We arrived in Santiago, the Chilean capital on 4th march by plane from Rio. This was just a one night stop as we were flying out of here on the 5th to Auckland. We stayed in a really nice hostel right in the middle of the Bella Boavista area containing all the bars and restaurants. On Sunday 5th we had a wander around the town and went up the cable car overlooking the city early afternoon which was fun Later we were planning to have a wander round the d...

We arrived here on 24th February from Salvador to spend carnival here. This proved to be a good choice as this was a really nice town with a superb beach plus we stayed in a really nice hostel. Although it was some 6km out of town and a good 15 mins walk from the beach is was a really nice place to stay with it's own little swimming pool and hammocks in which to laze the days away in. Given the searing heat of the day, lying in hammocks in the shade was just abou...

Salvador is a major Brazillian tourist destination mainly for it's musical roots and hosts the most revered Carnival in the land. Rio is the one all the foreigners know but Salvador's Carnival is known as being more lively and accessible to all than Rio's. We arrived on the 20th three days before it started. It seemed all the world and it's neighbour wanted to come here including travellers.The word was out that Salvador was THE place to come. We thought that too...

We returned to Brazil via a long day bus from Santa Elena, Venezuela which departed on the morning of the 15th and arrived in Manaus at 12.30am on the 16th. Manaus is a city of approx 2 million people situated very near to where the Amazon starts. We we warned it wasn't the nicest of places and true enough it lived down to our expectations. Quite frankly, bar a nice opera house, the downtown área is a dump and also hellishly humid. After our Venezuala r...

We arrived at this Brazillian border town after a 14 1/2 hour bus ride from Ciudad Bolivar, fresh from being robbed (see the Angel Falls write up). This was another in our awful bus journies list as this one was peppered with military check points which means members of the military coming on board and checking your passports etc. On this one they excelled themselves with four seperate stops including a 4am one which involved leaving the bus, getting our luggage ...