The final bus ride of the trip, and she's a doozy! 24 hours from San Pedro in the northern desert to Santiago in the country's central region matching the longest ride we've taken. Anyone who has followed this blog, even slightly, will have read an account (or many) by now of some long, often hellish journey by bus...it's almost always how the blog posts begin. I hope we didn't come off as whiny; for us writing about them made them more bearable, plus it's import...

It was 12:30 in the afternoon when we rolled into the dusty town of San Pedro de Atacama. The temperature had increased by at least 20 degrees during the trip from the mountains of Southern Bolivia to the Valley of Northern Chile. After a bit of waiting around, we were dropped off at Hostel Candelaria. It was a bit early for check-in so we pulled up a few chairs in the garden of the hostel and enjoyed the warm sun as we caught up on the emails that have been pil...

It took a good deal of motivation to leave the sweet comforts of our La Paz apartment, but after a week of hanging out it was high time we pushed on out of town. We had several equally inconvenient methods to get to our next destination of Uyuni. 1) Direct overnight bus in the worst seats possible (all nicer ones were sold out). 2) Bus to train (which would mean sticking around another day as they only depart on Fridays). 3) Bus to Potosi, transfer at 6am with ...

After going a million miles an hour for almost two weeks straight since the Wisconsin crew landed in Cuzco, it was a relief to finally get back to La Paz and check in to our final accommodation for the trip. We'd organized a sweet 3BR apartment through AirBnB which we got settled into after only a few moments of chaos when we were separated in 2 taxis and none of us knew where to go. A few of us hit the grocery store for dinner food and other supplies before we ...

We awoke to the shrieking of birds that seriously could have been made by the Teradactyl in Jurassic Park. It was horrendous. That's one thing about the jungle: it is loud, and no place for a sleep in! We made haste packing our bags and scarfing down some breakfast and then dragged our bags up the hill to wait for the van from the tour company. We weren't quite 100% sure they'd even be coming, as the confirmation had been less then assuring. But, sure enough, bef...