Santa Lucia is another high lump of mountain in the middle of the city with good views. It is here where Valdivia founded the city after marking out the streets. It is now a city park. We spent about a...
View ArticleChile: Valparaiso – Up Above
We arrived in Valparaiso and went straight to Cerro Concepción to our hotel. This city is composed of two parts, the sea-level ocean front and the cerros behind, where houses are delicately perched and...
View ArticleChile: Valparaiso – Down Below
Here you really feel like you could be in Victorian England, the streets and buildings date from around that time and are lined with telegraph wires and power lines for the bus-trams. The port is still...
View ArticleChile: Viña del Mar
This is a more modern town that sits on the edge of Valparaiso. Normally it is visited for its beaches, but we are here in the winter and it is a little too cold for that. The town has more hotels,...
View ArticleChile: Valdivia
Valdivia, being hundreds of miles south of Santiago and Valparaíso - in this country of unimaginable distances, takes over 10 hours to get to by bus. For this reason we took an overnight bus, which...
View ArticleChile: Puerto Montt
We arrived to this city in the late evening in the dark and were shocked at how dirty and run-down the city was in comparison to what we had seen so far. We hoped that by daylight the place would look...
View ArticleChile: Ancud in Chiloé
Ancud was founded in 1769 as a Spanish stronghold in the region, and after Peruvian independence in 1824 it was the Spanish Crown's last possession in all of South America. The bay is surrounded by...
View ArticleChile: Castro in Chiloé
Castro is the third oldest city in Chile, founded in 1567. It is at the end of a fjord that reaches almost 20km into the island of Chiloé. This city has been destroyed again and again by earthquakes...
View ArticleChile: Achao, Isla Quinchao, in Chiloé
Doing anything touristy at this time of year has proven difficult. Most tour operators on the island seems to be completely closed this time of year, which has made it difficult to see some of the best...
View ArticleChile: Chonchi in Chiloé
Chonchi was another beautiful old traditional town. It has managed to keep many of its original timber buildings (despite a large fire in 2002). Unfortunately almost all of its palifitos were destroyed...
View ArticleChile: Puerto Varas
The cold Chiloé weather and lack of money prompted us to start the return to the north. To do so we made a stop of in the southern vacation spot of Puerto Varas before taking the bus to Santiago and...
View ArticleChile: Iquique – heat at last
The northern-most region of Chile is a land of barren rock and the driest desert in the world. One that has no recorded rainfall - ever. This inhospitable region is huge, towns and cities are hundreds...
View ArticleChile: Nitrate Ghost Towns
Perhaps the highlight of our trip to Chile, other than just being in Chiloé, was visiting the abandoned ghost towns of the nitrate mining era. Just 30 minutes from Iquique are Humberstone and Santa Laura.
View ArticleChile: La Tirana
La Tirana is a town of dusty streets and adobe houses with a church and a piece of history as its only attractions. La Tirana is named after an Inca princess Huillac Ñusca. In 1535 Diego de Almagro, a...
View ArticleChile: Cerros Pintados
There are over 400 geoglyphs drawn in the sand in the desert in the Reserva Nacional Pampa del Tamarugal depicting animals, humans and geometric patterns. We arrive to see them as the sun was setting,...
View ArticleChile to Peru, the journey home
We had taken a bus to Santiago from Lima which made crossing the border simple. On the return however, there was no such bus, at least for a few days anyway. We were able to take a bus from Iquique to...
View ArticleEcuador: To the border… and beyond
The journey was as expected - 18 hours from Lima, passing the famed and inviting beaches of Mancora, Punta Sal and Zorritos to arrive in Tumbes. The plan was to arrive here and take a taxi back to...
View ArticleEcuador: Guayaquil
Las Peñas used to be a very poor part of town - across South America the poor always live up on the hills. It has now been restored and set up as a tourist attraction, and the locals have set up a...
View ArticleEcuador: Montañita
We were told that the closest beach to Guayaquil was at Salinas and we made a bit of a mistake heading there. It wasn't one of the famous beaches of Ecuador, but we didn't know that until we arrived...
View ArticleEcuador: Portoviejo, Manta – journey to Quito
The time on the beach was great, but we decided we needed a break from the intense heat. It was time to get to Quito. We were already this far north so we decided to go by the coastal route rather that...
View ArticleEcuador: Quito, the new city
We spent the first day in Quito using the local internet cafe for work purposes and not leaving the new city. Quito is said to be a city of two cities - the colonial old city in the south and the new...
View ArticleEcuador: Quito, the old city
We walked from the new city to the old city to save on a $3 taxi ride, it took about 20 minutes. The old city, which spans out around the Plaza de la Independencia has buildings dating back hundreds of...
View ArticleEcuador: Quito’s Pickpockets
This was maybe the first criminal act targeted towards me in all my months in living South America. Annett and I had left the internet cafe where we had been working on a project, it was perhaps 9 or...
View ArticleEcuador: Mitad del Mundo
0° latitude - the equator - just north of the city of Quito We went to see the equator and the monument that sits on it. It was here that the equatorial line was calculated by Frenchman Charles-Marie...
View ArticleEcuador: Otavalo
Otavalo is a market town north of Quito and one of the main and most famous artisan markets in the Andes. We arrived on Saturday night, missing the main Saturday morning event. Market towns, however,...
View ArticleEcuador: Peguche
While in Otavalo we decided to take a local bus to one of the nearby towns just to see what was there. We went to Peguche and found some houses, a church, two shops and an artisan's studio. The area...
View ArticleEcuador: Tena
Enough of the mountains... we had escaped the heat of the coast for here, but now the British climate of the Andes was becoming irritating. Too cold, too cloudy and annoying on-and-off rain. It was...
View ArticleEcuador: A morning trek in the Amazon
With our guide that we arranged for in Tena at the last moment and a last minute price, we headed out to an eco-lodge in the forest for the day. From the lodge - a wooden construction perched on a...
View ArticleEcuador: Ethnotourism – Meeting the locals
Later that same day, after lunch and a rest in a hammock, we headed out on a 3 hour walk to a nearby indigenous community. First we had to cross the River Napo so we could get to the trail through the...
View ArticleEcuador: Riobamba
We left Tena the next morning, heading south towards home. Via Puyo we arrived at Riobamba to catch the train to Alausí. We spent a full day here to allow us to use a local laundry - we only had a...
View ArticleEcuador: La Nariz del Diablo – The Devil’s Nose
The Devil's Nose is part of the rail journey to Sibambe from Riobamba and has been extended to be the name of the entire journey which is now solely for tourists. There used to be a railway that ran...
View ArticleEcuador: Alien visits the Incas
A local woman was walking up the same mountain and confirmed that the Pan-American (a road from Chile to Alaska) was indeed at the top. The walk was arduous but we did make it - and faster than anyone...
View ArticleEcuador: Ingapirca
The Cañaris, a strong and proud people, didn't want to submit to the Incas, as many other civilisations had done when the empire was being expanded into what is now Chile/Argentina and...
View ArticleEcuador: Cuenca
From Ingapirca we returned to El Tambo to take a bus to Cuenca, no more than 2 hours away. As we approached I noticed the city seemed less run-down and dirty than the other cities we had seen so far....
View ArticleEcuador: Race to the border
We left Cuenca mid-afternoon, eager to return to Perú. We needed to arrive at the border and cross it before dark, worrying about what might happen if we were wandering through the Huaquillas...
View ArticleMacará border crossing
I've crossed the Peruvian/Ecuadorian border twice at Tumbes (1,2) at it was not a very pleasurable experience. Macará is said to be very different, so when having to cross into Ecuador last week, I...
View ArticleEcuador: Macará
The border town has a strangely painted red and yellow cathedral that looks as if it could be a children's toy model. Crossing into Ecuador, the mountains became more green.
View ArticleEcuador: Loja
The city of Loja is Ecuador's most southern major city and base from which to explore the country's green mountains and cloud forests, in villages such as Vilcabamba.
View ArticleEcuador: Vilcabamba
The small town of Vilcabamba is 40 minutes south of Loja by colectivo or 1 hour away by bus. It is nestled between green forested hills in what was once an Inca sacred valley. Vilcabamba was made...
View ArticleEcuador: Vilcabamba’s Rumi Wilco Eco-Lodge
It all started as home. After 16 years mostly as a naturalist in the Galápagos islands (one year in the Amazon, two and a half years in the USA studying zoology), Orlando came to Vilcabamba in southern...
View ArticleArgentina: Buenos Aires
My long awaited and expensive application for residency has been well on it's way for a while now. When you do receive it, you are asked to leave the country to collect it, making it easier on the...
View ArticleDía de la Canción Criolla… en Londres?? [Featured]
Creole Song Day... in London?? Alan Malarkey writes, with photos, from London.
View ArticleMiguel Grau and the Battle of Angamos
Known as the Gentleman of the Seas, Admiral Miguel Grau is remembered by friends and enemies alike as not only a great tactician in naval warfare, but also for his chivalry, the like of which had not...
View ArticleThe Dakar Rally Heads To Peru
The 2012 Dakar Rally is heading to Peru as South America was chosen to host the event for the fourth consecutive time. Peru will play host to the final four stages of the off-road rally race after the...
View ArticlePeru descends on Peru, Nebraska
Watch as the small town of Peru, in Nebraska in the United States, is turned Peruvian as part of the campaign to launch the new Peru brand.
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