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Seven months, 26,765 miles, 64 huts/hostels/hotels, 15 flights, 14 trains, 42 buses, and 14 boats later, our grand worldwide adventure has come to an end, and here we are back in the UK.

We landed back at Heathrow's new Terminal 5 on a bright, sunny and crisp autumn day and were whisked off to the Isle of Wight by Amy's uncle Hugh to attend Anna & Glen's wedding where Amy was giving a speech, the very next day.

We've been back in the UK for a while now. We moved into a flat in London with our two cats. We have caught up with friends and have either found employment or are in the process are getting it.

It's awfully strange to be back. Even after a few weeks, it felt like we'd left our travelling selves on a beach somewhere. Now, after a couple of months it feels like we almost never left. Almost, that is.

Since we've been back we've managed to stay in touch with some of the people we met while we were travelling. We've seen Jon and Anna (Peru), Justin and Natalie (Bali) and have either spoken to, emailed or written to Lisa (Bali), Giles (Bolivia & Argentina), Tats and Alexis (Bolivia, Argentina & Uruguay!), Patrick (India, Australia)... to name just a few.

The one saving grace that takes us back are the little emails, cards and photos we receive from all of the wonderful people we met while we were away, but the one thing that makes it worth staying put (for a while, at least) are all of the wonderful friends and family we've come home to.

Now we just need to decide where we're off to next......

Bye bye Buenos Aires, sob

We spent the last few days of our excellent adventure in Buenos Aires. The weather wasn't great, but as we were coming to the end of our trip we decided to treat ourselves to an apartment which turned out to be a very wise move, and kinda made up for the rain and grey skies.

Our place was super central (and on one of the widest roads in the world - see view in photo below) and meant we could cook for all our new friends every night! So that's exactly what we did. We ate a lot, drank a lot, and on our last night we went out on the town and experienced BA's crazy nightlife. Nothing kicks off there until 2am, so you really have to have some energy in reserve so you don't fall asleep in whichever bar you visit before the dancing begins. The place we found was packed full of locals who all seemed to know every dance move to every latino pop tune that came on... It was slightly freaky but strangely mesmerising at the same time.

After that it was time for an emotional farewell, and a couple of hours sleep before nearly missing our flight due to Adrian setting the alarm for 8pm instead of am... Silly boy.

Sunny Colonia

After a few days of riding, relaxing and a great deal of eating we had to return to civilisation, and had one more night in Montevideo.

We decided to check out the picturesque seaside town of Colonia (not unlike many quaint British seaside destinations) and arrived after 2 hours on a bus to find that everywhere was fully booked. The entire population of Argentina had come to Colonia for their bank holiday weekend and left no room for us.
We found somewhere in the end and spent the afternoon enjoying the sunshine. We watched the sun set with a beer outside a pub by the sea, while Adrian made me learn my reading for Anna's wedding off by heart. While I was rehearsing, I spotted a familiar figure in the distance, and couldn't believe my eyes when I realised it was Tatiana and Alexis walking towards us! After much excitement we settled down for the evening and consumed more beer.

A couple of days later we all bundled back on the boat back to Buenos Aires.












I have since found out from my Grandmother that Colonia was where my Grandfather was born!

Horse trekking in Cerro Colorado, Uruguay

We decided to catch a ferry to Uruguay while we still had plenty of time left, and met up with Alexis and Tatiana again in Montevideo. The city was very quiet and I swear we were the only foreigners in the whole country.

Adrian and I booked a few days on an estancia in Cerro Colorado so we could spend some time riding horses. After two nights in the capital we caught a bus out of town and into the middle of nowhere. Our bus dropped us off and we felt a little bewildered until someone tapped us on the shoulder and said 'San Pedro'? Relieved, we hopped into his taxi and he took us even further from civilisation and dropped us at San Pedro estancia.

We couldn't believe our eyes - sat before us was a tiny village of Mediterranean style buildings and even a small church. There were endless stretches of green in all directions. We really were in the middle of nowhere.

We were shown to our room complete with roaring fire, and went straight for lunch. Three hefty courses later we walked fatly out of the restaurant and chilled in our snuggly room before going out for our first outing on the horses....

Bueno Buenos Aires

We said farewell to our friends and left Iguazú for Buenos Aires last weekend. Yet another overnight bus journey and we arrived in BA in time for lunch. Got off to a bad start by getting totally ripped off by our taxi driver, but never mind...

We spent the weekend exploring the city on foot. We had a room in the lively Recoleta district with some pretty amazing restaurants and cafes nearby and actually very few tourists. On Sunday morning we went on a guided walk with a very entertaining guide who took us to lots of historical nooks and crannies of the city. We visited the cemetery (more of a small town than a cemetery!) where Eva Peron is buried, visited San Telmo for the weekly antiques market, and then caught a train out to the suburbs to Martinez to visit my grandfather´s cousin, Elaine.

That night we returned to San Telmo to watch the locals come together to tango in the square, with a troupe of drummers passing by in the background. Party central!

The fellowship of Iguazú

Iguazú Falls

After three nights in Salta chilling out and eating good food, Adrian and I decided to follow Giles, Alexis and Tatiana to Iguazú Falls, on the border of Brazil and Paragay, as from there it´s very easy to get to Buenos Aires.

We boarded what is surely our hundredth bus for another overnight journey and arrived in Puerto Iguazú to pouring rain and deafening thunder. It wasn´t a great start. The falls may be wet, but we wanted to actually be able to see them....

Luckily for us, when we got up the next day the sun was shining brightly and we had the warmest weather we´d seen since Peru.

Upon first setting eyes on Iguazu falls, the then American First Lady exclaimed `Poor Niagra!` for it is one of the largest waterfalls in the world (dwarfing the US`s tiny effort). Only Victoria Falls in Africa trumps Iguazú to the number one spot. The falls are in the middle of dense rainforest, inhabited by curious racoon things, monkeys, vultures, guinea pigs, iguanas and millions of brightly coloured butterflies.

We decided to see the falls by boat. After boarding the vessel, we sped off at super high speed straight into the belly of the beast. We sat terrified by the noise of the water crashing around us from great heights and then as our boat got closer we got completely soaked by the splashing water - a truly exhilarating experience.

Adios Bolivia, hola Argentina

We arrived back in Uyuni unwashed after our stay in the desert, and after a hearty meal (much needed) we boarded a train to the border with Alexis, Tatiana (both from Oz) and Giles (London - all pictured below) who we met while on the Salt Flats.

After an overnight journey we arrived on the border and had the longest border crossing any of us had ever experienced - the queues for immigration each side were so long they virtually crossed over into the opposite country.

Once safely in Argentina we had two more buses before we arrived feeling pretty revolting in Salta. We were in desperate need of a shower, only to discover that EVERY hostel in Salta was fully booked due to a festival that weekend for Jewish new year (Salta has a large Jewish community).

After the lovely kind man in our friends´ hostel had exhausted every option, we decided that if ever we deserved a night in a fancy hotel, it was now. Armed with the credit card, we booked ourselves into the only room left at the beautiful Papyrus Hotel - the delux suite. Hurrah! It was perched on a hill overlooking the whole city (see view below). Our suite had a bed the size of a small house and a very very nice bathroom. We were extremely happy with our rash but necessary decision, and got the best night´s sleep of our lives.

Party at minus 20c

We had been dreading our second night on the Salt Flats. It would reach minus 20c and we were staying in very basic accomodation with six or seven beds to a very simple room in a very remote shack. Amy and I didn´t even have sleeping bags (nobody told us!). So, to keep our spirits up, we did what we do best. We had a party.

Armed with my new miniature guitar, we sang songs whilst drinking yet more cheap wine. It turned out that everyone else was up for a party too. Even our tour guide and cook - we all ended up singing and dancing as the night came in and the temperature dropped. The whole celebration reached a crescendo with a very close limbo competition. Our new friend Jo (Yorkshire) was narrowly beaten by Alexis (Sydney) who despite having cracked a rib on the World`s Most Dangerous Road, managed to sneak under a very low piece of string.

When it was late enough, we ventured out into the cold night to watch the sky. I saw two shooting stars.

The following morning, we drove out to see geysers (pictured top), and into the Salvador Dali desert (above) which was the inspiration for many of Dali´s famous desert scenes in his paintings. Then we saw the Green Lagoon (mineral deposits again) before resting our cold and weary bones in a lovely natural hot spring which hit 40 degrees!

In the jeep

With Jo and Dan

The Red Lake

It really was very red (as a result of mineral deposits).

Flamingoes

The Salt Hotel

When one is completely surrounded by salt, why not use it as a building material? On our first night on the salt flats we stayed in a hotel made entirely out of salt. It´s not the easiest thing, to sleep on a salty bed, but we managed to catch some sleep thanks to some bad, cheap Bolivian wine.

Here are some photos....

4x4s on the salt

We left La Paz to head south to the Salar de Uyuni, or, to call it by its Gringo name, the Salt Flats. It´s basically 4000 square miles of flat salt plains, formed when a huge prehistoric lake dried up leaving the largest salt plain in the world.

It´s a terribly desolate and remote place. With no roads, and white salt stretching far into the horizon in every direction, it´s dazzling in the bright sunshine and closely resembles snow.

We signed up to a three day tour of the Flats where we would travel by 4x4, sleep in a salt hotel and freezing cold dorms (where the temperature dropped to minus 20c), see the clearest night sky in the world, be whipped by dust storms, witness green and red lagoons and have a bizarre limbo competition in the middle of nowhere with some newfound friends.

But first... here are the token touristy Salt Flat photos of us taken by our friends Dan and Jo, playing with scale and perspective of this odd place...

The World´s Most Dangerous Road

We decided to join a tour with Gravity Assisted Mountainbiking to ride down what the World Bank had named the World´s Most Dangerous Road. It is a trecherous narrow gravel road that stretches from the top of a mountain near La Paz deep down into the valleys, with sheer 400 metre drops from the side of the road and no barriers (see below!).
As we drove to the start of the ride, a signpost informed us that 48 people had died on the road so far this year. An ominous start to our day. The start was easy enough - a high-altitude freezing cold stretch of tarmac road where we could whizz down at our leisure. Then, disaster struck as we set off on our second leg. Amy performed some acrobatics, flying over her handlebars and landing on the ground, resulting in two huge bruises on her legs. A little shaken but determined, she carried on as we reached the gravel and the sheer drops.

The weather took a turn for the worst and we couldn´t see great deal with our goggles on, so we took them off and opted for the better option of letting mud splatter onto our eyeballs as we rode down the rough, wet and slippery road, next to huge drops and a cloudy abyss.

Finally, after about four hours, the weather got better and we were able to see again. All the stunning jungle and surrounding scenery was visible, it warmed up, and we arrived at the bottom of the road covered in mud and glad to have survived.

Happy 27th Birthday to me!

Saturday 20th September: my 27th birthday, and my first away from home.

I wasn´t sure that Bolivia would be the best place in the world to spend my birthday, but I was wrong! Everything is so cheap here you can live like a king for a day. Adrian woke me up with balloons and birthday cards on Saturday morning, and then hurried me out the door a couple of hours later muttering all sorts of confusing things in order to put me off the scent - I honestly didn´t have a clue what he had planned for me.

We ended up eating brunch in the rooftop restaurant of a 5* hotel - the highest in the world - with fantastic views over the whole city (see above, I look pretty content!). After that we spent hours lounging around in their pool, sauna and jacuzzi which was super relaxing. After we´d pruned ourselves sufficiently, we wondered out into the streets of La Paz to eat birthday cheesecake and shop! I am now the proud owner of some very nice hand crafted Bolivian wares, and Adrian even bought a handmade miniature guitar for himself.

That evening we went to a beautiful Swiss restaurant across the city (we very nearly couldn´t find it) and had a fantastic meal. Unfortunately we had an early start the next morning so couldn´t hit the town, but it was definitely a super lovely birthday.

On top of the world

We are now in the highest capital city in the world! La Paz is 3,660 metres above sea level, and to top it off, is on one enormous hill. It hasn´t affected Adrian and I too badly, but we have been known to get a little breathless after climbing a steep street.

The city is surrounded by huge snowy mountains and is actually a bit more cosmopolitan than I was expecting. We spent our first day here doing a walking tour from ´Lonely Planet´which, even though it sounds terribly touristy, actually took us through some amazing little back streets where all the locals do their daily business, selling wares, catching up with friends, etc. The only thing I found a bit disconcerting were the dried llama foetuses that they sell to ward off evil spirits.... I think I´d rather take my chances!

Bye bye mummies, Hello Bolivia

Our mothers´ last day in Peru was an eventful one.

We awoke to a beautiful sunny day in Arequipa and had planned to visit the Santa Catalina convent again, as Adrian and I had enjoyed it so much last time. We spent the morning there (see Diana, Adrian and Mum, above) taking yet more photographs, and eating more delicious cake.

After that we split up for a bit - Mum and I went off to do a spot of shopping and Adrian and Diana went exploring.

Sadly it all went horribly wrong when Mum realised her purse had vanished. We aren´t sure whether it had been lost or stolen, but either way it was a complete disaster, mainly because she´d just put her memory stick full of photos in it. The Peruvian police were amazingly helpful, but of course we didn´t get very far. Spent an hour struggling to make ourselves understood for a police report, and then didn´t have long to catch a cab and get off to the airport.

Adrian and I waved them off, sincerely hoping they would get to New York and then London without having any more problems.

We spent our last night in Arequipa and said goodbye to our favourite town in Peru very early on Wednesday morning. We nearly missed our bus because our stupid taxi driver thought ´bus station´actually meant ´airport´, but very luckily for us, the bus waited and we were on our way back to Puno. After a night there, we got another bus over the border to Bolivia and into La Paz, which is where we are now.

The second deepest canyon in the world, and condors!

After our day on the lake Adrian and I took our mums on the bus to Arequipa. We loved it there so much we wanted to return and show them around, and also spend a couple of days exploring the Colca Canyon and surrounding area.

The Colca Canyon is the 2nd deepest in the world - twice as deep as the Grand Canyon and only beaten by the Cotahuasi Canyon (also in Peru) by a couple of hundred metres.

On our way to Chivay where we would spent the night, we stopped off to see herds of llamas and alpacas, and reached our highest point yet - 4,800 metres above sea level. Apart from feeling a little short of breath, we were all surpringly fine! We stayed in a cute little hotel in the middle of nowhere with fantastic views, and our own personal alpaca who likes to come indoors.

We had a short trek, visited the thermal springs, and the following day we went condor spotting. Over an hour passed without us seeing a single one of these magnificent birds, but our patience was rewarded when an enormous one swooped very low and circled the crowd several times just before we left. It´s a huge bird - it stands at just under one metre high and is alegedly the largest bird in the world. It is also the national bird of Peru.

After a short trek around the canyon itself in the baking heat, we had lunch back in Chivay before returning to Arequipa again, and that evening had a delicious joint birthday meal for Adrian and I!

Fancy footwork and all-men knitting circles

More tribal people live on the lake on real islands, made out of dust and dirt. But because these islands are so small, there are no cars. In fact, animals are pretty rare too (they only eat meat on special occassions). When we visited their stunningly beautiful island, one small girl invited me to join her in a traditional dance with her family. Under the watchful gaze of her father, I tried to keep up with their steps while smiling and wondering how long the song that her brothers were playing was going to last.

But at least I didn´t have to worry about being seen as a prancing sissy in front of my tourist peers. I mean, the men knit there. And they don´t just knit the odd sock or scarf every now and then. They knit all the time. In fact I wouldn´t be surprised if they knitted in their sleep. I guess this is why the tiny island of Taquile is known for producing some of the finest textiles in the world.