First and foremost, let it be noted that there was no wind while I was in Chicago. I felt let down. Duped. No big apples in New York, no wind in Chicago and now updating my blog on a rainy day in the “Sunshine State”. Wind or no wind, I shall recount my experiences of…
Category: Travel
Playing catch-up: The Big Apple
I have visited New York before so this was less of a tourism trip and more to catch up with friends. Nonetheless, there were several boxes I still wanted to tick/check, the first being a trip to an NFL game. I was staying with a friend from university, Julia, who was not only able to…
Playing catch-up: Columbia
Howdy folks! This is coming to you from a motel in Missouri, where I am waiting for the rain to blow over so I can hit the road on my motorcycle. But more if that soon… I have seen and done an awful lot since my last post, some of which is starting to blur…
Lima: Ceviche, Pisco and a street party
I’m running about a week behind due to sheer laziness and an overly comfortable hotel bed. As such, I may forget a few of the details but, to balance this, I may well invent a few too – cosmic equilibrium maintained. I arrived in Lima around 6pm and made my way to the Miraflores district:…
Rematchu Picchu: the finale
Days 1-3 of this 5-day trek to Machu Picchu via the Salkantay trail have been covered in previous posts so this final part of the trilogy begins on the morning of day four; a day that would lead us down into a valley, along the train tracks and, eventually, to Machu Picchu village, a hot…
Football, hot springs and coffee: part 2 of the Machu Picchu saga
Hola amigos! I left you at mid-afternoon on the second day of a five-day hike to Machu Picchu via Salkantay mountain. As the day wore on we started to pass alternative campsites along the route. In need of quenching our collective thirst, we stopped in at one such place but, no sooner had we finished…
Inca-redible experience: Salkantay and Machu Picchu: part 1
The setting is Cusco, the time is 6:30pm the evening prior to a five day hike, via the mountain of Salkantay, to Machu Picchu. We participants had been informed we were to attend a briefing at the headquarters of Alpaca Expeditions, the agency in whose charge we had placed ourselves. Most uncharacteristically, I arrived late…
Cusco, Peru
After a brief layover in Lima airport, I boarded my internal flight to Cusco, the Andean city from which most tourist journeys to Machu Pichu typically begin. I had been advised by the tour company with whom I had booked to arrive a day or two before the start of my trek in order to…
Montevideo #2: the rowdy bits
Sorry for the leave of absence: I have been off-grid for a few days trekking in the Andes (is there a way to say that without sounding pretentious?). Update on that to follow. Meanwhile, let me take you on a journey back to Montevideo and the second half of my week with Bart and Nathalie. The…
Salvadorable
My chosen means of transport from Recife to Salvador, the largest city in the state of Bahia, was bus. I made my way to Recife’s central bus terminal which, ironically, was so far from the city centre that I need to take a bus just to get there. I had booked the ticket without looking…
Ask and ye shall Recife
First, an apology to anyone who speaks Portuguese: I’m aware that an “r” at the beginning of a word is pronounced as an “h”, thereby making the title’s already tenuous pun, even more of a stretch. Yes, that’s right, folks; in Brazil, Rio is pronounced “Hio”. You reard it rere first! Recife is a small…
My week in Rio: part 2
So where was I? Ah yes! I had just finished my tour of the botanical gardens and was deciding on a plan for the evening. I settled on jazz at a bar called La Champanharía, some distance away, between the nocturnally nefarious areas of Mauá and Santa Teresa. In the knowledge that walking any distance…
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