Ten Weeks of Madness in South America

- Salar de Uyuni - crossing the salt plains at the Bolivian-Chilean border. The most spectacular scenery I've ever seen, miles and miles of pure bright white salt, beautiful coloured lakes, thousands of pink flamingos, huge exotic rock formations, lunar landscapes, bubbling molten lava, absolutely unmissable.

- The Inca Trail and in the Colca canyon. Superb natural scenery, challenging hikes, condors, cactii, ancient ruins, and amazingly rewarding views.

- Sandboarding in the desert at Huacachina (outside Ica, Peru). This is a beautiful little oasis town surrounded by massive sand dunes and miles and miles of desert. Unbelievable sunsets, scorching hot weather, and of course the sandboarding was brilliant.

- Surfing in Montanita, Ecuador. Montanita is the best surfing beach on the coast of Ecuador, fantastic place, great atmosphere, very laid back, good bars, good waves, great place for learners and experts alike.

- Exploring the Pampas from Rurrenabaque, Bolivia. Three days of exotic creatures, cruising along the river, and wading through the pampas. Saw crocodiles, manta rays, pink dolphins, howler monkeys, an anaconda, sloths, porcupines climbing trees, and much more.

Quick Tips:

Pack light. I ended up sending home four kilos of stuff that I realised I didn't need. Aim for 60 litres or less, including your sleeping bag. Have as light a rucksack as possible, and you'll be glad you did.

Best Way To Get Around:

I found that the most interesting and most fun way to get around was to go with the locals. It's even better if you can speak the language - there's nothing like chatting with local kids on a bus to pass a long journey. Take chicken class buses, hike in the wilds, walk around a city. Forget about city tours, royal class buses, and flying - the real way to get to know a new place is to get to know its people.

An amazing trek. The trekking itself is reasonably easy, anyone who is aerobically fit and willing to walk for a couple of hours can do it. You spend most of the time walking on Incan-built steps and paths. There was a 55-year old German housewife in our group, and she managed it - with the help of a porter and plenty of coca leaves.

The toughest part of the four days is day 2 - you hike up steps to an altitude of 4,200 metres. This one's a real battle in your mind; each step up meaning thinner air, less oxygen, and harder to climb. However, I've never hiked much before, and I managed it ahead of most of our group, and it's so worth it. The view from the pass was spectacular, amazing, superlative. The views on this trail are impossible to describe, and it's even harder to capture them on camera. The rest of day 2 is downhill as well, so after a suitably long rest the remainder of the day is easy.

It's called a four-day trek, but in reality you only spend a couple of hours trekking, on the difficult day 2 most people had reached camp by early afternoon. At the end of day 3 was one of the nicest parts of the journey - arriving at our campsite to find a bar there! How nice was it after three days to take the boots off, and kick back with a cold beer and some amazing view from the bar's balcony.

Day 4, up at 3.30am for a 1-hour dash to the Sun Gate to watch the sunrise over Macchu Picchu. We were incredibly lucky, not a cloud to be seen, beautiful day. Spent a few hours wandering about the ruins and then feeling ultra-fit after our exertions, we decided to climb Huayna Picchu - the mountain overlooking the ruins that you see in every photo of Macchu Picchu. This was fantastic, 360 degree views of the valley, plus a unique angle on the ruins themselves. When we had finished we hiked down to the town of Aguas Calientes ("Hot Waters") to soak those aching muscles in the hot baths. Blissful. All in all a fantastic four days, it's obvious why this is South America's most visited tourist attraction.

We got off the bus at a roundabout outside Ica, and took a cab straight to Huacachina - all the cabbies know it, it's beginning to establish itself as a favourite with the gringos. The road goes straight out there and ends at an oasis with a large lagoon surrounded by a small town, surrounded by desert as far as the eye can see.

We stayed in one of the newer hostels, a beautiful place called Hostal del Reya (Hostel of the Sands). It had a beautiful little pool, surrounded by a grassy area with deck chairs, parasols, a beach volleyball area, and of course the obligatory bar complete with coconut fronds on the roof. Here is where the days were spent tanning, drinking, eating, swimming and generally having a fabulous time (ok, so it may sound a bit like something from MTV's the Grind, but after a few days hard travel it really hit the spot) while waiting for the blazing sun to cool down enough for the highlight of the day - sandboarding.

At about 5.30ish each day, we'd grab some boards, and trudge for 15-20 minutes up the huge dune right behind the hostel. From there, the choice of the easy side for beginners to practice, or back towards the hostel at an insane angle (not to mention insane speed) for those who feel they can handle it. What an amazing time we had here, I only wish we could have stayed longer. After four days of sandboarding I was getting quite proficient at it, but still managed to come down looking like I was made of sand every time. Unmissable.

I thought I'd done white water rafting before in the US, but it didn't compare to this! Four days spent on the river, camping each night on its banks, setting up camp each night, and packing up every day. There were 16 of us in all, including four staff. Spent the first day taking it quite easy on the water, getting used to the rafts, and learning how to raft, the different signals, etc. Day two was a spectacular day, faster rapids, blazing sunshine, amazing.

The scenery we passed through on the trip was mind-blowing to an Irish boy - we don't have mountains at home, I've decided, we have small hills. The sunshine was very pleasant at the time, however because of the high altitude (we were rafting at just over 4,000m) the UV rays were terribly strong and all three Irish kids ended up with sunburnt feet and hands (of all things!).

Day three was the most exciting - class 5 rapids! Quite dangerous, but very exciting, strictly for adrenaline junkies. Before attempting the rapids we all had to get out of the rafts and traipse up onto rocks overlooking the rapids, where the guide 'explained what we were going to do'. Roughly translated, this means that he scared the crap out of us. However, two sets of brave souls decided to give it a go, and luckily there were no mishaps. I think that this was probably the best buzz of the whole ten week trip.

Day four was a wrap-up day, some long, fun class four rapids, body-surfing, and hydro-speed: a 'new' sport that to me was quite disappointing. You get into the water with a foam 'hydrospeed' which fits around your hands and is shaped like a small boat. Apparently you can do lots of tricks with it - the only trick I learnt was swallowing river water!

Before driving back to base we had a huge barbeque, and did a bungy-jumping like thing involving a standard rope and a bridge over the river. Great fun, not as good as bungy-jumping, but the fact that you have to hold the rope onto your harness and decide when to let go (i.e. fall into the river) makes it a pretty scary time.

All in all a great trip. Highly recommended. Also highly recommended is resting on return to Cuzco. Cuzco was at a higher altitude and instead of a good night's rest I spent most of the night drinking horrible cuba libre's (I am not a fan of rum) and I ended up spending two days in bed with 'exhaustion due to exertion at altitude'. But it was worth it!

I did my pampas trip from Rurrenabaque, where you have a choice of quite a few agencies who organise taking you to the pampas and/or the jungle. At the time I was there, in late December, it was possible to arrive with no bookings and leave the next morning on a trip. So after spending the afternoon soaking up the sun in the local swimming pool, we headed off the following morning for the pampas.

This involved three hours in the back of an uncomfortable 4WD to get to the river, then another two hours or so in a wooden boat with a motor until we finally reached our camp in the jungle.

The journey to the camp wasn't all bad though, as of course we got to see plenty of wildlife on the way, including one of the highlights for me - pink dolphins! The great thing about these creatures is that they scare away all of the nasty piranhas and crocodiles so it is safe to swim with them, which we did immediately.

Day Two of the trip was spent on the river, seeking out crocodiles, howler monkeys, sloths, porcupines, manta rays, and whatever else we could find. It was amazing, we got up close to a couple of crocs, and even got to feed some cheeky little monkeys. I woke up to find that my back was completely covered in mosquito bites, literally hundreds. They had bitten me through my black t-shirt: mosquitos are attracted to dark colours. My advice is to wear all white, and cover up as much as possible.

Day Three we ditched the boat to go searching for anacondas in the swampy grasslands bordering the river - this is the real pampas. Because the water levels were high, we had to wade up to our knees in search of deadly snakes - a weird experience. Our guide was barefoot and eventually found us an anaconda by stepping on it. We all had a good look and then got the hell out of there, most of us were relieved to be back in the relative safety of the boat.
That night we went out in the boat with torches to find crocodiles - the reason behind this being that their eyes glow bright red in the dark when you shine the torch at them, it looked amazing. We also found a manta ray asleep on the surface of the water, as a bonus.

Day Four we spent some time fishing for piranhas, but because the water levels were so high we were wasting our time. Then it was time to head back to Rurrenabaque, an unpleasant, uncomfortable trip to be honest. But the pizza and beers in the local restaurant more than made up for it. All in all a fantastic trip, not something you get to see to often.

In the south of Bolivia, near the border with Chile, is an expanse of terrain known as the Salar de Uyuni. This area used to be an ocean millions of years ago, but all that is left of this is the salt. This may not sound of any interest but try to imagine miles and miles of blank white terrain in all directions, with mountains surrounding the edges, and the mountains perfectly reflected in a couple of inches of water on the surface of the salt. It's amazing: pure beauty.

To get here you must make your way either to Uyuni in the south of Bolivia, or to San Pedro de Atacama in Chile. Many travellers use this four-day trip as their crossing point between the two countries. I took a three-day trip from Uyuni southwards, and crossed into Chile from there (the fourth day of the trip is getting back to Uyuni in the 4WD). The trip cost me $65, but you can pay more. This was fine though, the food was good and our driver was an expert mechanic - just as well, as the jeeps don't last so long what with all the salt. Along with the salt plains themselves, there are many more attractions on this trip. On the first day we also visited a salt factory, some hotels made purely from salt, and an island in the midst of the salt plains that was covered in huge cactii. It even had its own resident ostrich of all things! The nights were spent in remote guesthouses along the way, which were comfortable but sparse. We were fed in each of the guesthouses too, dinner and breakfast, and our lunch was prepared each day by the driver/guide and his son.

There were also other types of terrain along with the salt plains. We passed through massive wide desert plains surrounded by huge mountains, saw lakes with waters of many different colours, thousands of pink flamingoes, wild foxes and alpaca, huge strange rock formations, bubbling lava springs and hot geysers, natural hot baths - all in all an amazing experience. Some of our group stripped to our shorts to bathe in the hot springs in sub-zero temperatures, it was great fun lying in the warm water watching everyone all wrapped up and trudging about the place! By the time we'd eaten breakfast our shorts and towels had hardened because they were starting to freeze!

This trip was another of the highlights of my time in South America. The scenery is like something from another planet at times. If you are anywhere near this area of the world, you should definitely include it in your itinerary.

We arrived into Lima, Peru on Friday evening after a pleasant 12 hour flight or so from Madrid. Our immediate aim was to get over our flight and get our asses to Cusco before the imminent rains hit, so we could do the Inca trail without drowning. It turns out we needn't have worried.

We stayed with a family in a beautiful apartment in Lima, with maid, doorman, and electric fence around the walls, where they were extremely good to us what with letting us stay there in the first place, feeding us, driving us around the city and the like. We also saw the other side of Lima, which isn't so pleasant, when we took a bus to the Northside of the filthy river that runs through Lima. Sounds a bit like Dublin!

We stand out a bit here what with the pasty whiteness and the blue eyes, one young boy was particularly taken with our blue eyes on the bus journey to the north of the city. We also had at one stage about thirty young Peruvian girls laughing and giggling and surrounding us and taking loads of photos. My companions were quite taken aback by this, but luckily I'm accustomed to this kind of behaviour.

So we left Lima in the morning for Nazca, where we flew in a tiny Cessna plane over the desert to see the Nazca lines - loads of geometrical lines and pictures carved into the sand. We didn't stay overnight, mindful of the imminent rains, and got on a bus the same evening overnight to arrive here in Arequipa this morning. Because our buses were booked by our friends in Lima, who of course speak fluent Spanish, the buses are Royal Class, which means huge seats, which tilt back fully, food served, and even an area at the front with a couch and a table!

After one night spent in Arequipa (not nearly enough), we decided to get a much cheaper bus to Cusco. So, we ended up doing a 14 hour overnighter up into the Andes on the cheapest bus possible. This was the worst bus journey I've ever taken, the bus never stopped bouncing, the road was terrible, and one of my travelling companions kept being sick out the window, much to the annoyance of the other passengers (it was pretty cold outside). Us not having much/any Spanish, it was pretty hard to explain to them that he was being sick, lots of hand motions used of course. We eventually arrived in Cusco early in the morning, feeling very much the worse for wear. We had no idea what the next two weeks would hold: illness, white-water rafting, and the incredible Inca trail. And very little rain.