Coroico is the town situated at the bottom of Death Road. In order to delay the inevitable return journey, we decided to stay down there for a few days. I say ‘down’, but Coroico is still at 1600 metres above sea level making it higher that Ben Nevis (1344 m.a.s.l.). Coroico is a nice little Bolivian town in a beautiful valley, and usually has warm weather. It was definitely warm while we were there, but it did rain quite a bit. We stayed at El Cafetal, a French owned lodge…read more
There are varying statistics about the Death Road. What they all agree on is that it is very dangerous. In its heyday, an average of 26 vehicles dropped off the edge every year. In 1995, the Inter-American Development Bank declared this road as the most dangerous in the world. In 2009 the Bolivians finally realised that owning this deadly ‘road’ wasn’t a great claim to fame and built a new, safer route. These days, the Death Road (or North Yungas Road as it is really called) is mainly used by…read more
The Bolivian salt flats stretch on endlessly. We spent a couple of hours creating ‘fotos locos’ or crazy photos under the expert instruction of our driver Roberto. A few of the better ones are posted below.
Update: Check out the video at the bottom of this post! One of the things that I have been most excited about in South America is visiting the Bolivian salt flats. Simon, Graham and I booked onto a four day jeep tour and were joined by Jamie, an ecologist from North Carolina. Before I tell you about one of the most incredible trips we have taken so far, here is some information in case any of you want to do it in the future. I would highly suggest starting your…read more
Originally we had planned to cross back into Chile to visit the Atacama desert, and then go from there to the Bolivian salt flats. After looking into it though, it appeared that travelling from Salta to San Pedro de Atacama is tricky and expensive. It is also not recommended to go to the salt flats from Chile as the huge increase in altitude leaves most people feeling very sick. With this in mind, we decided to travel up to Tupiza which is just across the border in Bolivia, where we…read more
We had originally planned to travel north from Valparaiso to the Atacama desert before crossing over the border to Bolivia. However, after a bit of invesitgating, it turned out that there is very little to see in Chile between these two points. Instead, we decided to cross over the border to Argentina and travel north, before crossing back to the Atacama. We took a bus over the border to Mendoza, travelling through the beautiful Andes mountains and up some of the craziest roads so far. Mendoza is a lovely Argentinian…read more
Towards the end of my time in Australia, I decided that I would go back to the original plan and spend my final two months of travel in South America. I flew from Adelaide to Sydney to Santiago, and travelled back in time by 13.5 hours! The flight was amazingly good, and I had two seats to myself. This resulted in me sleeping through the maltesers, the ice cream and the cheese and biscuits, to my utter disappointment! Graham had already been in Chile, working on a farm, for a…read more
Five weeks working at the Adelaide Fringe, very little sleep and lots of adventures. Sarah M, Sarah C, Scotty and I are long term Well Hung and Tender staff who had joined up with Donald and Nicol in Adelaide to sell burgers and burritos to the Australian festival goers. Sarah M and I were staying in the residential wing of the Royal Adelaide Hospital, directly opposite the helicopter landing pad and on the same corridor as a lot of Fringe ‘atristes’. We were working for about 55 hours per week,…read more
As a child, having a February birthday was a mixed blessing. It almost always fell during the half term holiday and more often than not there was snow. More than one birthday outing was cancelled due to bad weather. In fact for my seventh birthday a small group of us were supposed to be going to see Babe at the cinema, but overnight there was a huge amount of snow so the trip was cancelled. I was devastated until I built the biggest snowman EVER (OK, well it was ginormous…read more
Important things I have learned: Everything looks better in the sunshine. The most dismal place can be transformed by good weather. There is no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothing (A Swedish proverb). Abel Tasman National Park is in no way a dismal place. In fact, it even looks nice under storm clouds. However we are not travelling with suitable clothing to explore a national park in the rain. The forecast for our day here was not looking promising, and sure enough we woke to the soothing sound…read more
