Bikes and Booze – it must be Mendoza

I was VERY excited about Mendoza. For me, it was the place that most truly embodied all of the things that drew me to Argentina: red wine, steak, and the afternoon nap. In my imagination, it was a place where the streets ran ruby red with Malbec as gauchos galloped down them flinging vast hunks…

A realisation whilst chilling in Chile’s chilly Chiloé

If you want to test your definition of ‘bleak’, head to Puerto Montt in Southern Chile. Stand on the harbour where a pallid sea leaks into an insipid sky. Eat your tepid empanada as a three legged dog watches you through its one good eye. Search for words to describe the place, and realise that…

Dipping a toe into Patagonia

Patagonia is not for the faint of heart. Interminable bus journeys, inhospitable terrain, bone-chilling temperatures and sky high prices mean that many travellers skip it all together. I was planning on going, I really was, but when I met traveller after traveller heading down there with sleeping bags and tents as basic necessities, four week…

Blurred photos and hazy memories – NYE in Valparaiso

High up on a hill, up steep staircases daubed with art, past hidden doorways and wooden-shuttered windows, around the corner and up again, you’ll find a large square lit with buttery lamp light and dotted with palm trees. Down from the square, over the shadows of the higgledy-piggledy streets beneath, the inky Pacific ocean stretches…

Next stop: Mars – Adventures in the Atacama

I left off my last post by describing my friend’s leap of (misplaced) faith through a geyser in the Bolivian desert. And I described the subsequent appearance of weird bony pointy thing (showing off with my technical terms here) protruding from his his left shoulder. We headed back into the jeep and I calmly told our…

Dinosaurs in the Desert – Uyuni to Atacama

This blog and I have quite some catching up to do. Let’s blame my absence on Christmas and New Year, and start where I left off… After leaving La Paz, I travelled through Sucre onto Uyuni. I’d seen plenty of pictures of people being chased by giant plastic dinosaurs across vast expanses of white, and…