365

365 days, 16 countries and a full circumference of the globe. So how much would a trip like this cost? The tickets, 20 flights, cost almost exactly £2000. We bought a couple more, at about £120 each, along the way. A long van rental in Australia? Just over 50 days in the off season cost us about £1500 between us. Considering that was our accommodation as well it wasn't too bad. But if anyone if staying longer than a couple of months then buying a vehicle is the way to go.
Our American Subaru set us back a couple of thousand quid and we sold it in a rush for about £900 with it's nagging new fault!


So the real cost it just living. All in all I probably spent about £12,000 just on food, getting around and sightseeing. I bought only a couple of momentous from the trip as carrying the newly purchased items or sending them back expensively is a hassle I can live without. It was enough to carry a backpack and another bag in my hand on those long travelling days, not that they were packed with clothes. For the first 6 months I survived on one pair of boxer shorts!
Since I've been back in the world of odd new phrases like 'credit crunch' many people have asked me what my favourite country is. I've not even scratched the surface as far as world travel goes but I'd definitely like to see more of Japan and New Zealand. America's landscape is amazing and just everyday living in South America was for me the true spirit of what a trip like this is all about.

One person has asked me what my worst country is and to be honest that's an even harder question. I plumped for Bolivia because the people were miserable, there was a lot of civil unrest once we left, but there's some truly beautiful scenery there. The unwanted attention in China and the annoying con-men in Bangkok were only minor bugs in an otherwise exceptional trip. We spent a year almost constantly travelling and encountered only one dodgy situation and even that was not a full week into the trip.
Would I do it all again? Well, yes. I'm not sure if I'd stay away for as long as a year again but six months definitely. Although, for anyone who hasn't already done the year trip then I would recommend it unquestionably.


I've been set a back and left speechless soo many times along the way with soo many memories that keep coming back to me that will stay stored away in a dusty corner of my brain forever. I've come back a red wine and green tea drinker but other than that nothing has changed except for my massive appreciation for the great country of my birth. It's funny how much things about your own country you miss, good British ales for one, and how much the people who live here take everything for granted and really do a good job of putting it all down.
As I go about my daily business I often think that at this very moment there's guys in flip-flops and shades doing some welding in China. There's a bronzed, beer bellied 50 year old guy catching a few waves on his surf board. There's a tour guide explaining the Inca ruins in three different languages. There's a perfect Argentinian steak being served, a stunning American mountain range being snowboarded, a huge New Zealand glacier being explored inside and a funk band playing in the dark clubs of the white city of San Francisco. Whatever it is, wherever it is, when you're travelling there's always something going on and it's almost impossible not to love it.

Hasta luego Latin America

The third leg of this trip is over. Latin America. And what a place it is. Only one country didn't really impress, and that was only due to the people, Bolivia. But that's not saying I wouldn't go back there and give it another chance. Once the altitude has been overcome there's plenty of places to visit in Bolivia it's just my enthusiasm was taken away by the miserable Bolivians we meet. They can't all be like that, and besides they had a lot of civil unrest against the president after we left. I like to think my arrival there was the final straw.


The highlights include the immense Iguazu Falls and the mystical Macchu Picchu. These are both highlights of the whole trip so far. I loved most of Peru, crossing the Andes, seeing Mexico City and everything Argentinian. South America is a huge continent and as far as this trip goes it's similar to Asia. A different language, different culture and cheap. Thing is, as good as Asia is it can't compete with South America. Maybe it's not fair to compare continents really. It was a lot easier day to day in Latin America because I knew some of the language and learnt more as we went along.


Getting the language takes a bit of time but pays off all over the place, except Brazil damn it!

Rio was definitely the most dangerous feeling place on the continent, and the whole trip, but it did have it's extremely beautiful side that you just can't deny. There's poverty, there's money, there's everything. This is travelling, I'm not talking about deep Amazon vine hacking or mountain trekking in Peru but everyday life in Latin America in itself is enough to make me want to go back over and over. The whole place is enormous and massively diverse, it has nearly every climate on Earth. Everyday there's something going on and something to see. Amazing stuff and quality of living all within the reach of the backpacker. I'll come on holiday here as soon as I can afford the flight. No need to book ahead or plan as everything is possible once you're here and for a fraction of a package holiday price.
Argentina and Peru were my favourites. These are countries you could spend a lot of time in for very little money and have a very good time. I think next time I'll do some mountain bike wine tours, white water rafting, sandboarding, surfing, kayaking, visit a desert, a rainforest and a jungle. Easy.
Life is good, the people are good and the places are amazing. The whole continent is alive with life and colour. And to think I was apprehensive about coming here. Turns outs there was no need.
Only question left is, when can I go back?

Deepest darkest Peru

So, that was it. And as we look back it dawns on us that we'd just spent a month in Peru. A month! I never thought that would ever happen. But it was a great month and I'd happily go back. Peru is incredibly diverse and still has plenty left to see. Deserts, surf, huge mountains, the deepest canyons, rainforests, jungle and varying villages and colonial towns with their own charm. The people are friendly and the living is good. The ancient Macchu Picchu is already a highlight of the whole trip and has recently been voted onto the new 7 wonders of the world list. History is falling out of this place and they're still finding more ancient ruins from civilisations gone by. Let's just hope that the country stays stable enough not to become too Western for it's own good or to descend into terrorism and unrest.
What was once the capital of the Spanish conquest of Latin America, Lima, was a disappointing place. But the old Inca capital of Cusco lived up to expectation and more. A true capital if ever there was one.
I don't know where the hell Paddington bear got his mack from because I didn't see any of them for sale when I was there, Peruvians mainly sold hats and jumpers!

Lame Llama Lima

It's funny how different two areas of the same city can give you a totally different perspective. The day we spent in Lima a couple of weeks ago was in Downtown. Even though this area has the main buildings and museums it's run down and gritty. It's not a nice place to walk around and judging by the lack of other tourists and what a local told us it's not the safest area either.
This time round we have 5 days in the more affluent Miraflores area. I wasn't looking forward to returning to Lima but Miraflores is a totally different prospect. It's only down the road from the dirty streets and fallen down blocks of buildings but has tree lined streets with various styles of large colonial houses and modern designs. Guards are all over the place protecting the rich and the tourists. It's strange at first but you get used to seeing them everywhere. They even have guards designated with certain streets, in their own small booth at one end of the street. Residents all pay part of the wages for 24 hour security. It seems paranoid but when you see the massive difference of living quality in Lima it makes sense.
It also seems that money isn't spread very equally between the more indigenous Peruvians and the Spanish descended Peruvians. In other words, most people round Miraflores look white and far less Peruvian looking and more European. That does have a knock on effect for me though, I'm less of a standout blonde freak here. Yes!
Our hostel is also pretty flash, it's an old colonial style sprawling house with a grassed sun trap of a courtyard in the middle. Unfortunately it's also popular which means we end up changing into different rooms almost every day. Our first is probably the biggest room we've had on the trip, it even has a sofa and a hammock!
Lima is the capital of Peru, in my opinion this shouldn't be the case at all. It's not really representative of the rest of Peru and certainly hasn't got the style and atmosphere of Cusco. Lima is also on the coast, which also means it's the end of high altitude living for us, now I've got used to it. The coast is moderately attractive and has some surf. Plenty of guys are braving the cold water to ride some waves but from the look of the water, and what I read about the pollution in it, I didn't fancy a go at all. It's no Australia that's for sure.
Cut into the rock shoreline is a new shopping arcade and restaurant area which is a bit crappy but rammed with tourists. It's funny because generally we walk everywhere taking in life on the street and don't see too many tourists. Clearly a lot walk out of their hotels straight into a taxi to this place. The food in Larco Mar, the name of the shopping arcade, touts itself as being a bit gourmet but in reality it's overpriced and dire. Much like the rest of our eating experiences here. In fact we only find one decent place during our stay, whereas Cusco and Arequipa could've kept us in quality living for a long while for a lot less money.
So we are paying more for the room, more for the dire food and there's a lot less to see here. Why do people even bother? If you came to Peru and only visited Lima you'd have a strange and substandard impression of Peru.
We do visit a couple of ancient ruins here though. In the middle of a housing estate is a Pre-Inca pyramid. It's not like a pyramid in Egypt as it's not totally triangle but it's still fairly large. Thing is it took to the 1960's for the government to realise this was a valuable asset for tourism. Then it became protected, only after a road had been built through the site and houses had been built. The site is large but only a third of the original site. Which is why across the road you can see someone still has part of the pyramid in their back garden! Crazy.
For a site that was built around 400AD you'd have thought there would be more importance placed on it's preservation, but no. Still, like Macchu Picchu, it's now being rebuilt. The pyramid itself is built out of mud bricks, Lima is a fairly dry place, that have survived for over one and a half thousand years through earthquakes and invasion. This is because of the clever construction, a library book style. These are small book shape bricks lined up like a library shelf which can move around in Earthquakes but not collapse.
Sacrifices where also made here, a few decapitated bodies have been found and there are probably a couple in that blokes garden over the road.
We're shown around by a guide with an extremely annoying Australian and a couple of Americans. The Australian seemed to be slightly mental but then I remembered what Australia was actually like. Not quite right.
Lima also gives us our first experience of a large supermarket in South America. It's quite upmarket, more so than anything Australia has for instance. The booze isle is an odd affair. Around 6 wine 'guides' await you to walk down the isle. They ask what type of wine you're looking for and explain the differing virtues of each one. Funnily enough they always seem to say the most expensive one is the best. Odd that. But as the most expensive wines are around £6 I can afford to splash out on the next to dearest.
At this point I'd had pretty bad stomach ache for a fair few days and the food here wasn't helping. Luckily we found a couple, literally, of decent places to eat. Whilst in one cafe late on a Sunday night a Peruvian couple came in who clearly had money to throw about. They were very well travelled and got chatting to us. They then invited us to a local club that isn't widely publicised. That's because it's a gay bar. Up until this point I hadn't thought about it much but it suddenly occurred to me what was going on. Most South American countries are very Catholic and that means being gay is really frowned upon. It's also a very macho society so this is also considered a weakness. But the gay scene is huge nonetheless. You just have to know about it. We went along and the club was packed out. No tourists here and it seemed that the blonde haired Englishman was an interesting prospect for the young Peruvian male. Either way it was a good laugh and we danced around like loons with a couple of the friends of our newly acquired hosts. I was still confused with the bar situation, having to buy a ticket for a drink at a counter and then take that to the bar, but still it was an interesting side to an uninteresting city.
The day after we lazily watched a marathon being held through the streets, one girl was running in flips flops.......flip flops!!! I mean come on! All of a sudden a couple we'd met in Arequipa came walking up to us with their backpacks on! They'd been to Pisco, briefly. If you don't know, and we didn't, Pisco was hit by a massive earthquake last year that flattened the city. 70% of the city was destroyed and 430 people were killed. This was a big deal. Once they'd arrived at Pisco they soon realised the magnitude of the destruction and the huge amount of rebuilding still needed. The hostel they'd booked was just rubble. So that meant a short time sandboarding, sounds ace, and a rest in Lima. We arrange to meet up later but one was ill so we put it off. It turns out that was when we found the best eating place in town.
Another pyramid in a far flasher area of town was another brief visit. It wasn't as interesting as the other and mainly just gave a good view of the classy buildings and nearby restaurants around.
On our last evening in Lima, and South America, we visit another area of the city. Barranco is touted as a classy part of town but seemed gritty and fallen down other than one square and part of a street. We eat great food and then visit a local drinking spot. This place was full of shelves with strange coloured bottles with odd labels on such as,'Cat's nails' and 'bark'. It turns out we'd walked into a natural alcohol bar. All ingredients were derived from plants, and seemingly, bark and the such! It blows your bloody head off. Along with the constantly made fresh popcorn given to you and the odd tasting booze I was off my face. It's a shame my bad stomach never quite left me though.
Lima, disappointing but not indicative of Peru. Good bits but hard to find. Not a place I'd want to go back to, there's no point. In fact, if I'd started in Lima and travelled around Peru after it would have only have been better for it. Unfortunately most flights go through Lima so my advice is to get out after 3 days maximum and see the real Peru!
On a side note, as we were having our last breakfast in the hostel we met a French guy and his Peruvian girlfriend. This quickly turned sour when he tried to make her say 'key' in English rather than Spanish. She didn't like this much and after a brief period of shouting from their room she left with her backpack, after giving him a few clouts first. And all because we were there, if we had not been there the French guy wouldn't have tried the language lesson with her. Ah well.

A history of Coca

We splashed out on a VIP bus to Cusco that had a tour thing thrown in. Meaning that the 8 hour bus ride included 6 stops and a buffet lunch so it wouldn't be too long just sat on our arses.
The next major town North of Puno was Juliaca. This is a large market town, mainly black market, that the government turns a blind eye to. You can get anything here but the main item for sale is Bolivian fuel. It's much cheaper than Peruvian and comes in yellow cans that are outside a fair few houses. The buildings here aren't finished either and in a further tax dodge the flash new bus station is unused due to the departure tax people have to pay. This means that all the buses are crammed on the street opposite. It's crazy really. It's an ugly place in general, dusty streets with flying litter abound.
The first real stop was at a village called Pukura. This is the site of some pre-Inka artifacts and a pyramid, not of the Egyptian scale however. This village was the site of many a sacrifice, all from the village itself and all had to be of pure blood and 'unblemished'. Many young virgins in other words. We saw a frog shaped alter that was thought to be used for chopping off the heads of the sacrifices. These sacrifices took place to get good weather to produce good crops and a harvest. No Micheal Fish on the BBC weather here then! Some of the walls here were built 2000 years ago and still survive today. When the Inkas arrived they continued to use the pyramid until the Spanish came along and built a church, typically.
We went high up onto the Altiplano again and stopped off at the highest point for photos of the surrounding mountains. Up here it's a rural life, but a good one, we are told. I can't quite see it myself but each to their own. People do live longer here than in the city due to less stress, larger lungs(gained due to the thin air up here) and more red blood cells(also a bi-product of living at altitude) that helps stave off infections and diseases. The land is mainly all owned by the farmers who are actually squatters here. They still use the old Inka system of one for all and all for one, sounds familiar. Every year the families of the community club together to build a new house for a selected family. It's mainly potatoes, Alpacas and Llamas up here. Not a lot else. Huge mountains too.
We stop further up the road at a place called Raqchi. This is an old Inka temple and has some unbelievable stonework that has lasted over 500 years with an original mud wall atop. The Inkas are so renound for their excellent stone masonary and you can see why. For the most important buildings, like this one, they didn't use any mortar. Instead they hand polish each stone to fit perfectly with the next, and not in the conventional way you see on modern houses. These huge rocks are carved with many angles and the effect is stunning. An Inka god is supposed to have arrived out of a nearby volcano and this temple is believed to be where that god was worshipped. It's a large site and has straight-as-an-arrow streets still intact. Many an earthquake and eruption rocks this area, as Peru as a whole, but theses mammoth rocks still stand the test of time.
We next stopped at another elaborate church that was full of 24 carot gold. The town surrounding it was very poor and it's annoying to see all that money go to waste in somewhere like this.
The tour guide was keen to stress the importance of Coca leaves. Peru is the biggest producer of Coca in the world. Many people look down on this, especially America, as it is from this plant that cocaine is made. To make it you'd need a hell of a lot and you also need to isolate one of the many alkaloids contained within the plant. You see Coca leaves all the time and their a huge part of the culture and have been well before the Inka times of the 1500's. This is partly due to the benefits you get from chewing coca leaves or having coca tea, of which we had loads. It really helps with altitude sickness, it sorted me out many times, as well as being beneficial for teeth and including many required daily vitamins. The leaf itself is so far away from cocaine, the grape and wine is much closer. The US government has tried to impose trade sanctions and other bribes to Peru to force them to stop producing the leaves. America is the biggest consumer of cocaine and Peru does supply a hell of a lot. But Peruvians are quite offended by this as the average joe on the street uses coca for totally different reasons that don't provide the high of cocaine. Now and again I see local women carrying huge bags of leaves bigger than themselves.
You can chew the leaves but you'll need a catalyst to make them work. This catalyst is a bit of hardened ash. You wrap the leaves around the ash and chew for about 40 minutes without swallowing the leaves. It numbs your mouth briefly but after that it's fine. Once in Cusco we did hear an American girl in a cafe complaing of altitude sickness. She refused coca tea believing it was cocaine, sniggers filtered around the place. If it was cocaine I'm sure there'd be even more tourists here.

On the road to Peru

On the rocky ride to Puno in Peru the bus driver's assistant persuaded us and another couple to look at his 'excellent' hostel in Puno. He offered us free transport from the bus station so we thought we should at least take a look. Once there we soon realised this place was awful. Something akin to a horror movie. At the very least the toilet should have a seat surely! We declined, even when they reduced the room price to 4quid a night. I'd rather pay quadrouple and be in a nicer place. And a nicer place we found just round the corner.
First impressions of Puno are bad. The potholed road into town has unfinished buildings either side. In fact nearly every building in Puno has an unfinished look about. Large metal rebar poking from the top of every roof. We later discover this is a tax dodge. If you have a finished house you pay more tax, therefore no-one does and the place looks crappy because of it.
Puno is a couple of hours down the road from Copacabana in Bolivia and also beside Lake Titicaca. It's not right on the lake's edge as there's a inlet full of reeds nearer to town. It's a much bigger place than Copacabana and instantly you can tell the people are far more friendly. It's more geared up to tourists but that just means it's better for us. The saving grace of Puno is the one pedestrianised street it has and a couple of nice Plazas. There's a raft of rustic and funky looking restaurants to choose from, which at least gives us some options in the evening.
Pizzas seem to be very popular in Peru. Most places have a traditional wood burning pizza oven and they taste pretty good as a result. I had to give the local delicacy, Alpaca meat, a try. It was pretty damn fine too. Alpacas are similar to Llamas but have subtle differences. Their hair is finer and used to make blankets, scarfs, hats, jumpers and so on. Every third shop here is selling some kind of Alpaca item or multicoloured poncho.
Another food favourite is Cuy. A guy next to us at a restaurant ordered fried cuy and looked a bit set a back when it arrived. The two girls he was with seemed close to being sick. This is because Cuy is Guinea Pig. Not too bad if it comes in pieces but no. This beast is served whole, sliced down the middle and spread eagled on your plate. It took him a good hour to pick the meat off. That's one thing I think I'll avoid.
After recently celebrating Puno day the celebrations still continue a week later with the odd procession here and there. A live band also play in the square but it's absolutely freezing at night here so watching them for longer than a minute was tough.
The main attraction for tourists here is to go out by boat and visit the floating reed islands on Lake Titicaca. These are man-made islands that people live on that float around the lake. The people of the islands have to constantly replenish the reed on top as the bottom of the island disintegrates. You can even stay with a family on the island too. I didn't fancy the whole thing. We'd heard it was created mainly for the tourists and to be honest I wasn't that interested.
We do decide to stop 3 nights and do nothing but eat, drink and get on the internet. It sounds like a waste but in fact it was pretty good. To not do much for a few days is something we haven't really done on the whole trip.
Whilst sat on the square drinking a bottle of Inca Kola we were surrounded by 20 or so kids, no older than 10. They asked us loads of questions, mainly in Spanish, and just generally liked to stare at us. At one point one of them snatched my cap and every single one of them felt my hair at the same time declaring, 'Gringo!'. It was pretty funny. The people here are far more welcoming than Bolivia and it seems that they've realised how huge an industry tourism can be. It works too. I'd much rather spend my money where the people are friendly rather than a place where I don't feel welcome.
At least I feel a bit better about Peru. Time to move on to Cusco. The old Inka capital of South America. The navel of the world, as it is called. We'd heard very good things about it but we didn't want to expect too much.