Altiplano part 1
The other 1.5 days we drove through the altiplano to Chile. We saw colorful mountains, sandy deserts, beautiful lakes, spotted vicuñas, viscachas, lamas, Andean foxes and flamingos, froze on 4500 meters at -10 degrees and icy winds, covered in bed in so many blankets we couldn‘t move, and had a totally amazing time. Instead of […]
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Salar de Uyuni part 2
Bolivia, 50th country we visited, June 2-7 Salar de Uyuni We were very lucky that our Salar de Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama tour with Ruta Verde only started on our third day as it was very cloudy for the first two days. So we relaxed in our nice salt hotel and hoped for […]
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Salar de Uyuni part 1
Bolivia, 50th country we visited, June 2-7 We were very lucky that our Salar de Uyuni to San Pedro de Atacama tour with Ruta Verde only started on our third day as it was very cloudy for the first two days. So we relaxed in our nice salt hotel and hoped for better weather. We […]
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Titicaca Lake
Lake Titicaca is the highest navigable lake and quite impressive with its size and high altitude (3800m). It’s also a very pretty sight with its dark blue water, surrounded by yellow hills and far away, glimpses of Andean peaks. Puno on the other hand was rather ugly. Though very busy. On day one we could […]
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Nazca Lines
For our “backpacking” part of the trip we travelled by bus from Lima to Nazca (6h), overnight to Arequipa (10h) and with the last very comfy bus to Puno (7h). Final bus transfer from Puno via Copacabana to La Paz was no more shiny buses with wide leather seats reclining 180 degrees and personal entertainment […]
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Santa Cruz hike – part 2
Initially we planned to do the four day Santa Cruz Trek trek on our own, renting trekking gear in Huaraz. Luckily we decided instead to take an organized group trek with Quechuandes. First, we met some great people to hike with, Erica & Maxine from Toronto, Debbi & Michael from Zurich and our crew, Héctor […]
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Santa Cruz Hike – part 1
Initially we planned to do the four day Santa Cruz Trek trek on our own, renting trekking gear in Huaraz. Luckily we decided instead to take an organized group trek with Quechuandes. First, we met some great people to hike with, Erica & Maxine from Toronto, Debbi & Michael from Zurich and our crew, Héctor […]
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Huaraz – acclimatization hikes
Peru, May 17-June 2 Back to Peru, back to Lima. The food here is great, the city itself is meh. We quickly moved on to Huaraz, the hiking capital of Peru. There was not a single person on that flight not wearing hiking boots and carrying hiking poles. The Cordillera Blanca is the highest mountain […]
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Cuenca
For our last few days in Ecuador we went to Cuenca, a laid-back colonial town in the south. From there it was only about an hour by bus to Cajas National Park. With an altitude of 3000-4000m, hiking here was a good exercise to get ready for the Cordillera Blanca in Peru. It was our […]
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Galapagos – Isla San Cristóbal (video only)
On Isla San Cristóbal, we had an early morning snorkeling at Kicker Rock at 6am which was the perfect goodbye to the Galapagos. We had multiple sightings of hammerhead sharks – most impressive (and slightly scary) one that dove up towards us. There were lots of grey reef sharks forming a big circle, we counted […]
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Galapagos – Isla Española
Isla Española was another excellent island for birds and sea lions. During our morning walk we got very close to sea lion colonies with their babies playing in the shallows, saw rocks covered with sea iguanas and watched the beautiful waved albatross, arriving to the island to start their breeding season. In the afternoon, we […]
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