When we arrived in Buenos Aries at the start of our trip, we were very excited to see Monk Parakeets strolling around the lawns. Half an hour, and many photographs, later we had noticed that everyone else was ignoring them because they are so common! That was our introduction to a group of birds (parakeets, parrots and macaws) that we grew to be very fond of over the course of our journey. The sound of a flock of parakeets flying overhead became something of a home comfort to us. Continue reading
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Birding from the Yellow Van I: An overview by two complete amateurs
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Birding from the Yellow Van II: A more detailed record for the keen
There are so many places to see birds in South America, covering a wide variety of habitats and ecosystems. In the second part of our blog about our experiences of birding in South America, I will talk a bit about some of the places we visited. To make it a bit more cohesive, I have roughly grouped them into seven themes, each with its own accompanying gallery of some of our favourite photos. Continue reading
Climbing in Chile and Bolivia: Places with potential
Rock climbing has only recently become a popular activity in Chile and Bolivia and this is most obvious when you see who is climbing – most people are in their 20s. Unless you are a mountaineer, or fancy a go at climbing the formidable Torres del Paine, then the crags are probably best visited as an element of a wider trip to explore the country, as they were for us. Saying that, there is plenty of potential for rock climbing in these two beautiful countries. Continue reading
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Rock climbing in Argentina: A land of plenty
Argentina is a huge country and a great destination for rock climbers. Whether you only go to one of the well-developed crags, each of which could easily occupy much more than a week of your time to explore fully, or just sample these crags in passing and discover a few hidden esoteric ones as part of a grand tour, Argentina has a wealth of options. Continue reading
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The secret wines of Bolivia
Wine tasting at Hallwright’s
Bolivian wines? Really? This is probably what most people think when I mention the subject. In fact, it did take us a while to work our way through some distinctly ordinary wines, but, finally, Bolivia revealed her secrets with bodegas whose wines were excellent and compared well to the better Argentinian and Chilean examples we had tried.
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Some thoughts on the wines of Argentina and Chile
Comparing some Torrontes
A wonderful thing about spending much of 2015 travelling around both Argentina and Chile was that we had an opportunity to do quite a lot of wine tasting in two of the world’s great wine regions. This was a task we took seriously to heart and luckily there was some trekking in Patagonia to try and offset the expanding waistlines…
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Yellow Van Days 