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
Tag Archives: Brazil
Birding from the Yellow Van I: An overview by two complete amateurs
Filed under Topics
April down the Amazon II: Down river to Manaus
One thing that Becca has repeatly said during our trip is that she would like to see an opera at the opera house in Manaus. Manaus is right in the middle of the Brazilian Amazon, on the confluence of the Rio Negro and the Amazon, and emerged as the capital of the rubber boom in the late nineteenth century. When things were going well, it was such a rich city that building a grand opera house, importing marble etc. from Italy, seemed a reasonable thing to do! Manaus is down stream from Iquitos in Peru, so once we had done our conservation trip, we thought it would be an interesting experience to travel down the Amazon by boat to get there.
A dip into Brazil: The glorious Pantanal
Hycinth Macaws asking us to turn the heat down
September & October 2015: They say, if you want to see jungle, go to the jungle, but if you want to see animals in South America, go to the Pantanal. Although South America doesn’t have the chart topping diversity of big animals that some other continents have, the Pantanal displays what it does have in glorious quantity and boy does it make up for it in diversity of bird and insect life.
Continue reading
Brazil’s two elegant capitals: Rio de Janeiro and Brasilia
Flying out over Sugarloaf, Rio
September & October 2015: Whilst Brasilia has been Brazil’s official capital city since the 1960s, Rio de Janeiro is still the country’s heart, beating to a uniquely Brazilian rhythm. We flew into Rio in mid-September, using it as a hopping off point for a return trip to the UK. We stayed for 2 wet days on the way out, then enjoyed 10 glorious days on our return from the UK in October, before flying into Brasilia for a one night stopover on route back to the van in Campo Grande to continue our exploration of the Pantanal.
A year in the van in review
A year ago today, the van was pushed out of it’s shipping container, given a push start by a fork-lift truck and then made it’s first journey on South American soil straight to the nearest VW garage! A year later, these 12 pictures are our highlights of our first year on the road in Latin America, along with some reflections…. Continue reading
Filed under About
Argentina Head to Toe – Part 1: Iguazu Falls to Cordoba
An Amazon peers out to check us out from a hole in a tree above our campsite
We turned south at the Iguazu Falls for a drive that will take us the full length of Argentina, we hope. Iguazu Falls is at the northern tip of the Misiones province, a thin spit of Argentine land separating Paraguay from Uruguay and defined by the Rios Uruguay and Paraná.
Continue reading
Filed under Postcards
La Costa – Beauty and the (little) Beast(s)
Two thousand kilometres of coast, mostly lined by long beautiful sand beaches has been the theme of the time that we have had on the road since leaving Montevideo. The beaches of the Atlantic shore are immense and dramatic, often backed by expanses of dunes. The ones along the undeveloped coast of Uruguay are particularly stunning…
Filed under Postcards
Yellow Van Days 