Baja to Bali

Our Christmas trip with Ed, Jan and Tom continues. We spend Christmas day in a lovely AirBnB in Medellin, before heading to Guatape. Then its back to Bogota so these guys can catch their flight home. It was a bit of a whistle-stop tour of Colombia, but I hope they got a good sense of the country and above all, I really hope they enjoyed it.

Its lovely having Ed, Jan & Tom to visit us for Xmas. In the first part of their trip we spend a few days in Bogota before heading to the Amazon.

We end our time in Chile in Santiago, with a short side trip to Valparaiso, Chile's 3rd largest city, characterised by its bohemian atmosphere, and waning port. Mostly though, we spend our time wandering through the leafy streets and parks in Santiago, with, of course, frequent stops for liquid refreshment in its many cafes and bars.

We cross the border from Ushuaia in southern Argentina into Chile, and then make our way up through the Chilean Lake District to Santiago. The scenery is pretty outstanding, very lush green, and full of volcanoes and lakes., so we enjoy the opportunity to do plenty of hiking in the national parks.

We visit Puerto Madryn, Bariloche and Ushuaia in the Argentine part of Patagonia. All are very different - Puerto Madryn, on the Atlantic, is full of marine wildlife; Bariloche is set on the edge of a huge lake surrounded by mountains; and Ushuaia is in the far south of Argentina, not far from Antarctica. All three are great spots for hiking.

John's stay with us in Argentina continues with trips to Patagonia and Uruguay, as well as enjoying some more time in Buenos Aires. It was a super fun month, I feel like we did absolutely loads, and we both really enjoying having John to stay.

John has come to Buenos Aires to visit us, so we show him around the city. In this video, we cover his first couple of weeks here. There is lots of eating & drinking, but we also take in a polo match, a classical music concert and visit all the top sites in the city. We also take a couple of trips - to the Iguazu falls on the Brazil/Paraguay/Argentina border and another to the Mendoza wine region. Enjoy :)

We take the ferry from Buenos Aires to Montevideo, Uruguay for a short road trip along the east coast towards Brazil and back through the interior. Its a very easy country to travel in, and the coast is stunning. My personal highlight was seeing the colony of sea lions at Cabo Polonio.