Something like a third of South America is taken up by the basin of the river Amazon. The outflow into the Atlantic is greater than the next seven largest rivers in the world combined and accounts for 20% of the freshwater flowing into the world’s seas. So we just had to visit it at some point on our trip. After spending the last week of March 2016 with a bit of a beach holiday in Zorritos on the north coast of Peru, we flew to Iquitos on Friday 1st April to start our Amazonian adventure with a conservation cruise up river of Iquitos. Part II of our Amazon blogs will describe our journey down the Amazon to Manaus in the heart of Brazil. Continue reading
Tag Archives: wildlife
April down the Amazon I: Doing a bit for conservation
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The Galapagos Islands
As two biologists who both studied evolutionary biology, the Galapagos Islands are an iconic destination and one that we had every intention of doing thoroughly! Indeed, when we were in the early planning stages for our South American adventure, even before we had thought about what sort of vehicle we would get, we had a line in our budget for our visit to the islands. On the 6th March 2016, after about 40,000km of driving round South America, we finally touched down. Our time there was spent mostly on two boat tours – a diving trip to the excellent diving locations around the remote northern islands of Wolf and Darwin, followed by a more traditional naturalist cruise round the western islands. Continue reading
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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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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
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Antarctica: Beyond the end of the world
The lovely Gentoo penguin
Tierra del Fuego is described as El Fin del Mundo (“the end of the world”), but there is more to see further south – and we decided it was worth taking the opportunity to board a boat, suffer 5 days in the worst seas in the world, to go see…
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Argentina Head to Toe – Part 2: Patagonia dreaming
Ushuaia – at the bottom of Argentina
When you mention Patagonia, the first thought that goes through most people’s minds is the mountains of the Andes. If they do think about the east, it is just as a huge windy desert. If that is what comes to your mind, then you are only partially right…
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Yellow Van Days 