After leaving the lovely San Pedro de Atacama, we decided to skip some of the sights on the west coast of Chile, and instead did a 24 hour bus drive to the capital, Santiago. We'd been on the road, rushing since Colombia and decided to spend our last few days in South America chilling. Our hostel is relaxing, with a Christmas tree and we've been able to sample numerous bottles of grape juice at about £3 per bottle. Lovely! New Zealand awaits us in 3 days!

After some wonderful treking in Peru, we travelled by bus to Bolivia and the beautiful Lake Titicaca. On the way, we met a lovely Kiwi couple, Tom & Amy, who talked us into another crazy trek from La Paz. This one (Huayna Potosi) involved snow, ice axes, crampons and an altitude of 6088 metres (my previous peak had been a mere 4600 metres in Nepal some years ago). The lady at the treking office seemed to know what she was talking about and made us feel more ...

Just completed the Salkantay Mountain trek. Got collected at 4:30am and travelled by minibus into the countryside. Our group of 14 were a great crew, especially the Irish contingent. The first day was fairly straight forward with great views of Salkantay Mountain by the evening. However, it rained all night. Luckily our tents were under shelter, although everyone was freezing at night. Day 2 involved us trekking uphill from 5.30am to the peak at just over 4600m...

Jumped on Fritz the Cat from the ancient port of Portobello along with a group of 6 bikers and their bikes and headed out towards the San Blas Islands. The weather wasn't the best, but the islands were still stunning. Anchored the boat and did some snorkeling, seeing a stingray. A few of the other passengers suffered with the 'motion of the ocean' but we were fine. At night, sitting on the bow of the catamaran sailing towards a full moon, with the odd flash of li...

Saw the Panama Canal and went to a shopping mall in Panama City......well.....it can't all be high octane stuff you know! Looking forward to the Catamaran trip in 2 days.