SmaviesAdventures

Puno, Home of Spectacular Floaters The Floating Islands of Uros The Culture We left Arica bright and early in the morning. The journey to Puno was not at all easy. We arrived at Arica bus station to be denied access to one bus, completely uncertain as to why. But then we got on the second bus which took us to Tacna. From Tacna it should have been easy to get to Puno, despite being in the terminal at 7:00 we were told that the 8:00 bus did not exist. As it turned out Tacna is a confusing place to take a bus from, there are about five different terminals. We finally found a bus we could take at 12:30 so we had a few hours to kill. We popped across the road to eat something for breakfast, chicken and rice which was actually really nice. Accompanying this however was Quinoa juice, that was an odd experience, it was hot as a lot of juice in Peru seems to be, but also tasted a bit like cornflakes, not the best really... Some of the traditional clothed dancers After a pai

Incan Delights We will be spending a total of three weeks across Peru. Peru is a delightful country with amazing biodiversity with the Amazon in the north of the country, deserts in the south, amazing mountain ranges and sunny beaches. There is truly something for all here. Below you will find our posts about our destinations in Peru Puno The view of Lake Titicaca from the mighty Condor Cusco The Peruvian Last Supper in Cuzco Cathedral Machu Picchu Machu Picchu and the mighty Huaynu Picchu Nazca The tree Glyph of the Nazca lines Ica Oasis in the Desert Trujillo The Wall at the Chan Chan Museum Overview European Ecstasy Adventures in Asia Pacific Paradise Southern South American Splendour Central Celestial Scenes Incan Delights Heading North

A little bit of Arica by my side The view of the Sea We arrived in the early morning in Arica, having taken the overnight bus from San Pedro . Arica was only to be our destination to break a long journey northwards so we only remained here for a few days. As I mentioned in our previous post we had arrived on Wednesday, a day that appeared to be the hangover cure day of all the mass celebrations. Our bus arrived earlier than anticipated so we waited at the bus station for a little while before heading to our accommodation in the North of the town. Olivia enjoying the beach When we arrived we found our accommodation relatively easily and was greeted by a very sweet lady who made us a hot drink and gave us some cake from her daughters birthday the day before. It was a great cake of layered pieces of pastry, cream, dulce de leche and strawberries. We felt well and truly spoiled. After enjoying our cake we headed for a nap before we left for the day to find an open shop and

San Pedro: Drier than an Armadillo’s Bumhole Valle de la Muerte So we left the Salt Plains in Uyuni and headed down the steep hill in the bus. Although San Pedro is still at quite the high altitude it was nothing compared to where we were, we probably dropped around 2000 metres. The whole experience of crossing the border had been a little weird. Not only had there been the extortion of the amount for an exit stamp in our passport, but we were on a bus filled with bleary eyed tourists, including a very sweary French man who seemed in a foul mood. Just as we’d got to the border the driver pulled into a layby and jabbered away at us all in Spanish. At which point to my amusement a few very panicked voices from the back went ‘Can someone translate please!’ So an Australian girl translated for the group of Slavic girls at the back. As it turns out Chile has ecological safeguards in a similar manner to Fiji and New Zealand , this means that a lot of food and various plants and

Uyuni - Nearly enough salt for all the chips I want to eat #OliviaInBolivia Andrew and his friend at the Cactus Island Arrival An English girl abroad (Pre-warning, there are a lot of photos in this post) Uyuni is a dyslexic nightmare to spell... We arrived in Uyuni after a very stressful morning. In a sleep induced state we'd managed to lock the keys in the apartment before we'd unlocked the downstairs door, thankfully two things happened. Firstly a rather confused man let us out of the downstairs door and secondly the bus was delayed so we bought our ticket and ran out just in time to catch the bus (we didn't think we'd make it and I was very close to giving up on the stupid (nearly vertical) hill to the stupid bus stop...) Such fun When we had arrived in Oruro we transferred to Uyuni. It was a very odd experience in the bus station as it is not a nationalised bus service but rather an group of bus companies that offer their services. As a re