Justine and Dylan’s Travel Blog

Alright, have been promising this for a little while, but they’re now all up (as always on www.dylanav.com). And by “all”, I mean approx. 1900 highlights (out of approx 7000 photos so far). Hmmm. Sorry about that. I haven’t brought the number down any further because we’ve just seen a lot of stuff lately.

Note: I haven’t done ANY editing of the photos (so yes, I know there is room for improvement with quite a few of them), but I plan to at some stage pick a couple of dozen really good ones, do the usual postprocessing (levels, cropping, etc) and put them up somewhere separate. Maybe in June

Some of the (scenic) highlights of the trip so far:

→ Machu Picchu and the Inca Trail, Peru: Day 1, Day 2 (incl. Dead Woman’s Pass), Day 3 (incl. Second Pass), Day4 (incl. Sun Gate, Machu Picchu and Wayna Picchu)

→ Walking through the snow to Condoriri base camp, Cordillera Real, Bolivia

→ Looking out over the Salar de Uyuni (Uyuni salt flats) from Isla de Pescatores, Bolivia

→ Flamengoes at Laguna Colorada, Altiplano, Bolivia

→ Climbing Vulcan Lascar to 5480m, Chile

→ Refugio Frey circuit walk (incl Refugio Lynch and Cordon Catedral), Nahuel Huapi NP, Argentina

→ Laguna de los Tres, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina: Take #1 (incl. hail coming in horizontally and Piedras Blancas) and Take #2 (incl. almost perfect weather and Laguna Sucia)

→ Watching the sun rise over Cerro Fitz Roy on a perfectly clear day, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina

→ Glacier walking on Glaciar Grande at the base of Cerro Torre, Los Glaciares NP, Patagonia, Argentina

→ Valle des Frances, Torres del Paine NP, Patagonia, Chile: Take #1 (incl. hanging bridge near Campamento Italiano) and Take #2 (incl. perfect weather around the amphitheatre near Campamento Britannico)

→ Los Cuernos and Las Torres, Torres del Paine NP, Patagonia, Chile

→ Watching the sun set over Manhattan from the Rockefeller Center, New York, U.S.

Off to Japan, Nepal, China and Thailand next week. Should be good for a few more highlights

We managed to time our visit to Vancouver so that it coincided with a parade held to celebrate the Chinese New Year (completely coincidentally… we all know all our trips are organised around hiking seasons). Great little bonus as it was quite a spectacular affair with the various types of dragon costumes, colourful flags and other types of costumes on display.

Of course it did rain, but that was apparently supposed to be that way in order to give it that Canadian touch.

Well, it’s safe to say we’re no longer hot any more… Looking out of the window right now Buenos Aires seems like a very distant memory. Funny what sitting on a plane for a day or so will do to you.

Been in Vancouver a few days now and all settled in. Have eaten and drunk too much (hmmm… salmon and applewood smoked cheddar) while catching up with friends (likely to be continued over the next few days) and have used the bad weather to help us get motivated to do some homework, so all good stuff. Things still on the To Do list: shopping (some things you just can’t get in South America, I don’t care how up and coming Argentina and Chile are), organising some photos (loving the internet connection here…) and doing some research as to the next part of our trip (New York and Japan) so we can book some accommodation at some stage (might come in handy). If it stops raining we might even go do some touristy stuff!

All up a good break from our holidays so far