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

The first is the place where our friends who we have been staying with live. Not far from where I was born and lived for 18 years, it’s always interesting coming back here (especially after a previous post where I just mentioned how I now feel like I’m coming home – but not quite – when visiting London or Melbourne… seem to have collected a few “homes” around this planet…). Again it’s been great catching up with friends and a good chance to catch up with some homework (didn’t quite get around to organising that whole second leg of our journey around Japan, Nepal, China and Thailand before we left). I imagine it won’t be too long before we’ll be sorely missing knowing some good friends and being in countries where we speak the langugage and know where everything is. Oh well, plenty of that in Melbourne coming up.

The second place is a place not far from where we’re staying: to add a little touristy flavour to our otherwise social agenda, we went to a reconstructed fortress village called Bourtange. Not sure how to describe it really, it’s not exactly a fortress, but far more protected (with moats, drawbridges, etc) than your average village (was in 1742 anyway). Not a bad day out, but I’ve decided it’s definitely more interesting from the sky than it is at ground level: check out the google map from the Vesting Bourtange homepage.

Oh, and did I mention all the food? Gotta love stamppot met rookworst, snert, stroopwafels, pannekoeken (at Het Pannekoekschip of course), koek, Jonge Goudse, Fries suikerbrood, etc. Me thinks it’s time to go for another hike… soon.