The finishing post!

This is a short final farewell post from our last stop, Buenos Aires.

After a lot of chopping and changing, we decided to give ourselves a final 'holiday' to end our travels. We arranged to stay in an apartment in Palermo (actually cheapher than a hostel!) and settled in for our final 8 days! We had no plans to do anything strenuous, which was probably a good thing because our bodies were a little tired!

On Steph's to do list was a visit to the Sunday Market in San Telmo - and she wasn't disappointed.

   

We also went on a free city tour around Buenos Aires, and although we should have brought some sunscreen, we had a great time and got to see a little bit of the city!

The President's famous Pink House...

Our last big meal out was just that...BIG!!! 

Thanks to everyone who has followed and commented on our blog over the last 6+ months. We have a great time and have enjoyed sharing our experiences with you all.

Warning - Blog may contain Spiders!

After leaving Puno, we crossed into Bolivia via Copacobana. Unfortunately, we were both a little under the weather and couldn't get to Isla del Sol, but it gave us a chance to rest and get our plans sorted for the final few weeks travelling.

We headed from Copacabana to La Paz, this is how our bus got over the water!

 Collectivos were very popular with the locals in Peru and Bolivia, here you can see one of the less crowded ones!!

 When we got to Alto La Paz we could see down onto the sprawling city below, the biggest city we had visited in a while...

Whilst in La Paz we changed our mind a number of times, but finally settled on a plan of action! After speaking to some fellow travellers, we decided to visit the Jungle! This had been one of Jons 'things to do'before we left but it hadn't looked likely. 

We booked our tour to the Chalalan Eco lodge, an eco tourism project completely run by Tacana villagers. Firstly we flew from La Paz to Rurrenabaque, this was our ride...

 After a day getting used to the change in altitude (around 3000m difference!) and a change in temperature (around 37 degrees), we set off to Chalalan. It was a 6 hour boat ride and gave us a good excuse to kick back and enjoy the wildlife.

 During our lunch break, we waded through an amazing number of butterflies!

When we arrived we were pretty impressed with our accomodation, given that it was bigger than our old flat!

This is a view over the lake that we were based around...

During our 2 days at Chalalan, we went on 2 long hikes in the day, a night hike and a night canoe ride on the lake. Here are some of our photos...

These birds were pretty large, and made a racket!

We were lucky enough to see 3 different types of monkeys during our stay. The Red Howler, Brown Capuchin and Yellow Spider monkeys, here you can see some of the Red Howlers...

Mother and Baby!

 This toad was huge!

Some of the many spiders...

A Tarantula...

 Our guide, Rigo, told us alot about the different plants and animals, and had an amazing ability to mimic the sounds of alot the creatures we came across! He showed us these cool trees, called 'walking' trees, because...they walk! They send out roots horizontally then downwards, and the tree actually moves its location untill it finds the perfect spot!

The brave explorers themselves!

This little fella hitched a ride with us on our evening canoe ride.

 We saw this Tree Boa, making its way very slowly to a bird in the tree...

 Here you can just make out the bird on the right, we returned a little later, but the snake had hardly moved, very patient!

 Soon it was time to leave, yet another highlight for us both!

The Sacred Valley and Island Hopping

Before the trek we went out for a few drinks and spoke to some ex-pats who seemed to have been sucked in by Cusco.  We didn't understand why people stayed so long there but after finishing the tour we soon realised how easy it is to stay.  We recuperated for a few days and then decided we needed to get out of Cusco otherwise we might end up staying!

We headed to Pisac in the Sacred Valley - to see more Inca ruins and also visit the famous Pisac Market.

After Pisac we headed to Ollantaytambo which involved getting on a local bus (not so comfortable as it was packed and we had our big backpacks with us) and then a taxi.  The journey was interesting because the  scenery was so beautiful but also because we experienced our first blatant example of police corruption.  Police stopped our taxi and the driver had to get out and plead with them plus pass them some money in order for us to continue (we asked the taxi driver when he got back in the car if that was normal and he said yes!).

Ollantaytambo was a really pretty little town with impressive ruins and we were lucky enough to be there for some of their independence celebrations.

After a couple of days there we headed back to Cusco and organised to do a city tour (we thought we should seeing as though we hadn't done any exploring there).

The bus journey we took to get us to Cusco initially was a nightmare so we decided to research reputable companies to get us to Puno.  We ended up doing a day tour to get us Puno - positive luxury compared with our previous experience!!

Puno isn't a very inspiring place and the only thing people go there for seems to be to get into Bolivia. We only had one day there and decided to do some island-hopping in Lake Titicaca, to the floating islands of Uros and also to Taquile.

 The experience was interesting but it was all very touristy and the islanders on Uros in particular were a little aggressive when we didn't want to buy anything from them!

Next stop Copacabana and Bolivia...