Category: South America

Cocora Valley, Tallest Palm Trees in the World

Location + How to get there Cocora Valley means “star of water” and is located near the city of Salento in Colombia. There are buses to Salento from Bogota and Medillin. From Bogota, you have to take a bus to Armenia (7 to 9 hrs), and...

Street Foods of South America

Street food holds a special place in the whole travel experience but is often a gamble for the faint stomached. To my surprise, most of the street food vendors I came across in South America had pretty clean set up and there was rarely anything alarming. In...

Salta and the Children of Llullaillaco

Salta is a city in the northwestern region of Argentina, known for gaucho, bustling nightlife and the Children of Llullaillaco, the most well-preserved child mummies of South America found frozen at the peak of Mount Llullaillaco.  Gaucho If a gaucho and a cowboy come face to face on...

Tupiza, A Quaint Little Town Full of Surprises

With a population of roughly 25,000, Tupiza is known as the “town where Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid met their end at the hands of the Bolivian army.” From Uyuni where the salt flats are, many travelers will select the route that goes to the Atacama...

Jungle, Rurrenabaque – Amazon Round 2!

Returned from the pampas as new wo/men who conquered the river, we get one night of rest in town to prepare for the march into the Amazon jungle the next day. We came across a hole in the wall restaurant and got ourselves more than...

Pampas, Rurrenabaque – Amazon Round 2!

Why the Amazon again, after all the mosquitoes, sweat and tears from the last trip to the Amazon, one might ask? There’s only one answer to that. Because I had some of the the best and worst times throughout this trip in the Amazon. Plus...

Border Crossing – Peru to Bolivia

To cut to the chase, here’s what one needs to do to get pass that line between Peru and Bolivia: Step 1: If you hold a US passport, be sure to have pristine US dollars of $135 or more (in case they reject any). Between...

Floating Islands on Lake Titikaka

Most often seen spelling is Titicaca but while we were there, the locals spelled it as Titikaka, so that’s what I’ll go with. In the morning we were picked up by the tour van for a two days one night trip on Lake Titikaka. The...

Most Touristy Way to Puno

Between Cusco and Puno lies an eight hour bus ride. After a day to recover from the tiresome trek to Machu Picchu, we were ready to head off into the next destination — Puno. A city known as the must stop for Lake Titikaka (Titicaca). Lake...

Up Machu Picchu and Huayna Picchu

Woke up at 4 AM to eat breakfast before we head up to the almighty Machu Picchu with our newly joined group,which consisted of Annie, me, the three California girls, one Irish couple and one Australian couple. All of them except for us, decided to...

Salkantay – Day 2 & 3

Day Dos To wake up at 4 AM is almost natural when one goes to bed at 8:30 PM. Unless you had been chugging coca tea all day and have the caffeine kick in not when you needed it, but when you sleep. With roughly...

Salkantay to Machu Picchu – Day 1

You need at least two days to acclimate, so it says on the tour brochures online and everywhere. Not true! I think I needed a week to acclimate. But two days we stayed, in Cusco, the starting point for nearly all Machu Picchu treks. Our...

Sandboarding (eating) in Lima

Traditionally, the closest sandboarding location is Ica, which is about 4 hours from Lima. However, with a bit of luck, a new area much closer to Lima now offers sandboarding as well. We found Sandride Sandboarding Lima online and booked for a day trip. It...

Lima, the City that Never Rains

After a 10 hour boat ride from Santa Rosa to Iquitos and an hour flight from Iquitos to Lima, a city that (almost) never rains. What they have instead are mists (called “la garua”) that blankets the city every morning. The roofs are flat and it...

Border crossing – Leticia, Colombia to Iquitos, Peru

Surprisingly, when I googled, I found very little information on the interweb about this topic and had to explore my options a bit all over town. A few of the local guides/travel agencies offered to make a tour out of this at the cost of...

Amazon, Monkey Island & Giant Lily Pond

Some time ago in the 1960’s when there were no wildlife restrictions, a Greek man brought a load of squirrel monkeys to an island he owned. Without predators on the island, the monkeys thrived and La Isla de los Micos (Monkey Island) was born. Today,...

Amazon, Leticia, La Frontera

The heat loving German bartender in Buga raved about this town, Leticia, and the Amazon. He gave hope and a way out for the travelers stranded a few towns from the border of Colombia due to protests and road blocks. I never considered Leticia. It...

Bogota Museums (Day 6)

I saved the museums till the very last day because I was waiting for a rainy day (never did happen, can’t complain!) Instead towards the end of my stay in Bogota, I had two muse-see museums, Botero Museum and the Gold Museum, and one collateral....

Bogota La Monserrate (Day 5)

La Monserrate is a mountain in Bogota. Sitting at  3,152 metres (10,341 ft) above sea level, it overlooks the entire city. The people of Bogota believe, if a dating couple visits Monserrate, the relationship will be cursed and will not last (personally, I think that’s a brilliant...

Bogota a Zipa (Day 3-4)

On day 3/4, I switched from the hostel ($14/night) to another reservation from Airbnb ($25/night), a bedroom in an apartment building on the eleventh floor. The view of the city from the apartment was gorgeous. The apartment is only 30 minutes from the hostel but...