We arrived in Potosi around midday following a local bus journey. It was an interesting experience to be surrounded by the locals and their families, carrying their big bags, containing anything from food to babies. On the way we had to suffer the longest sales pitch ever (we timed it at over 1h30), presented by…

The next stage of our trip would take us north-west from San Pedro, across the Atacama desert and over the boarder into Bolivia, ending-up on the salt flats in Uyuni. The three-day, two-night trek would be undertaken in a jeep, along with a driver and 4 other passengers and would take us to some of…

San Pedro de Atacama an amazing place and we loved our stay there. Imagine an oasis in the middle of the desert at 2,500m of altitude, within which exists this small, dusty village. We flew from Santiago to Calama, which allowed us to skip a 24h bus ride. We then took a bus to cover…

We arrived early at Santiago Bus terminal at 6:30am, after a surprisingly smooth trip. We managed to get another card to use the public transport and immediately headed east on the metro to El Golf, right in the heart of the business district, where Fred and Eddie live.   Fred and Laurence used to travel…

We arrived at Mendoza at 10h30am instead of 6h30am, having spent an unprecedented 5 hours at the border – our record! This delay was due to the heavy rains that had resulted in big rocks falling from the Andes and blocking parts of the road. The emergency services were quick to the scene but much…

Our bus drive from Pucon was very smooth as we had no boarder crossing to contend with. Still exhausted from the Volcano ascent, we slept all the way and arrived early morning. Our hostel suggested that instead of an expensive taxi we seek-out bus 612 which, for about 30 pence each, would whizz us up…

Our five hour bus ride to Pucon was surprisingly smooth, with only limited delays at the boarder. Crossing the Andes into Chile made for some amazing views and we arrived in Pucon early evening, with Volcan Villarrica (the “smoking mountain” as the little girl behind us called it) puffing small plumes of smoke into the…

Our trip back to El Calafate was much longer than expected as we spent more than 3 hours at the border, and to make matters worse, the air conditioning was broken… or the driver was trying to save fuel… We were delighted to finally arrive and headed straight to our hostel, Lago Argentino, which we’d stayed…

Our Chilean adventure started with a much longer than expected bus journey. A strike at the usual border had all the buses diverted through a tiny frontier, which created a sizeable bottleneck. 2h30 later we were let into Chile and shortly thereafter arrived in Puerto Natales. Puerto Natales is the base for anyone heading to…

Our mixed dorm at the Hostel del Rio in Colonia del Sacramento turned out to be empty, which was just as well since we needed all 6 beds to re-pack our backpacks to prepare for our assault on Patagonia. This is where we hope to unleash some of our expensive kit, which was bought in…

We left Montevideo in the morning and had to cut the conversation short with Stephanie who engaged us in a discussion about the fruits in her native Nicaragua. We headed straight to Punta del Este and the Bed and Breakfast “ La Casa” where we had found a last minute deal online. It was surprisingly…

So here I am, sipping a glass of Tannat red wine (prominent grape in Uruguay, originally from the South West of France) and nibbling on crisps while Ed is cooking diner in the (shared hostel) kitchen. Lucky me! The boarder crossing with Uruguay was extremely smooth as all the passport controls occurred in the boat…