Kia ora friends and whanau, This is Gemma here for what is sure to be a long Amazon recount, so get comfy : ) We arrived in Cusco on the 23rd of Sept and set about the next day visiting many of the many tour companies offering Amazon trips to the area we wanted to go, Manu National Park. People we´d talked to and our guide books had recommended Manu as one of the best protected and most biodiverse areas on earth. The company we went with is called Pantiacolla ...

Mike here. Time for a quick update as we are disappearing for nine days to Manu National Park in the Peruvian Amazon in the wee hours of tomorrow morning. Since La Paz we've been over to Lake Titicaca and up to Cusco, Peru. From La Paz we headed to the little town of Copacbana on the Bolivian shores of Titicaca. Gemma and Guinny were a day ahead and headed out to Isla del Sol, the island in the middle of the Lake which was once a major seat of Inca power. Today...

Mike here, about time I contributed to the blog (I think Gemma and Guinny would agree). So since our last posting we´ve made our way up from the Salar de Uyuni salt flats through to the silver mining town of Potosi and across to La Paz. Southern Bolivia was pretty incredible as Gemma described. The flatness, dryness and emptyness of the landscapes was mind-blowing. Amazing to visit but can´t imagine living in a place so completely lacking in fresh water or an...

Mike here, about time I contributed to the blog (I think Gemma and Guinny would agree). So since our last posting we´ve made our way up from the Salar de Uyuni salt flats through to the silver mining town of Potosi and across to La Paz. Southern Bolivia was pretty incredible as Gemma described. The flatness, dryness and emptyness of the landscapes was mind-blowing. Amazing to visit but can´t imagine living in a place so completely lacking in fresh water or an...

Buenos noches amigos (it´s 11pm here!) Gemma again, yes Mike is noticeably absent from the blogging isn´t he? We are currently in Potosi, Bolivia so I´ll fill you in on everything between Pumamarca, Argentina to Uyuni, Bolivia where we finished our salt flats trip. We crossed the border from Argentina to Chile on the 6th which involved clambering in a bus up to 4000m over the Andes which gave us great views of the mountain deserts broken up only by tussock-l...