Six months in South America – a new adventure begins
The whole idea of selling much of what we owned was to travel the world and visit all the places we have always wanted to visit. I grew up reading National Geographic, and have always dreamt of one day actually going to all those amazing, exotic places that had so engrossed me as a boy.
So for the next six months we will be traveling through some of South America, with the Galapagos islands and Machu Picchu as our main focus for the first two months. The driving force behind visiting these places as soon as possible is the realization that mass tourism will eventually destroy them, or at least restrict access to them within a few years. It just seems that governments around the world are largely incapable of protecting their natural wonders or archeological treasures in a sustainable manner.
So on 5 April we boarded our flight across the Atlantic and 10 hrs later we landed in Sao Paolo, Brazil, where we overnighted before taking another two flights to get us to Quito, the capital of Ecuador. From Quito we will fly to Galapagos where we will spend two weeks exploring three islands…Santa Cruz, Isabela and San Cristobal. We had seriously considered trying to find a 5 day cruise once we arrived in Galapagos, as we had heard that it is possible to find discounted last-minute deals on these pricey tours, but after doing research we have decided to rather do our own thing and visit each island independently. We really enjoy the feeling that we have done it ourselves, with as little help as possible from tour organizers and travel agents. We are quite capable of surviving out in the big, wide world using our wits and survival skills…
After Galapagos we travel back to Quito for a night, before boarding a bus to Puyo, where we will meet Moi, from the Waorani tribe who live in the Ecuadorian Amazon. He will take us on a further 4 hour journey to his village deep in the forest, where we will live with his family for 10 days. We are very excited about this part of the trip.
Then we catch two more busses to get to Guayaquil, en route to Lima in Peru. The cross-boarder trip will take around 28 hrs, which we are not looking forward to. We will overnight in Peru before hopping on the Peru Hop bus headed for the ancient Inca capital of Cusco. We will spend 5 nights on this leg of the journey, stopping over at several small towns along the way before we finally reach Cusco, which is the launching pad to the Sacred Valley and Machu Picchu, another of the places I have wanted to visit since childhood. We will spend 3 weeks in Cusco 🙂
After Cusco we get back on Peru Hop, and set off for Lake Titicaca, where we will overnight at two towns, and take a side trip to Isla da Sol, the island where the Inca kingdom was born. We will cross the border into Bolivia at this point. Then it’s on to La Paz for a few days to acclimatize to the altitude before we head to Salta de Uyuni, the massive salt plains filled with alien landscapes and pink flamingo’s.
After a four day trip by Landcruiser through the salt plains, we head north to Sucre, the former capital of Bolivia, before doing a week-long trip to the former Jesuit missions of northern Bolivia, after which we head to the border of Brazil by train. After crossing the border we will spend a few days exploring the wildlife extravaganza which is the Pantenal. Then we are back on a bus up to the town of Goiania, where we will meet up with our old friend Rogerio and his girlfriend for a three week road trip through central and north-east Brazil.
That’s where our definite planning ends, but we know that we will head south to the Iguazo Falls, on into northern Argentina and Uruguay, and then loop back into Brazil for Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paolo before we fly home in early October. We hope that it will be a great adventure without too much drama, and we will post updates as we travel, and as internet speed will allow 🙂
