Ecuador part 1 - Lorne
3:30am and the alarm is going off for what is an unpleasantly early start. Why? We are off to a new country, Ecuador and this involves the 5:30 flight from Iquitos to Lima, then Lima to Guayquil Anytime later and we would need to stay in Lima overnight, so super early start it is. There is no way...
AMAZON - Jessica
Our journey into the jungle started off pretty exciting using a variety of transports and another early start. We had two flights, a taxi ride, a minibus, a toot-toot (motorbike with a wooden cab on the back) and a shallow, motorised longboat, as the terrain became decidedly less city and more coun...
The Big City Lima - Lorne
The Big City Lima .............. It is quite a while now since we have visited a big city, by big I mean really big, 10 million plus people, crazy traffic, that sort of thing. From experience, we have found that it really is best to stay clear of these places, if you can. Yes, they have a lot of...
MACHU PICHU - Jessica
5.30am the alarm goes off. 5.30. The number of expletives going off in my head would make Frankie Boyle blush. It had been a late night to bed anyway and then our neighbours dog had done its usual sounding off at 2.00am, that I didn't feel I had actually slept at all. And now the alarm was telling...
Adiós Bolivia, Hola Peru - Lorne
The journey to Peru is a simple affair, 2hrs 21 according to Google Maps, closer to 5hrs once you factor in exit and entrance for the relevant countries and the fact your are traveling in a large group on a bloody tourist bus. Not ideal being on a special tourist bus, however there was one significa...
Copacabana - Lorne
To the North West of La Paz lies one of South America's most beguiling and romantic destinations, the vast, high-altitude Lake Titicaca, with its sacred Inca islands, Isla del Sol and lakeside pilgrimage town of Copacabana. That is what the Rough Guide to South America On A Budget said about our lat...
COCHABAMBA TO TIWANAKU - Jessica
We arrived in Cochabamba late in the night. It appears that even South American flights can be delayed for ridiculous reasons too. From being buoyant in Uyuni to feeling stressed all in a matter of hours wasn't good our healths. We sat in the small airport watching our plane sitting on the runway...
SALAR DE UYUNI - Jessica
At 3,670 metres, coming from Potosi, I definitely felt like the pressure was relaxed by a thousand even though we were still really high up in the world. The people of Uyuni were falling over themselves to help you and talk to you and marvel at the children. But this was Tatooine reincarnate. No...
High Altitude - Lorne
The next part of our trip threw up a few logistical issues, from a transport perspective. As I have said before the roads in Bolivia aren't great and although you may not be travelling huge distances, say 200km, the route often involves steep climbs and decents. For example driving between Edinburgh...
BEING ILL - Jessica
It came on us slowly. We'd already been in Bolivia for over a week, had a bout of diarrhoea, but not really sick from it, we just needed to be near a toilet at all times. We'd eaten in the local market but avoided tap water, and everything had been fine. Our stomachs were solid. Even the altitud...
The Historic City of Sucre - Twinned with Cardiff - Lorne
The nicest city in Bolivia is how Sucre was described to us by our Colombian friends. It is also readily mentioned as being the best city to learn Spanish and with these points taken into consideration we decided to head up to Sucre for an extended period. From experience it is never a good idea to...
SAMAIPATA - Jessica
You would be forgiven at this point for questioning us relentlessly on our workaway activities, or the lack of them. We had decided some time back that we would forgoe any workaway until we reached Bolivia, just because we wanted a change of scene. When we got to Bolivia, however, the workaways,...
Goodbye Argentina. Hello Bolivia. - Lorne
Kazakhstan the largest land locked country on Planet Earth, population 18 million, highest point 6398 metres, a rich heritage, Genghis Khan, Soviet rule, independence declared 21/08/1991. We are not planning on visiting Kazakhstan on this trip, or any trip, to be honest. We are though, about to emb...
SALTA ❤️️❤️️ - Jessica
We had all been looking forward to Salta for one reason or another. It was an area where some of our Spanish teacher from back home's family had come from. It also represented an end to the more westernised part of South America and a step into relative unknown territory. Basically, we had loosel...
OFF COURSE - Jessica
We decided to hire another car, just for three nights this time to explore Tafi Del Valle and Amaicha del Valle, west of Tucuman, between the mountains. It wasn't exactly on route, but we figured we had enough time to just have a quick look. We weren't disappointed. Huge rainforest looking hills...
TUCUMAN - Jessica
Tucuman was somewhere that Lorne had wanted to go to. Me, I didn't really mind here nor there, but it was on the way to Salta, so I was happy to stop for a night and see what the fuss was all about. We got an overnight bus from Mendoza to Tucuman which we were looking forward to because our last...
The Bus Journey of Legends - Lorne
When you are planning a trip to anywhere in the world, googling away, reading blogs, there is a plefora of tales and stories out there. Back in February last year I recall reading one, it was a couple of who were traveling from Santiago to Mendoza. They were sharing, their experience of getting a...
Fairwells, Funfairs and Flee Markets - Lorne
There is only one more sleep left of family, festive fun and everyone wants to make the most of it. The pickup trucks leave Caletta Horcon at 11am and we have a clear simple rendezvous point. Fantasi Landia, Parque o Higgins, Santiago. It was clear from our unsuccessful visit that this place would b...
Feliz Navidad - Lorne
So there we were, heading off to the west coast of Chile for a very unique and one off Christmas. Christmas has been a bit of rope round our necks for a while, something we were all looking forward to, however also something that was getting in the way of our plans. It was consuming a disproporti...
DECEMBER - Jessica
We had a bit of time before we had to reach our Christmas destination. We had a car and we had some distance to travel, but on the scale of things we were in no hurry and so could amble north towards Santiago and then our eventual stop, north west of Santiago, on the coast. However, it was December...
Fancy Cabaña and Pishing Rain - Lorne Pt2
This isn't a problem. One full day isn't enough time for here and following our first visit to the kennels we ask if we can stay a third night. The dogs are incredible, very noisy, jumping around like lunatics Anderson to someone that shites themselves at sight of a Staffie would be extremely intim...
Fancy Cabaña and Pishing Rain - Lorne Pt1
In the last blog I mentioned that we had to be somewhere but had opted to head up the volcano, well we still needed to be somewhere and slightly later than planned we headed off on the 45min drive to where we needed to be. This had all started a few weeks earlier when in the midst of a bit of resear...
Punctures, Professors and a Volcano - Lorne
Our morning had started with a small problem, well actually it was a 3 inch problem, as it later transpired that that is how big the nail was that was embedded in one of the rear tyres of our hire car. Having never even changed a tyre on any car, let alone a fairly substantial pickup truck, this was...
ALSATIANS AND AULD PEOPLE - Jessica
Our next leg north to Valdivia and the west coast took us from a Swiss feeling landscape to a definite Scottish one. Green fields carpeted the valley floor towards rolling hills of forest, with green and yellow bracken favouriting the side of the highway. Other than the well-kept, bright, roadside...
PUERTO VARAS - Jessica
Everywhere you look and every corner you turn, there's a beautiful view to be seen and amazed at. Decision making has become hard because of this. We needed somewhere with Internet and some down-time to make a rough plan for the next two weeks, as we'd been winging it the past week, which worked,...
PENGUINS - Jessica
On our way back to the mainland, we had one more stop we just had to do on Chiloe and that was to go and see if we could find any penguins. The children were really excited to see them, but we kept warning them that these penguins were in the wild and they might not even be here yet. We travelled n...
SEA SCARE - Jessica
Another destination point for us while we were on Chiloe was to head west and see the Pacific Ocean for the first time during this trip. It only took a couple of hours to get there, but it felt longer as the single track road twisted and turned round every nook and cranny. The landscape turned fr...
"TOMATOES" "TOMATOES" - Jessica
An excursion only really capable of doing by car, was to Isla Lemuy and Parques Yayanes. The drive was another spectacular one, through beautiful scenery and across a body of water on a quick ten minute ferry ride. The island was small but also well occupied and I was surprised to see not one but...
Isla Grande de Chiloe - Lorne
We had never heard of the Chiloe until a few weeks ago. It was those Canadian girls (remember them) who mentioned it first, it was only the second time I witnessed them seem animated. The first time they were talking about facebook and the missfortune of a former collegue. Then all of a sudden eve...
CAMPING ANDERSON - Jessica
If Puerto Montt was the Mos Eisley of Chile, then Camping Anderson was the Lake Country, where Anakin and Padame fall boke-inducingly in love. My first impression was that we weren't going to last a week here, let alone two, as we were told point blank by the Canadian girls that they didn't like kid...
Thieves, Chinese, Ladies of the Night and Warm Welcomes - Lorne
Following a 7hr bus journey from Bariloche across the border to Chile, we finally arrived at our destination about 8pm. Most travel books and bloggers are in agreement that Puerto Montt is very good for picking up provisions, getting money from banks and providing a good transport hub. They are als...
DREACH AND DROOKIT - Jessica
Bariloche is on the border of Chile and we can't be more excited! We've seen more hills and mountains in the past few days than we have in the past month. Lorne has been moaning all holiday about how he wants a pair of shoes different to his Solomon walking trainers, but his face shone when we ente...
Buses and Beef - Lorne
We have been travelling for 70 days, spent the night in 18 different beds, travelled approximately 11,000 miles, Axel has grown 1cm, Edith 1.3cm and I have grown a few more grey hairs. As I write this we are on the overnight bus between Mendoza and San Carlos de Bariloche, 11hrs into a 18hr bus ride...
The gateway to the Andes/The home of Malbec - Lorne
Mendoza is somewhere we have been looking forward to going to for quite a while. The gateway to the Andes, the wine and a famous goal from 1978. To mix things up and to avoid getting a night bus from Cordoba that left late at 9pm and arrived early 7am we opted to hire a car. We left downtown Cordoba...
PICNIC IN THE PARK - Jessica
Having the freedom of a car really helps in this vast country, which we really realised after this road trip. Many of the tour books advised just getting a bus from Córdoba to Mendoza direct, as there wasn't really anything to see in between. However, we disagree after having a two night stopover...
GETTING CULTURED! Jessica
We found Córdoba to be a city of two halves. We were situated in the neighbourhood of Neuvo Córdoba, an affluent, local, student area, with shops, cafes and a relaxed, cool vibe. Young people wandered the streets, shoulder to shoulder with tourists, who were there for the museums, Jesuit churches...
URDINARRAIN - Jessica
We arrived in the dead of night at the farm in Urdinarrain, tired and dazed, so our first thoughts of the place couldn't really be described. The initial look of the large communal eating and sitting area looked amazing though and we were happy to have a room inside the house (albeit the kids and I...
Rosario - The Dangerous City. Lorne
Did you know that Rosario is a dangerous place? You have to be very careful, petty crime is on every street corner, the crime rate is double that of other Argentine cities, motorbikes maraud the streets at night looking for easy targets and you have to always keep and eye over your shoulder. This is...
ROAD TRIP 2 - Jessica
How long had we been in Rocha for? Two weeks? Three? I couldn't remember. The days were drifting into one and life had definitely slowed down. What felt like a month, was only a week. But not in bad way, it was just the way things were going here. It was time to leave. We were all happy to go, e...
The Fight/Phone Charger-Gate -Lorne
Something happened today. It was in the mobile phone shop. We were all quite stressed and the shop was busy so we had to wait a while to be served and the kids were fooling around and getting bored. I had been just told that i was in the wrong queue and had to wait in a different queue. I was fine t...
Market Day at Lauburu - Lorne
Thursday is market day! What's market day? Well there never used to be a market in the local area, people needed to drive for 20 minutes to Rocha to grab any provisions. Not now though. Every thursday from about half past 3 the local community start to gather at Loubrou. It is a real proper communit...
ROAD TRIP - Jessica
The children needed a break from the house so we decided to hire a car for the weekend and go for a drive to see the surrounding countryside. Living with the locals, we were advised a good place to visit which wasn't in the tour guides or on the map. It appears with further investigation and discu...
DAILY LIFE - Jessica
"You know why I don't pick flowers anymore mummy? Because the bees need them." Edith proudly announces to me as she helps me in the garden. My fingers and legs are scratched and raw, but the sun is beaming down on us as we admire our progress. We are staying with a family, and in return for free f...
LAUBURU - Jessica
We had little expectation of what we would find with our host family when we arrived. We knew we would be staying in their tepee and helping them on their land to grow food, but otherwise we knew nothing. The family hail from Basque Country and Alvano speaks English, having lived in Birmingham pre...
The Road to Rocha - Lorne
Possibly the worst part of travelling so far is packing up your bags, having a tidy up and trying to get everyones asses out the door so that we can make our next connection. This is now the 6th time in 10 days that we have done this so it is safe to say everyone is looking forward to bit of a longe...
PUNTE DEL ESTE - Jessica
PUNTE Del Este - Holiday stomping ground for the rich, so they say in Uruguay. A quick pit stop before we go and stay with our first host family, wash some clothes, watch some telly and do a bit of social media "surfing" before we head off into the unknown. What a shithole. Sorry that's probably a b...
FLASHBACK - Jessica
Buenos Aires has an air about it that I took a while to figure out but when I did, it was obvious. The people have an exterior persona much like the Italians and Spanish. Well dressed, cool demeanours, with a touch of stylish superiority about them. But scratch the surface, or look into their eye...
The Day of Reckoning Reckoned - Lorne
The feelings of anxiety and nerves returned big time on the day of the flight. We didn't have much to do, everything was mostly sorted. What we did have was several hours to sit about waiting for our half past 3 taxi and plenty time let the nerves brew. As airports go, Madrid's piece of the interna...
AND THEN THERE WERE FOUR - Jessica
"Everything we had been planning for over the past 9 months has come down to this?" I thought to myself as I frantically dabbed away at Axel's bleeding nose at half 3 in the morning. "Maybe this was a mistake?" But I quickly pushed the thought to the back of mind and reflected on those last 9 months...