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…
Author: Alexandra
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…
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.
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.
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 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…
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 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…
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…
At the start of the Varanasi section of the Lonely Planet it says “Brace yourself. You’re about to enter one of the most blindingly colourful, unrelentingly chaotic and unapologetically indiscreet…
We didn’t have huge expectations of Jaipur, we were a little disillusioned after Delhi and expected Jaipur to be a big, ‘new’ Indian city ie. a bit of a mess…
We’re sitting on the shaded rooftop terrace of the beautiful haveli hotel ‘Seventh Heaven’ in Pushkar (despite phoning a week ahead we couldn’t get a room) listening to Janis Joplin…
The bus journey from Jodphur to Jaisalmer (the ‘golden city’) was our first really long distance bus journey and it was actually pretty good! The journey was supposed to last…