Rio nearly didn’t make it into our travel itinerary. We had decided that we didn’t really have time to go into Brasil and even though we’d heard incredible things about this beautiful city full of beautiful people, we’d heard some pretty horrible stories about muggings and corrupt policemen too.

We decided to fly from Bogotá to Rio and fortunately had a night stop over in Buenos Aires where we left most of our baggage and travelled on with only one hiking pack and a small day pack.

We’d been a bit blasé about booking accommodation in Rio, we’d emailed a few places but even though some of them got back to us without availability we didn’t try and phone any of the others. We just assumed it would be like everywhere else and easy to find something on the ground. We were wrong. Upon arrival at our 2nd or 3rd hostel that didn’t even have a dorm bed available we were told that it was a public holiday in Rio on the Tuesday (Childrens’ Day) and Thursday (Teachers’ Day) of that week and that there was also a Bon Jovi concert taking place. Basically she told us we’d be lucky to find anything. In desperation we wandered into a holiday apartment block. They didn’t have anything either, but the guy behind the desk got on the phone and managed to communicate to us that he had found something elsewhere. We wandered a little dubiously the two blocks to the apartment he’d found and were met by Rosemary, who, it turns out manages the property and also lives in the same building. The apartment was perfect, and at the same price as a double room in a hostel, a real bargain. We took it for six nights.

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We didn’t have huge expectations of Lima which was probably a good thing… we really enjoyed it. We spent a couple of days eating in the lovely restaurants of Miraflores and enjoying walks through the really wonderful park by the beach. Another spent in the Old Town, checking out the catacombs, churches and the museum of the Inquisition (Lima was the centre of it) and we were ready to head for some guaranteed surf and sunshine.

We arrived in Máncora after yet another 20hr bus journey and were not disappointed by the sunshine that greeted us. We found a really nice small hotel right on the beach, grabbed the suncream and headed for the sand. Unfortunately it was pretty windy on the beach so we didn’t spend much time in the surf, still, we got in a little bit of time in the sun in between hanging out in cafés and playing backgammon. On our last day it rained, so again we felt ready to move when the time came to board the bus to Ecuador and our adventures in the Galapagos Islands.

We arrived in Cusco an hour early at 4am on Saturday. The city was very much asleep (other than one incredibly drunken gringo party-goer with fluorescent pen all over his face who we saw stumbling in a gutter) so we were relieved that we’d decided to book a room in advance. Our hostel was closed when we arrived, but fortunately someone opened the door and agreed to let us sit in the café. Once it got light we hit the streets. We were amazed by Cusco, it is a really beautiful city. It’s the longest inhabited city in South America and is full of narrow cobbled streets and beautiful old buildings. We spent the morning wandering and searching for a company to book to take us on the Salkantay trek to Machu Picchu. Having read quite a lot about conditions for the porters and quality of camping equipment we were stunned by how cheaply some companies were offering the trek. We contemplated doing it on our own, but decided against the hassle of carrying all our own food and equipment and eventually booked with a reputable eco tourism company.

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Poor old La Paz didn’t really stand much of a chance with us. We wanted to go there… but we really wanted to see everything else we wanted in Bolivia before we got there. Our disappointment at our enforced shortened trip in Bolivia and our weekend arrival didn’t exactly make it easy for us to like.

That said, our first impression of La Paz was incredible. We arrived as the sun was rising over the many terraces of the city. La Paz lies entirely in a valley so makes a for a spectacular view, particularly as the sun rises. Unfortunately once we got off the bus we couldn’t get a room at the hostel we wanted to and the one we ended up staying at was a bit weird. To get to our room we had to walk through one of the dorms and the walls to our room were glass with curtains that didn’t fully cover them. Also, we could hear everything from the dorm. Still…. it was a bed and there was a shower and given the ordeal of the past few days we were relatively happy.

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The bus journey to Salta was the only one so far that we’ve done during the day. It was pretty interesting to actually be able to see the countryside, and we were rewarded with giant cacti and even a little tornado that was sweeping through the dust.

We didn’t have anywhere to stay when we arrived, so we walked into town, looked at a few places and eventually decided upon Residencial Elena. It’s in a neocolonial building just a couple of blocks south of the plaza and is run by a really lovely Spanish family. Once we were settled in we headed up to the impressive Plaza 9 de Julio to locate the Museo de Arquelogía de Alta Montaña (MAAM) which houses the truly amazing mummified bodies of the Incan children found on Llullaillaco in 1999 (although only one is on display at any given time). Even though we had been told how incredible the mummies are (thanks Janna), nothing could have really prepared us for just how life-like they are. We also popped into the Catedral to try and take some photos, but it was filled with children, I’ve never actually seen a full church before, let alone a massive cathedral, it was quite an impressive sight! Back at the B&B that evening we met Laliv and Yossi in front of the fire who are travelling in the opposite direction to us. We ended up spending hours talking about travel, films and even a little bit of biology and ended up skipping dinner and going to bed late.

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We didn’t have flat beds on the bus ride from Mendoza, so we were pretty tired when we arrived in Córdoba. We had to wait in the common room at the hostel for a few hours until the room was available.Then we crashed for a bit and headed into town to see what was going on. Our hostel was in a great location just a couple of blocks from the truly beautiful Plaza General San Martin. It was early evening when we went out and we were amazed at how beautiful the central part of the city is. The buildings are beautifully lit and restored, we just walked and gawked for quite a while. Most things are closed on Mondays in Argentina and there are very few people about, so we decided to see a movie. Let’s just say that it was called ‘Encuentro Explosivo’ then I don’t have to embarrass us by telling you what it was.

The next day we took in some of the sights. Again we were a little thwarted by closings during the middle of the day (namely the supposedly great English tour of the university which we tried to visit three times, on the final time it was open, but they weren’t running the last tour of the day, the one we had arrived for), but we managed to see the Cordóba Cabildo and the very sobering Museo de la Memoria. We certainly didn’t know much of the history of Argentina when we arrived, but found out shortly after arriving in Buenos Aires that during the late 70s and early 80s the government ‘disappeared’ a startling number of people who didn’t support it. Many of the people who were taken were frighteningly young.

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We were pretty sad to leave our friends and BA behind, but fortunately we were on our way to the perfect place to drown our sorrows. We began on the bus with red wine and champagne. Our very polite bus attendant approached us just after we left the terminal and questioned us in Spanish. Unfortunately we couldn’t understand, and upon my polite ‘¿Hablas inglés?’ he said ‘A little… let’s play bingo’. A minute later he handed us a bingo card, grabbed a microphone and off we went!

We arrived not so fresh at 8.30am on Wed and jumped in a taxi to our B&B. Unable to check in for a couple of hours we stepped out to check out the area and see if we could find a wine bar. Unfortunately the town was still pretty sleepy, so we had a coffee and some medialunas and looked around for a wine tour for the next day. Later that day we found a great place and booked on a bit of a posh tour, and as a bonus they gave us a voucher for a free glass of wine! Happy at last, we made our way to The Vines of Mendoza and ate cheese, drank wine and chatted to the staff who were all too happy to begin our vino education.

We dragged ourselves out of bed the following morning, ready to be picked up at 9am to start ‘tasting’. Already in the bus when we arrived were Bill and Mark from DC. Lovely guys who had already done a tour with the same company only two days before, a good sign! Mark is a Spanish teacher so it was pretty interesting having him around. Soon after, we picked up Walter, a Brasilian guy who was VERY into his wines. Needless to say, we felt a little like children amongst the grown ups! However, I was to discover towards the end of the day that Bill and Mark didn’t take it too seriously, when I commented that one of the reds smelled like washing up liquid and they chuckled along with me!

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So, as many of you will already know… we got married.

We decided quite a while ago that we wanted to get married, but we just weren’t quite sure how or when. We thought maybe we’d do it when we got back to London when we finished travelling, but we weren’t too keen on the stress of organising a big wedding. I must admit that the thought had occurred to us to get married while we were away travelling, but we hadn’t really taken the idea that seriously until we were in Cairns in January. We took my Dad’s bike out a few times and rode up the coast and decided that Palm Cove was where we wanted to do it.

So we made some pretty big decisions in a pretty short space of time, booked the venue, chose a dress and then jetted out to India. We didn’t give my Mum all that much notice, but she managed to organise the fine details with about 6 weeks to go.

Anthony’s family flew out from the UK and joined my family and some close family friends for the ceremony on 20th May. It was small, calm, and for us, perfect.

Thank you to those of you who made such huge efforts to be there with us, and to everyone else for understanding why we did it this way.

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We arrived in Vietnam with only 6 days left on the visa we’d bought in Australia in December. As we’d underestimated how long we’d need in Nepal we had to rethink this stage of our trip. Initially we had hoped to spend two weeks in Vietnam and two weeks in Cambodia, but once we worked it out we were only going to have ten days to see as much as we could in both places. Once we looked at the logistics and costs of getting around we realised we were going to have to miss either Vietnam or Cambodia. As we already had flights to Hanoi and a visa paid for, Cambodia missed out – much to our dismay. We decided to spend the 6 days in Hanoi to get a taste for Vietnam and are now planning to come back to this part of the world to see more of Vietnam and Cambodia.

Our flight landed at Noi Bai at about 8am local time and within 5 mintues of our taxi journey we’d seen rice paddies populated by people wearing traditional Vietnamese conical hats and plenty of people on bicycles also wearing the aforementioned hat! We liked it already! We were pretty knackered after our 3.30am start in Bangkok so we slept and wrote the Pokhara blog post until late afternoon.

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Despite the fact that Darjeeling is pretty close to Nepal we hadn’t been able to find a suitable method of getting from there to Kathmandu easily, so we decided to fly which meant another visit to our least favourite Indian city… Delhi. We had a three hour drive from Darjeeling to the airport and then a relatively stress free flight to Delhi. Once we got to Delhi we had a pretty tough time trying to buy dollars (which we needed to pay for our Nepalese visas), it appears that in India only Indians can buy dollars unless you’re in the departures lounge and you’re only allowed in there 3 hours before your flight. We were pretty anxious about whether or not we’d actually be able to buy them in the departures lounge, so after much insisting (and some dropped comments about how on earth is Delhi expecting to deal with the vast quantities of tourists coming through for the Commonwealth Games later in the year), I was allowed through into departures to change the money while Anthony waited with our bags and the policeman at the entrance.

We arrived in Kathmandu the following day and pretty much started on our mission for trekking supplies straight away. There are so many shops selling fakes that it’s pretty time consuming, we ended up buying a bit of a mixture of fakes and real gear. Fortunately we also discovered that Nepal has some excellent restaurants so we treated ourselves to pizza and milkshakes and felt much better. After two days of shopping for supplies we were finally ready to be on our way. On Tuesday 23rd March we were up early, tickets in hand and on our way to the airport. Unfortunately we spent the entire day waiting for our flight to be called. Due to bad weather at Lukla, our destination, most of the flights ended up being cancelled. The same thing happened on Wednesday, and we began to think we’d never make it there. When we arrived on Thursday at the check in counter we were told that our names weren’t even on their list to fly at all that day! Fortunately the guy at our guest house who sorted out the tickets in the first place managed to pull some strings and get us on a flight with another airline and we actually made it to Lukla!

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