ARGENTINA
Buenos Aires
After a very long time sat on two different planes we arrived in Buenos Aires, and taking the time difference into account, we actually arrived about one hour before we set off if that makes sense! We had pre-booked a room in a horrible little hostel for the first two nights so that we didn’t have to worry about finding a room when we arrived, plus we had ordered a taxi to take us there when we landed – not bad eh! The hostel was actually much worse than we had thought it would be and after a full day of walking around the city we found somewhere perfect, two roads down from where we started!

On our first full day we must have walked for about 7 hours, we walked from one end of the city right the way through to the other, and given the size of Buenos Aires that’s pretty impressive! Once we had moved hotels things became much better and we spent most of our days just wandering around, we somehow managed to stay there for about 10 days!

We decided to celebrate our two year wedding anniversary one day earlier as there was a Sunday Market on in San Telmo. Before the market got going, bearing in mind no one does anything before 11am, we headed over to another district called La Boca, to cut a long story short it’s houses painted in really bright colours with more cafes than anything else, it was a good laugh though and a good start to the day!

After seeing our fair share of markets over the past 15 months we weren’t expecting too much but it turned out to be a great day and some of the street performers were fantastic. Jon bought me a beautiful painting which promptly got shipped home (my first ever original, only one in the world, painting) and Jon got a scarf – who won there then?! Although the scarf is extremely nice and I have taken to wearing it myself!!

Our final touristy walk was to the Recoleta, probably the most impressive cemetery in the entire world. This place is filled with really ornate tombs and is a surprisingly fun place to wander around. To get round all of the tombs took us a few hours and after giving up hope on finding Evita’s (the don’t cry for me Argentina lady) tomb we spotted a big group of tourists taking photo’s of a relatively small tomb, and guess who’s it was, yup, we managed to find it, quite impressive we thought!

Cordoba
Our time in Buenos Aires was up and it was time to head to Cordoba – apparently the cultural capital of Argentina… Needless to say this place was not what it was cracked up to be and was pretty boring. We left after two days hoping Mendoza would be as nice as everyone says…

Mendoza
As a city this place was quite nice but the most interesting bits are out of town and it costs a fortune to get out! Whoever said South America was cheap was clearly not referring to Argentina, over the last couple of years the prices have gone up quite considerably and it’s now much more expensive than Asia, much much more, apart from booze which is ridiculously cheap – 25p for a bottle of wine, the budget is struggling!

We decided on one trip out of Mendoza which was called ‘The High Mountains Tour’. Given that we hate tours with a passion we were a little worried that it might completely suck but the tour was better than usual and the scenery was absolutely amazing. Instead of going on about everything I figure it’s easier to just put some pictures up and you can see for yourselves!

We decided after a few long conversations that Argentina was not our sort of place, we both wanted to move onto Bolivia, so we booked on to the next bus to the border!

BOLIVIA
Tupiza
Our first day in Bolivia was mainly spent sleeping as we were stuck on buses for almost thirty hours getting to Tupiza, we made it though with no hassles apart from sleep deprivation!

One of the most beautiful places in Bolivia is the Salar de Uyuni and you pretty much have to go on a tour to see everything, so after having a quick wander around we found a tour agency that seemed OK and booked ourselves on, and as luck would have it 3 other British lads walked in soon after to book, that’s what we like, a jeep full of people whose Spanish sucks! The tour wasn’t due to begin until 2 days after as we wanted to do a horse trek through the canyons in Tupiza.

Feeling a little optimistic we booked onto a five hour trek, soon after we started we realised that was just too much so dropped two hours and made it a three hour trek. The scenery was fantastic and it was good to be on a real horse, not some half dead donkey. Luckily my horse was a speedy one so I managed to get a few good gallops in, and even though Jon’s horse was a little on the obese side he managed his first gallop!! All very exciting! Needless to say certain parts of us were quite sore afterwards and Jon even managed to remove most of the hair on his inner thighs – well that’s what you get for wearing big baggy jeans on a horse trek!

The South West Circuit Tour
Rather than try to attempt to describe each day I’ll write out what our itinerary said and upload quite a few pictures. Needless to say it was absolutely amazing and we reckon it was the best thing we have done since leaving the UK all those many months ago. The only down side was that it was freezing the whole time, on the second night we stayed in a hut where it has been known to drop to -40c at night!!! Our sleeping attire consisted of a sleeping bag, 4 blankets, trousers, 2 tops, 2 jackets and scarves – I think that says it all really!

Day One – Leaving from Tupiza in a 4×4 jeep we visit the Quebrada de Palala which has spectacular red formations that resemble needles reaching 4200m in height. 15km from that point we arrive at the Valley of the Moon, where, as a product of earth degradation, the landscape looks like the surface of the moon showing peaks and craters. Next we arrive at Nazarenito, a small gold producing village, and then to Chilcobija, which has the deepest antimony mine in the world. You can usually see condors flying in this dry landscape. We spend the first night in San Antonio de Lipez at a height of 4660m.

Day Two – Leaving early in the morning we visit the old colonial and abandoned town of San Antonio del Nuevo Mundo. We continue on to an area called The Torreon which is an area full of erosion and volcanic rocks. Following this we pass through two small towns, Quetena Chico (4140m and 480 inhabitants) and Quetena Grande (4190m and 161 inhabitants). The tour visits Kollpa Laguna where you can take a bath in Rio Amargo (hot springs) and we then continue up to Laguna Verde. Here you can see two lakes separated only by a very narrow channel; the combined surface area of both lakes is 17km2. We then drive through Dale Desert, a fantastic landscape with petrified lava and ignimbrites. From here we head to an area called Sol de Manana, a 1km2 area with lava craters which are always in volcanic activity, burning and smoking at 5000m. There are also many geysers which is a great attraction too. From here we travel 50km to Laguna Colorada where we spend the night. The lagoon presents a brilliant red colour due to algae pigments and fine sediments placed at the bottom of the lagoon. There are flamingos in this area.

Day Three – Heading towards the Desierto de Siloli, a landscape splashed with lava formations, we see the famous ‘Stone Tree’. We then continue north where a series of small lagoons appear, the most significant are Laguna Hedionda, Chiarcota, Ramaditas, Honda and Canapa. Driving through the small Salar de Chiguana and San Juan del Rosario, we reach the edge of the Salar de Uyuni and the Salt Hotel where we will be spending the night.

Day Four – On our last day we cross the biggest salt plain in the world, the Salar de Uyuni, which measures 10500km2. There are fourteen small islands on the Salar, the main one being Fish Island which was formed by calcareous rocks, corals and marine shells. Leaving the salt bed we visit Colchani, a village where they process the salt collected from the Salar. Finally we arrive at Uyuni, the most important railway centre in the last few years, and we visit the Cementerio de Trenes, the train cemetery.

Uyuni
There is absolutely nothing to do in Uyuni other than book onto the tour we had just been on and so we spent our time here catching up on sleep, washing clothes and attempting to get warm!

Potosi
After a 7 hours bus journey from Uyuni we arrived in Potosi and found somewhere to sleep. The only touristy thing to do in Potosi is to take a tour to the nearby mines to experience what the miners have to go through each day, but to be honest we didn’t really fancy that so had a look around the town to see what else it had to offer. The answer was nothing, a nice town but we need a little more than that to keep us interested, so we jumped in a shared taxi to Sucre.

Sucre
After the usual struggle to find a room we found an amazing one, a little over budget, but it was worth it. Unfortunately an hour after we arrived we realise we had left our laundry bag in the taxi, not good, I was now down to one pair of jeans and one top, luckily Jon still had a few t-shirts so it was just me who was in trouble!! The saddest part was that Jon’s lovely scarf that I had now taken as my own was in the bag, absolutely gutted I was, but we could have lost far more important things so it’s not too bad!! After about 10 minutes we thought it was funny anyway plus it saved us doing the washing!

As usual we walked around the city seeing what there was, there was a little more than the last place so we decided to stay a few nights, mainly because of our nice room!

It was here we decided enough was enough, its home time, so we changed the flights once more and we’re due back on the 6th July now! The plan has obviously changed and we now have one month to see the best bits of three countries, so no more days in Sucre, we boarded a lovely night bus to La Paz.

La Paz
We only stayed in La Paz for one night because we’re not a big fan of ridiculously large cities, which is exactly what La Paz is. Also poor Jon was quite ill and with the combination of the altitude and the fact you always seem to be walking up a hill, it just didn’t work!

Copacabana
A relatively quick bus journey away and we reached Copacabana, a little town by Lake Titicaca. To put 5 days into one short paragraph I’ll keep it simple – we worked! There isn’t much to see or do in Copacabana so we took advantage of the cheap room and ploughed through our ever increasing work pile…

PERU
Arequipa
After another simple border crossing and a 10 hour bus we arrived in our first destination in Peru. We had decided before we arrived in Peru that we were going to become the only travellers who come to Peru and not go to Macchu Picchu! The reasons behind this remarkable decision is it costs a lot of money to actually go and the simple fact that all we think about now is going home – so it didn’t seem worth it, another time maybe!

Because all we could think about was going home we gave up on sightseeing, there really isn’t much to see unless you like churches so we worked solidly for 2 weeks instead! From Arequipa we got a night bus to Lima and from Lima we got a 36 hour bus to our final country – Ecuador.

ECUADOR
Quito
Well this is it, our last stop on our travels, and we only came here to catch the flight so again nothing to report on the tourist front… We’re really looking forward to getting home, not sure quite how we’ll find it but we’ll soon find out! Can you believe it – it’s all over, how strange! Well this trip has ended but who knows when we’ll go on our next one!