The sunshine greeted us in Paraty! We boarded a boat to sail around the islands off the coast. We relaxed, swam and drank caipirinhas on the sun loungers! We also had time to wander round the colourful colonial town with its cobbled streets and old churches. We then travelled by bus to Rio de Janeiro. We were disappointed to find that the sun hadn't followed us - it was cloudy and rainy! We stayed in Rio for a few days. We went on a favela tour visiting Rocinha ...

We spent a couple of days in Santiago, a surprisingly amorous city with canoodling couples everywhere! When the smog clears, the city is attractive with its backdrop of snowcapped Andean mountains. We enjoyed looking around the city and sampling Chilean wines in the local wineries. Next stop was Puerto Varas, a charming European style town built by German immigrants. This was our base for exploring the volcanic landscape, we trekked through the snow to Volcan O...

Since we were last online, we have spent a wonderful few days in the Galapagos Islands and the Ecuadorian cloudforest. We took our trip to the Galapagos from Quito, Ecuador and had a couple of days to explore this old city and to climb the health and safety risk that is the Basilica del Voto Nacional! We were rewarded with great views of the city but to get to this point we had to risk our lives crossing a rickety plank inside the main roof and various steep stai...

We took the bus from Cusco to Puno and used Puno as a base to explore the amazing Floating Islands of Lake Titicaca. We stopped off at the unique man-made reed island of Isla Flotante where the inhabitants use the reeds of the lake to build boats and homes, as well as the island itself. We cruised on to the natural island of Isla Amantani where we stayed with a local family for one night. We were made to feel very welcome despite the language barrier and had fu...

We are thoroughly enjoying our time in Peru so far. We spent a couple of days in Lima looking around the city and visiting Huaca Pucllana, an archeological site older than the Inca civilisation right in the city. We went to see a Peruvian dance show and got dragged up on stage! We flew over the Andes to the Amazon jungle where we trekked, saw wildlife and sweltered in the heat! After our jungle trip, we went to Cusco - which, at 3400m above sea level, is about a...