The folks smiled all the way through my confession, which happened after the event, of course. From Ushuaia, via Skype: “So now that we’re safely here, I guess I should tell you how we got here …” Yup, I did it. We did it. The folks are totally cool with it! I am so proud …
I loved Puerto Madryn from the moment I saw the flat blue ocean peeking through buildings and wide streets when I walked from the bus terminal, packs loaded front and back, to El Retorno Hostel. I loved it because I could smell the sea for the first time since I left Cape Town, nearly three …
Simply breathtaking, there is a neighbourhood in Sao Paulo that’s almost entirely covered in street art. This is Beco do Batman (Batman Alley) in Villa Madalena. Get there by following the green metro line all the way to the last stop (west). I photographed nearly every piece but am just posting a few highlights here. …
The road to South America started a few years ago. It was an adventure pipedream my pal Celeste and I talked about. At first, we thought we should go for a couple of weeks. Then we thought about a month. Then we thought about three. Time passed and the plan dropped away, but the dream …
Yesterday was one of those ambivalent mornings. My and Ester’s sad words from the previous night reverberated through my hungover skull: “We don’t write enough to call ourselves writers. [Deep mutual sigh.]” There’s only one way through that or anything else, really, and another thing Ester said about unrelated topics seemed relevant: “These are all things … Continue reading
Things had gotten pretty comfortable in Ecuador. Swimming pool-facing private rooms in Baños, restaurant meals in Quito, guided island tours and blue-footed boobies in Puerto Lopez. Paired-up travelling was a far cry from risk-laden solo backpacking, and so I was unable to ignore or forget the small write-up on the Quilotoa Loop hidden deep in … Continue reading
I’ve been back in South Africa for just about six months now. Moving on, physically and intellectually, knuckling down and getting shit done. But I do have some epic adventures to recount and I am here now, in body and spirit, because I was there then on the same terms, so here in pictures and … Continue reading
Baños in Ecuador is small, really small. And while this Andean village is mostly known for its waterfalls, rivers, active volcano, rolling green mountains and hippies, the few streets also deliver sights of another kind. See also: Beco do Batman Seen in Corrientes Seen in Rosario Seen and heard and done in Buenos Aires Seen … Continue reading
There are no prizes for knowing that the equator rips through Ecuador, however you will be the group smarty pants if you know that the monolith at Mitad del Mundo – literally “middle of the world” – just outside Quito is a red herring of gigantic proportions. The real 00º00’00” is a three-minute walk from Mitad … Continue reading
Quito has two parts: old and new. The old part is an artwork in its own right – old plazas and ancient churches are squeezed in between the narrow, steep, cobbled streets. In the new town, wide avenues lined with trees house coffee shops and restaurants. But always, the city is a canvas. The street art in … Continue reading
From Cuenca, the obvious choice for our next destination was the famous Ecuadorian coast. Obvious maybe, but not necessarily easy. Ecuador as a destination would make a great case study for the Paradox of Choice theory: when too many amazing and varied options can cause anxiety and suffering, and result in petrified indecision. But there … Continue reading
Before leaving Cuenca Mark and I resolved to do something outdoorsy, and with El Cajas National Park just 30km west of and up through the hills that hug the city, I’d’ve never forgiven myself for not going. We may have deliberated at length, tried to come up with reasons why it was OK to skip … Continue reading
On Saturday 29 March 2014 there was an armed home invasion while I was babysitting my 10-month-old nephew at my sister’s house in Bryanston, Johannesburg. Three armed men stormed the house at 7:05pm, five minutes after I put the baby down, and cleaned it out while making me and the gardener sit in the courtyard at … Continue reading
I didn’t even know Cuenca existed until Mark said he’d overheard someone say they were heading there next and it was supposed to be nice. And we weren’t even sure if we were going to go there – Ecuador is small but full of things to see. We could stay on the west coast and … Continue reading
Back in March, I made it to (and through) Argentinian Patagonia. Before my travels I had been made aware by a few people of a mythical Afrikaner community that relocated to Argentina early in the 20th Century. In Gaiman, I met a woman who had forefathers that were Afrikaans but, she told me, they had … Continue reading
Not since Santiago had a city’s street art captured the attention of my lens as much as Cuenca‘s did. Big, bold images often stretch up a couple of storeys or almost across entire blocks. And a city as pretty as this one would naturally have an excellent contemporary art gallery, too. The last few images … Continue reading
Up until Ecuador, border control procedures in South America had been pretty chilled. Even the Chile-Argentina one, with dogs and conveyer belts and X-rays and line-ups, was nothing compared to the 1am event that took place at Huaquillas in the southwestern corner of Ecuador. A brash, irritated-looking man stepped onto our bus. Using the light … Continue reading
Mark has remarked on the extensive pre-planning that went into my year in South America. Looking back I hardly recognise myself: the intense and focused excitement was almost innocent; a hereditary compulsion to be prepared for every eventuality; a level of research that put most of my fellow travellers to shame; a thoroughness that was … Continue reading
Because it worked so well for the Salar de Uyuni post, and because I want you guys to know the answers to these potential quiz questions of the future, here are the essential facts of Machupicchu. With thanks to WikiPedia, LiveScience, National Geographic, UNESCO et al. I should add that I am not pretending to be … Continue reading
Made it to Peru, country #5, from La Paz late October with zero hassle and arrived at Loki Cusco to find the Three Musketeers and Mark where I knew I would – at the bar. Jordan, Mark and I went out and stayed out till closing time, then for sunrise we made it up to a … Continue reading
Sprawling across the Bolivian altiplano at between 3 200 and 4 100 metres above sea level, La Paz is an incredible city. Incredibly difficult to walk through: the altitude makes the air thin and the steep hills add huffs and puffs to every excursion; after three weeks in the city climbing stairs were still an … Continue reading
That El Choro post was weak and rushed. It’s not that I’ve been battling writer’s block per se, more a case of lucking out with the universe’s greatest travelling companion (Mark from the UK) and so I’ve been filling my days with far better things than writing (ha!) since we hit the road together in … Continue reading
Made it to La Paz with five days left on my 30-day visa. It was meant to be a quick stopover, to meet up with the Frenchies again and then shove off to Peru. No part of me was ready to leave Bolivia behind, though, and so that is how Orlando, the bar manager at … Continue reading
What Bolivia offers in terms of natural diversity – desert, salt flats, highest-altitude cities, fresh lower-land days – is captivating in much the same way that South Africa is. But the hard to pronounce Rurrenabaque is whole new bag of tricks. Despite of how much I had seen of the country, I still found it … Continue reading
Flipped a coin at the terminal in Santa Cruz and settled on Trinidad, not entirely sure what I would do there but confident that it was at least halfway to Rurrenabaque, the gateway to the Bolivian Amazon. Bus terminals are not the prettiest parts of any town, but this one’s chaos was particularly oppressive. I’m … Continue reading
It’s 1 November and I’m nowhere near the equator. As I write this from Huacachina, Peru, I am in fact as far from crossing that line as I was a month and a half ago, when I was waiting for my bus to Trinidad in Santa Cruz’s ant heap of a bus terminal, destination: the … Continue reading
When you first meet Christobal, proprietor of Ginger’s Paradise, you’d be forgiven for believing that this riverside organic farm and refugio, cradled by pristine Bolivian cloud forest that clings to the mountain, was named after him. His faded red hair is a magpie’s nest of old dreadlocks and new growth; he wears a dirty white … Continue reading
We are easy to spot, hovering outside a bus terminal with bulging backpacks loaded front and back. What fools we must look, oversized Lonely Planet on a Shoestring, open on the “getting there and around” page, in hand. What easy targets we make, married to our desire to reach the next destination. In my case, … Continue reading
Bolivia is different. The ubiquitous rural settlements are more common than cities and remind me of rural Africa, minus the violent crime and paranoia. The Dunkin’ Donuts, McDonald’s, Burger Kings and giant supermarkets of Chile are conspicuously absent, at least in the places I’ve visited so far. Everything is dirt cheap. Evo hasn’t been successful … Continue reading
Hopped in a 4X4 from Uyuni with six others for a day tour of Salar de Uyuni (bucket-list item, check), the largest slat flat in the world. There is little that can be said about Salar de Uyuni that isn’t better shown through photographs, so I’ve taken the liberty of listing some facts shamelessly lifted … Continue reading
Before I left South Africa, the excellent travel angel/agent Tessa in Bloemfontein pointed out that I need a visa to enter Bolivia. When my passport came back from the Bolivian consulate in Jo’burg I was a little worried about the date stamp: November 2012. But I figured they knew what they were doing and that … Continue reading
Forgive me for glossing over San Pedro de Atacama. It’s not for lack of material, but rather because Bolivia is infinitely more interesting and wildly different, and the country has captured my imagination to such an extent that I am too tempted to compare it to Chile, which would be putting the cart before the … Continue reading
Iquique stole my heart and is probably my favourite place in Chile. It’s about 1,800km north of Santiago. The city is skirted by Pacific coastline – pristine, soft, white, walkable beach – on one side and the looming mountains of the Atacama Desert on the other. Not even the skyscraping hotels and tourism complexes can … Continue reading
I am writing this from famous San Pedro de Atacama, where I have been since Sunday (August 25) and from where I have been planning since the very beginning to enter Bolivia, via Salar de Uyuni. Sunday morning was real exciting – I arrived from Iquique (via Calama) only to be greeted by a snow … Continue reading
Santiago is covered in graffiti and street art. Most of the shots in this post are from Barrio Yungay, which is the neighbourhood next to mine. The rest of the city is similarly painted, though some efforts are more sophisticated than others – there is also a whole lot of needless vandalism that hardly qualifies … Continue reading
Skiing, like golf, was not invented for plebeians like me. As with golf, it’s not only the equipment that will set you back a handsome fee. Mere access to soft, snowy slopes for a day comes close to half of what I was earning in Santiago. And there is also the matter of where to … Continue reading
Photographs of the mountain, as seen from my apartment building in Santiago. Continue reading
This Thursday I will leave Santiago, which has been my home for four months. I have mixed feelings about the leaving and about the writing, and I have been grappling with how honest to be about my time here. These four months have not been my happiest – I got some bad news right when … Continue reading
I left El Calafate, Argentina at 16:00 on Friday 29 March and I pitched my tent in Puerto Varas, Chile at about 14:00 on Sunday 31 March. Where was I during the 46 hours in between? In transit, on a bus, neither here nor there. You’d think that you could just hop on over into … Continue reading
I was going to call this post “Dengue or not dengue – what was the question?” because for a couple of days in El Calafate, I was convinced I had dengue fever. I changed my mind about the title (but not the diagnosis) because I’d rather you remember Perito Moreno glacier than my rare hypochondria … Continue reading
We took a long, slow walk through the municipal cemetery of Punta Arenas on a Sunday afternoon. The light was perfect and the textures, crucifixes, depths and colours came together like odds stacked in something else’s favour. A cemetery is a somber thing, especially those small graves, or the ones now shared by married folk. … Continue reading
Nikki’s friend Rodolfo’s friend Ronald put us up for three fun nights in Punta Arenas, “the largest city south of the 46th parallel south”. We were dropped on the side of the road on the outskirts of town by Mario #2 on a Friday afternoon, and the first thing I did when we got into … Continue reading
No way were we going to public transport it out of Ushuaia like some kind of travelling amateurs when our hitchhiking trip down was such a roaring success, so we had the Ushuaia collectivo (“town bus” in Argentina) drop us off at the service station where we’d woken up five or six days earlier, and … Continue reading
Enjoy these pictures of our day at Tierra del Fuego National Park (wild and wildly expensive) while I go on a bit of a rant. We were tired that day. Our legs didn’t want to go very far for very long. Lots of stops and starts. Eventually we just laid down under some trees and … Continue reading
cape/caracas 