The South America Chronicles - Cero

Anna and I are just about to head off on our South America adventure. We some regret, we finally leave London on August the 15th, and we arrive back in Auckland November the 7th.

Firstly, we fly off with Brad & Sharon, first stop Quito, Ecuador. We spend the first week or so travelling around the Ecuador, including visiting the market town of Otavalo, before heading down for 4 nights at the (what looks awesome) Black Sheep Inn in the Quilotoa region. For Brad and I, this makes up our acclimatisation for our attempt to climb Mt Cotopaxi (on August 24th/25th), a 6000m metre high volcano! Amateur climbers can do it, though it still requires ropes and crampons, and how the altitude will affect us is still an unknown. However, the guides we have booked - Moggely - come high recommended, and seem confident that we wont have any problems. After our conquering of the mountain we meet up with the girls - who are going on a 3 day horse trek around Cotopaxi National Park - and head back to Quito for another couple of days.

On August 27th, we then fly out to the Galapagos Islands for 10 day, including an 8 day cruise of the boat Diamante, where we explore the islands and will do lots of amazing stuff - swim with sea lions/dolphins/penguins, see giant turtles/iguanas, etc. On the September 5th, we leave the Galapagos and say farewell to Brad & Sharon - who are travelling for longer than us and hence are moving slower than we are. But Anna and I fly down to Cuzco, where we are booked to do a 4 day walk along the Inca Trail, finishing at Machu Picchu on September 13th.

And then this is the end of our booked adventures, we have the next 7-8 weeks to travel as we wish.We have a good idea of what we want to do though. Next we will travel across to La Paz, Bolivia by way of Lake Titicaca. In Bolivia, we will mountain bike down the world's most dangerous road, visit the Amazon, and the Salar de Uyuni salt flats.

Next we plan to travel down through Chile, through the Atacama desert, and down to the Lake District, which is about 3/4 down, tasting a few Chilean reds along the way.

From the Lake District, the plan is to cross over into Argentina and make our way up to Buenos Aires - where we will want to make sure we have enough time to really enjoy. We have a few things on the list we would like to do in Argentina - go up to the Iquazu Falls, the wine region of Mendoza, eat as much Argentinean steak as humanly possible - but some of this will depend on how much time we have.

It is a big adventure for Anna and I and we are hoping that it all goes smoothly and that we have a great time. I will look to post a few entries on my blog site as we travel, updating you where we are and what we have done.

Adios amigos!