Andean peaks, Amazonian rainforest, Patagonian glaciers, Incan ruins, colonial towns, white-sand beaches and vertiginous nightlife: the wonders of South America set the stage for incredible adventures.
The main reason for us to visit Peru was to see Machu Picchu and to learn more about the Inca’s. While travelling for a year you don’t always end up in a country at the peak season. We have been joking that we in fact have been on an eternal fall instead of the eternal summer we had planned. It was summer in Peru, but unfortunately also the rainy season. While this...
Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake in the world and the largest in South America. Our arrival here had us battling altitude sickness, as it sits at about 12,500 feet. Standing up to quickly or walking to fast had us dizzy or out of breath. This also manifested itself in headaches when not enough oxygen reached our brains. But each day of our visit we felt a...
Arequipa, known as the white city was a nice stop on our travels through Peru. Its main square is really beautiful and is closed to traffic. Its a great place day or night to marvel at the architecture or to people watch. It seemed like a major destination for Peruvian tourists as well, they seemed to far outnumber the foreign tourists. Arequipa also has some...
Another short bus ride away was the town of Nasca. The town itself isn’t much of a destination, so we kept this stay a bit shorter, only a day and a half. We spent the afternoon lounging around the small pool at our hotel while the staff arranged our activities for the next day. The main reason for our stop here are the Nasca Lines, these are ancient geoglyphs...
From Lima we took the bus a couple hours down the road to Huacachina and Nasca. A lot of people make these stops for a day, arriving by bus, doing the tour, staying the night and on to the next stop. But Huacachina is a desert oasis just outside of Ica. The oasis itself is fairly small, probably only 300 meters by 100 meters, but it is surrounded by the iconic palm...
We arrived in Lima quite late, and took a taxi direct to a hotel. We awoke the next morning to birds singing and sunny weather and made our way to our apartment. We opted to stay in Miraflores, one of the nicer districts out along the coast. We had this beautiful view from our 15th floor apartment. Lima itself really surprised us in how clean and nice it was, lots of...
For a long time pictures of the Atacama desert intrigued me, vast salt flats of swirling color, alien landscapes without a single plant visible. It was part of the reason I picked Chile as one of the destinations for this trip. But after enjoying the Utah desert, I think I had built it up in my head too much, it wasn’t disappointing, but it didn’t quite live up to my...
After Calafate we headed back into Chile and into Torres Del Paine, the same boring drive in reverse. Torres del Paine is a huge park, and its mostly known for its multi day trekking routes, but with my injury and Charissa’s love of flat land, we decided to just tour it by car. The mountains themselves rise up dramatically from lowland hills, huge chunks of gray or...
So after the cancellation of the Antarctica trip, we had a few extra days to explore Patagonia. El Calafate seemed like the only close option nearby, but was an extra 3.5 hours driving each way and a border crossing into Argentina. We picked up our car in Punta Arenas, the pickup was by far the best rental car experience I have ever had. They were super clear and...
We had booked the trip of a lifetime with Quark Expeditions, we were going to Antartica. Charissa has had sea sickness before, so we opted to take the fly and cruise option to avoid the crossing over the roughest sea in the world, the Drake Passage. We were extremely excited for the trip and to add the 7th continent to our travel log. We had made our way down to...