Beneath the belly of the 20-person aircraft, the verdant jungle foliage of Madidi National Park, Bolivia scrambles to extract itself from a chaotic knot of dense branches, and indistinct clouds of crimson wings suggest macaws in flight through lofty treetops. Low mountains occasionally sprout from the landscape, but the miles of dense green are repetitive […]
El Dia De Los Peatones: The Day La Paz Fell Silent
One Sunday, I woke to the strangest of sounds. From my hostel bed on a busy street in La Paz, I was normally jolted awake by the blaring chaos of the city: cars beep a relentless tune as they narrowly skirt around one another, avoiding multiple potential collisions every second. Each morning at 6 am, […]
Cerro Rico: Inside the Mountain That Eats Men
With your eyes open and the light of the torches extinguished, you find yourself surrounded by the darkest shade of black that you have ever experienced. You could be anywhere, but the sharpness of this smothering darkness makes you conscious that this is definitely not the colour of night time, nor any other darkness that […]
5 Unmissable Places Around The Globe To Watch the Sunrise
*This is a guest post from my mum, Jane Dyson! In these days of electricity and instant light available at all times, it’s difficult to imagine how frightening the night could be for our distant ancestors. Watching the sun rise takes us back to that early reassurance that day would follow night, as well as […]
“Ya”. Hitchiking in Bolivia and a Patient Appreciation of Time
‘Ya’ in South American Spanish is a subtle, fluid word. The fact that it’s linked to time – a concept even more difficult to pin down in this continent than anywhere else I’ve travelled – makes it more problematic. “Ya viene,” she insisted for the third time; a savage nod of her head and her […]
What’s It Really Like Travelling Alone in Bolivia?
This article was initially published on my very first blog in January 2015 when I was living in Bolivia. When you decide to give up everything that you know as your life and substitute it for a rucksack full of essentials and a one-way ticket to the other side of the world where you’ll be travelling […]
Travel Serendipity and Hitchhiking in Chile
I’ve always been a little afraid of hitchhiking. Perhaps it was a childhood raised on horror films; nowhere else is it so strongly affirmed that the only people who stop to pick up hitchhikers are murderers and psychopaths. Hitchhiking in Chile seemed like a recipe for disaster. But there I was, thumb out to the […]
Why I’d Rather Be Sandboarding in Huacachina
This is a guest post from my friend Heather from Free-Spirited Foreigner about her experiences of grabbing her fears by the ankles and sliding down an epic mountain of sand on her stomach when sandboarding in Huacachina. Check out her other adventures around South America and the world on her blog, The Free-Spirited Foreigner. The calmness of […]
Earthquakes on the Toilet and Other Lessons in Normality
Sat on the toilet the other day, I experienced my first ever Chilean earthquake. I’ll admit that my initial concern when the toilet bowl beneath my bare bottom started shaking was more about the weight I’ve been putting on lately. Quickly, this turned to a different type of alarm when the shaking continued, despite being […]
South America Without A Plan: Meet Ash
An avid adventurer, once owner of incredible, luscious locks, and a real inspiration to me, I met Ash back in late 2014, soon after first arriving into Sucre, Bolivia. I didn’t know this at the time, but his journey had already been fairly incredible. 20 months previously, he’d arrived in South America without a plan. Instead, […]
