Macchu Pichu is everything the travel journals describe: an old Inca city on top of a moutain, undiscovered by the Spaniards who stole everything from other Inca places, with amazing old buildings and terraces and great hikes. We climbed Waynapichu mountain the first morning, then took a guided tour through Macchu Pichu during the day and climbed Macchu Pichu mountain the second day. Very impressive and certainly worth the effort and expense.

This was a much anticipated part of our trip - Macchu Pichu and the Inkas! To avoid much mountain sickness we planned to spend a few days at the Sacred Valley of the Inkas at 'only' 2700m above sea level, before heading up to the Macchu Picchu. In the Valley we stayed in Urubamba, the centre of the valley, and from there we had day trips to Ollantaytambo, once the place of many Inca battles against the Spaniards. Also we had a day trip to the salt mines in Mara...

This was our luxury part of the trip - we booked hotels from both sides of the falls - the argentinian and the brazilian - directly in the National Parks. That meant 5 star hotels with swimming pools and the option to see the falls early or late in the day without the major crowds arriving by bus or train around mid morning. And what a sight it was - an unbelievable display of a natural spectacle!! As we visitited in the rainy season - but we hardly had any trop...

After our lovely experience in laid back Montevideo, Buenos Aires presented itself rather different - very pompous, lavish buildings, grande avenues but also dirty and unfriendly people and on our first day - a Sunday - surprisingly empty, most shops closed and impossible to get dinner before 8pm!! It then started to rain and everything seems to go wrong including extreme difficulty to get money out of any ATM or bank. We got some glimpses of its rich history a...

After 2 weeks we are moving on from Montevideo to Buenos Aires. We love Montevideo and two weeks of language school has provided all 4 of us with a good start to the rest of the south american continent. From Montevideo we booked a bus with COT to Colonia (3 hrs), looked around Colonia for some hours and then took the Buquebus ferry across the Rio de la Plata to Buenos Aires (1.5 hrs). It would have been better and probably cheaper to take the buquebus package....