Sara Travel Blog

I looked up a few books stores to try and find a guide book about this country – and nothing. I must admit though I didn’t check out if there was a section in the Africa books. However country books were mainly for South Africa and Kenya. Coming from Sydney from my brothers wedding weekend it was my seventh long haul flight in around 6 weeks – I was tired but am getting use to airports and long haul flights and I found myself mouthing the emergency exit demonstration. The flight was not very nice – we seemed to go through a storm – it was pretty spectacular until we hit a huge air pockets and it turned into a carnival ride when people sneak on food and drinks. Getting onto the flight to Lagos at my transit point of Dubai, two things were apparent, the Nigerians travel in numbers and love duty free…The cabins were overflowed with duty free bags, and I was confused as to who knew which bag was whose. Landing in a new country I find exciting – always. The start to the ...

I ventured into my first town in the southern countries of Africa. Cape Town what a wonderful place. A little fact that reclaimed land (that being they pumped sand from the ocean to create land) makes up most of city section of Cape Town. I travelled on my own here for a work project. The first night I went into the Waterfront which was pretty touristic but had some lovely restaurants. I was on my own, and so they put me in the best seat of the house over looking the waster, and one of the waiters would come and keep me company - how lovely. We had one of the operations guys down from Gabon who had spent many a night in Cape Town being the remotes business center so to speak. He knew the owner of the Manor I stayed in, and from the second or third night, we started off listening to the owners stories, being a well travelled man born in Canada, raised in Brasil, working in Russia in the likes of oil industries, hedge funds and then giving up that life when he met h...

The pictures of the daytrip was my introduction to the Argentinian country. The place we visited was the family farm of Nadie (the girl second of the right in the picture above) in an area of the town called Rojas. I was packed off into a car with porteños drinking mate for around 3 hours. I have a taste for mate these days but it really makes you want to go to the bathroom - a lot, and the bathrooms were few and far in between during our drive. The intention of the trip was for the guys to do some filming of a multimedia background for a dance production (coming to England!!!). It is always interesting to me to watch filiming. In particular how someone has an eye for the perfect shot or will see some detail that I know my eye would not pick up.  An important lesson learnt on this trip was the common ground shared between the Antipodeans and Latinos of a good song which must be played over and over. Inclusive of air musicians and loud singing. The country is b...

There is a very good reason why Machu Picchu was awarded one of the new 7 wonders of the world. Many people I know have been to MP either via the Inca Trail or the train and walk up to the site. It is spectacular. We spent the night before in Auga Calientes a small village at the base of the mountain, and then made our way up early the following morning. You cannot spend less than a full day in MP, there is so much to see and do. This place feels like you are on top on the world, it is so steep, and when you have a narrow path to walk on and a sheer drop it is not for the faint hearted.  We both then spent the day rummaging around the ruins. We made out way from from Cusco to Lima via bus which is also not for the nervous person. It resembled a rollercoaster ride with loads of unmade sections. One of the drivers thought he was a in the formula one, we managed to distract ourselves by taking silly videos of pretending to pan pipe on little pipes Fanny had purchases to the...

After much deliberation of our choice of route we decided to head from Lima to Arequipa. We caught a bus for 14 hours to Arequipa. The first photo uploaded on the first Arequipa section is a picture of what we drove through, which is pretty barron, and is an extension of the Atacama desert. We met a couple of friends that Fanny had travelled with previously and we decided to head on a two day trip with them to Colca Canyon, one of the world deepest caynons. 

A short flying visit into my first city in Peru.

The first picture is of Cuicachi, a crater of an active volcano. The lake is freezing so you wouldnt want to swim in it. Also of interest is there are no fish due to the chemicals that come from the volcano. The others are of Cotopaxi one of the highest active volcanos snow capped!! The actual hike itself was probably one of the hardest things I have done.We made a slow drive up to 4500m. From there there is a steep incline to 4800m to a refuge, for a short break and then made a further hike to 5000m. All in all we were walking (or in my case falling) for around two and half hours. The altitude had an effect on my balance, so the higher I went the more time I was on my bottom, to the amusement of my fellow trekkers. I was really impressed with Cotopaxi it is very beautiful volcano. Hiking at the angles we did is hard normally but combining that with an altitude of 5000m enough to make you breathless and weak at the knees and high winds with a freeze factor to have the ti...

As you can probably make out this is a very scenic place. One photo I couldnt get was of the smoking volcano that sits behind the city. The top of the volcano was covered in clouds while we were there. A couple that left later than us took a photo of it, and you could see a plume of smoke. The last eruption this one including lava was in 2002. The last I heard they had to start evacuating people again a few weeks after left there due to seismologists predicting another eruption. I went on this trip with 5 Swiss who I met at school. They was great lovers of the outdoors but also appeared to have the passion to run up mountains so to speak. We decided on a bike trip to Puyo the largest jungle town of the Oriente and 61km from Banos. Most people make it to the large waterfall which was 25km away. The 25km was spectacular cycling usually sharing the roads with buses and cars, and then veering off when a tunnel appears. This is where you see some interesting sites including a brid...

These are some more photos around Saquisili and one of Quito city itself. Cuy or guniee pig are well known food in Ecuador and Peru, but they are also used for cleansing rituals. They are considered to be a sensitive animal so when a person wants to ensure that a child does not have bad spirits surrounding them they have a ritual with a cuy. The Ecuadorians are usually superstitious as well as being religious. The photo of Quito was taken at hotel Quito which became a regular little haunt to have mojitos, which was our own cleansing ritual.