[May 2016] By the end of April, after our successful trip to the Amazon, the rainy season in the mountains of Peru was over, so we turned back south again to go and explore the High Andes of Peru. However, we hadn’t got far when I got the sort of phone call that everybody dreads, especially when they are a long way from home – my father had been taken ill and had been admitted to hospital. The first days of May became about getting me onto a plane back to the UK. Bruce stayed with the van in Huaraz and, for him, that two week period rapidly degenerated into a cascade of interrelated mechanical problems and then culminated with him, on the day I was travelling back out, taking an unusually bad fall while rock climbing and giving himself a concussion! June could only be an improvement…
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Tag Archives: Problems & solutions
A Miserable May in the Cordillera Blanca, Peru
Living in a Yellow Van: A TED-style talk given to the reunion of my MBA class
At the recent (September 2016) 10 year reunion of my MBA class in Oxford, I was asked to give a “TED-style” talk about our trip. I’ve turned the slides and the script I used into a PDF document to share it here.
Lima: A six day foodie splurge
We wouldn’t exactly describe ourselves as foodies, but we do like our food and enjoy eating out regularly. Learning about and trying the different foods we have, and are yet to, encounter on this trip is an important part of the travel experience for us and we suspect we are choosing to spend more of our budget on dining out than many of the other overlanders we meet on the road. Given that, we arrived in Lima (on Tuesday 16th February 2016), dubbed the food capital of South America and one of the world’s great dining destinations, with high hopes for some gastronomic experiences. But a good meal (or two) every day for six days was more of a splurge than even we had anticipated! Continue reading
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Canyon & Carnaval: Adventurous driving in Peru part 2
This blog describes the second of two exciting mountain drives to and fro across the Andes of Southern Peru, taking in two of the deepest canyons in the world, Colca and Cotahuasi. This drive took us from the historic city of Arequipa, through the remote Cotahuasi canyon and over one of our highest passes yet, to join the major road to Ayacucho, arriving just in time for the start of its carnaval on 6th February. Continue reading
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Canyon & Convent: Adventurous driving in Peru part 1
We set off from Cusco on Sunday 17th January 2016 to cross the Andes southwards to Peru’s second city of Arequipa. Given we were in the midst of the wet season in the mountains, we expected to simply drive north up the coast of Peru from there, but that wasn’t quite how things developed. This blog describes the first of two exciting mountain drives to and fro across the Andes, taking in two of the deepest canyons in the world, Colca and Cotahuasi. This drive, the first of the two, took us to the historic city of Arequipa and its famous convent of Santa Catalina, via the picturesque Colca canyon and its condors. Continue reading
Bolivian Highlife: In and out of La Paz
It was perhaps appropriate that our arrival in La Paz, a city of dramatic geography, caught us out with its crazy topology. We arrived on November 21 2015 from the south, having driven for a few days up across the flat “altiplano” (high plain) that sits at around 3,800m, pausing on route to look for the recently disappeared Lake Poopo. We based ourselves on the outskirts of the city, coming and going from trips out to see the beautiful volcano Sajama on one side of the altiplano to the west and, to the east, the steep, lush Yungas mountains.
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.
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Bolivia 1 – pt 2: From Potosi, to Sucre, and down on to the plains below
From Uyuni, our journey across Bolivia took us north and east, first, to the historic mining city of Potosi, then onwards through the lovely city of Sucre and slowly (via very bad roads), down from the Andes and onto the plains below, near Santa Cruz, from where we headed East towards the wetlands in Brazil. Continue reading
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Bolivia 1 – pt 1: High Altiplano driving – from the far Southwest to Uyuni
This amazing drive, the first half of our first crossing of Bolivia, started with the “Lagunas Ruta”, in the remote southwest corner of the country, and took us across one of the wonders of the world, the Salar de Uyuni – and not without incident! As we left Chile, we were braced for one of the most remote and challenging drives of the trip…
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The Atacama Desert: More of it, and for longer, than expected
As we descended into the Atacama Desert, the driest place on earth outside of the polar regions, on Sunday 12 July, we were expecting to spend around a week exploring the area around San Pedro de Atacama, but that wasn’t quite how things turned out…
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Yellow Van Days 