There were three highlights to the trip I booked in South America; crossing the Bolivian salt flats, the Inca trail and visiting the Amazon rainforest. The day had finally arrived to cross over into Bolivia and the excitement of a 3 day, two night 4x4 crossing over the flats. It certainly lived up to expectation.We hired a bus which would take us 20 minutes to the Chilean border so we could exit out. It then took 30 minutes of crossing no man´s land to reach the...

The overnight bus left La Serena at 10pm and arrived in San Pedro at 3pm the next day, leaving us time to be able to visit the Valley of the Moon and Valley of Death to watch the sunset. At the base of the Atacama desert, San Pedro is a tourist town with a crossing into Bolivia. Despite this or maybe because of this, it was a cute town. Lovely adobe streets clustered around a pretty tree-lined plaza and postcard-perfect church. At night it had a very happy feel a...

Our tour departed Santiago with a 7 hour journey to La Serena. Chilean buses are lovely. There is a host attendant who makes sure you are comfortable with pillows and blankets, plus keeping the toilet clean. A big bonus.La Serena is a coastal town in Chile and is the country´s second oldest city. A far cry from the developed Santiago, this town felt more like I had stepped back a few decades, with crowded roads, small side streets and more houses covered with mu...

One of the oddest things about going East to West is dealing with the time difference. My flight to South America left Auckland at 16.40 on 25/11 and landed at 12.10 on 25/11- so I effectively arrived before I took off. In New Zealand I had been 13 hours ahead of the UK now I found I was 3 hours behind. Impressive saying time zones were only created in the 1845 by the British rail companies! What happened before that?So dealing with this, I decided the only way ...

So my final destination in New Zealand, with 31% of the entire population living here -Auckland. It lies around several volcanoes, mainly extinct, giving it a very interesting landscape. Surprisingly for such a large city, there is relatively little to do here for tourists but one of the main attractions is the Sky Tower, the tallest free standing structure in the Southern Hemisphere standing at 328m.Being a good tourist I duly bought my ticket and went up there...