Days not Homeless: 5 Years, 342 Days ...and loving every second of this alpine adventure!
We hoped that leaving La Paz on a Wednesday night for the three hour micro-bus ride to Copacabana was a good idea and that the internet at our fancy accommodation would work for Andrea! We had chosen Hostal Las Olas for its unique suites overlooking Lake Titicaca, and...
La Paz, sitting in a bowl at an altitude between 3.200 and 4.100 meters, is the highest capital city in the world surrounded by the high mountains of the altiplano, specifically triple-peaked Illimani. Behind Santa Cruz de la Sierra, it is Bolivia’s second largest...
Our final destination in the La Paz region was Chulumani. It was spent with drunks, downpours and delays and it certainly did not go the way we anticipated, but it ended up being much more fun than we ever imagined! We planned to head to Chulumani the weekend of...
From the moment we arrived in La Paz and being able to see Illimani from our apartment window, I wanted to hit the hills again – it's been six years since I summited Huascaran in Peru with some friends and I was hungry to get back into thin air. Illimani, at 6.438...
It's already our second weekend in La Paz and time for an adventure! The North Yungas Road, suitably titled “Worlds Most Dangerous Road” or WMDR for short, is a renowned downhill mountain bike ride and formerly the only road through the mountains from La Paz to...
One of the top activities to do while visiting Sucre, Bolivia is the trek to the Maragua crater with a visit to the dinosaur footprints. We decided to use Condor Trekkers, a non-profit organization that distributes its profits back to the community and relies heavily...
Thankfully it didn't eat the ones that toured the Candelaria mine in Cerro Rico recently! Cerro Rico, meaning ‘Rich Mountain’ in Spanish and looming above Potosi in Bolivia, is the primary reason most tourists visit the highest city in the world at 4.067 meters above...
Not sure why we came here, something to do with visiting a friend and it being half way between La Paz and our next stop, Sucre. Rumors abounded of the city being unsafe with very few tourist attractions so what better time to arrive than 11.30pm and your...
The town of Rurrenabaque, known as the gateway for all Bolivian Amazon adventures was a last minute decision, preferred over heading to Chiles San Pedro de Atacama for a week. Andrea was still on vacation from work for another six days and we knew our destination, the...
Hopefully you’re still reading this blog and we haven't bored you yet! We have seen so much on this tour and are so lucky to have spent it with a great group of like-minded travellers. The number one thing Andrea wanted to do in South America was the Salt Flats and...
We thought we had found the number one adventure in South America, the 5 day “W” Circuit hike in Chile, but we’re thinking the Salt Flats, beginning in Tupiza, Bolivia and ending in Uyuni is by far the best. Sitting in a 4WD for 8-10 hours a day and sleeping on slabs...
I’ve learned at least one thing on this trip – I prefer to be in smaller towns than in big cities. Before leaving for South America, I was begging Wayne to let us have at least 4 weeks in Buenos Aires. The thought of being in a big city with so much to do was very...
If it hadn’t been for the suicide drivers and the bamboo scaffolding I would have been mistaken for thinking I was back in England. From the moment we arrived at 3am on Sunday morning to our departure 5 days later we never got a glimpse of blue sky, nor did we get to...
South America borders are not the cheapest places for Americans due to Visas and reciprocity fees and without prior planning they are also not the easiest to cross. We've already been hit with $160 for a Brazilian Visa, $160 reciprocity fee for Argentina, and more...
With Ayutthaya being only an hour north of Bangkok it made sense to spend our last couple of nights there exploring the ancient temples. Once upon a time it was the capital of the Kingdom of Siam and very prosperous, until that is... the Burmese destroyed much of it....
Why did it take so long for us to make it to Thailand? What an amazing country, clearly with lots of places to explore - on this fifteen day trip we'd only have time for visiting Bangkok, Ayutthaya, and a couple of the many islands. Not sure of the reason but...
For me this was the highlight of an amazingly diverse country. The countless different tribes of the Omo Valley in the south of Ethiopia were unique, rich in culture, colourful, and often very extreme. Also very spoilt by the influx of tourism, of which we were...
A jeep adventure very similar to the Bolivian salt flats, only instead of being around 4000m in altitude this three day trip was often below sea level. The arid land we would explore was known as the Danakil Desert and covers almost 140,000 square kms of northeast...
Having been on the travel radar for some time, a good friend of mine from Everest in 2005 accompanied me on this adventure to Ethiopia, an amazing and culturally rich country. After a couple of days in Addis Ababa and completing Africa's largest 10km running race, the...
Did summiting Denali back in 2003 subconsciously set this somewhat crazy adventure into gear? I’ll never know but what I was hoping for is that this would be the end, the finale, the completion, the conclusion, whatever… of bagging the highest point in all 50 of the...
This trip went from being primarily about Seville, a city that we'd wanted to visit for some time, to Granada, Malaga, Cordoba, Cadiz, and even Gibraltar. We had no idea what we could knock off in a little over two weeks but decided that we would just keep on driving...
No idea why it had taken us so long to make it to Egypt but we're already raring to go back! This occasion was just a week long vacation to get us away from the cold of the Alps and for me to enjoy (if there is any enjoyment!) recovering from hip replacement surgery....
After what felt like an eternity it was a random email from a good friend in the US that prompted a plan of attack for the remaining 8 state highpoints. Unfortunately they were spread far and wide and included four that required some level of technique and multiple...
Encouraged by feedback from a friend that had recently completed this 'hilly' ride through the French Alps we thought, why not, that sounds right up our street. Officially starting on Lac Leman in Geneva we would cut it short slightly by cycling almost from our front...
It took us a long time to make it to Norway, but Oh was it worth it. The only plan we had before leaving on our long drive north from Chamonix was to meet friends in Senja for some ski touring. We just winged everything else and it worked a charm. The car was rammed...
With 2024 providing a brief glimpse into ski touring in Arctic Norway there was no way it wouldn't become a yearly ritual. Senja was fun but the Lyngen Alps to the north east of Tromso was destined to be an epic adventure. The crowd was pretty much the same; mostly...
Now that I had no desire to return to the US where I had spent far too many years where was I going to go whilst Andrea returned home? The most logical countries were Arabic speaking as they don't appeal to her! I had briefly looked at Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and Saudi...
Unable to take a rental car into Albania on a prior roadtrip through Europe we made it a mission to discover what would turn out to be a gem, and not one of those expensive gems! EasyJet supplied the direct flight from Geneva to Tirana, public transport was dirt...
Not quite what we had planned regarding a big Swedish adventure, our 3 week Kungsleden hike turning into a city break in Stockholm. Oh well, it was still fun, and we got to explore another scenic European city. With EasyJet flying the dirt cheap route directly from...
The thought of travelling for two days to visit family in New Zealand without adding on a South Pacific island trip was now only a thought! After spending a little over a week in Niue on our previous trip where would we go this time? Whilst my mum had already been to...
With a few hundred Euros in TAP Portugal credit and no real idea of where to go that didn't involve connections and long flights we decided to just head somewhere warm and that we'd never been to before. The Algarve sounded like that destination. Unfortunately the...
Approaching Greenland ice shelf from the air was humbling, the size of the glaciers tumbling into the sea, the iceberg’s with their turquoise underwater colours, the sheer expanse… and we were barely north of Greenland's narrowest point - there was a hell of a lot...
So here it is, time for another fairly long bike-packing adventure following the length of the mighty Rhine river. The other getaways I was toying with were either a north south traverse of Iceland on foot or a photography shoot in the Faroe Islands - for both it was...
Over eighty days of skiing under my belt, it was time for Andrea and I to head to warmer climates. We had spent some time in the French island of Corsica a couple of years ago and now it was time for the Italian island of Sardinia. We had zero plans; just the desire...
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