Los Angeles - the end of my adventure!

I already spent a couple of days in LA earlier in my trip and I have about $100 to my name so  I have just been relaxing and finally updated my blog!


I am currently sitting out in the sun - it is so nice to be in shorts and singlets again - and trying to make the most of it before returning to winter. However, I think it will feel quite warm compared to some of the winter weather I experienced in South America!


The past 5 months have been absolutely amazing and I have so many great memories to take home. It was great to catch up with old friends and I met some amazing new people! Thanks to everyone who housed me, fed me, traveled with me, translated for me and just generally hung out with me. Each and every one of you made my trip and I hope to see you all in Australia sometime in the near future so I can repay the favour. 


I have been asked a few times about the highlight of my trip but that is a really hard question to answer. Skiing is amazing in Canada and all the states are so different in America. Central and South America is another experience again with very different cultures and landscapes. I had great expectations for Machu Picchu and the Salt Flats Tour and have been wanting to go there for a couple of years now and they definitely lived up to, if not surpassed, my expectations! So I definitely don't have an easy answer for this and you will just have to read all my blogs and look at all my pictures haha. Although I can tick some more countries off my list, this trip has also made me realise how many more places I want to go!


When people started asking me for updates I realised there was so much to write about so I decided to start this blog. I had no idea this many people would read it so I hope you have enjoyed hearing about my adventures!


That is all for now until my next adventure...

Salt Flats Tour, Bolivia

The majority of the road between La Paz and Uyuni wasn’t paved so this made for a very bumpy ride and made it hard to sleep! I arrived in Uyuni around 6:30am and someone from the agency picked me up from the bus stop but then I had to wait around in the travel agency until 10:30am when the tour started – so boring!

The Salt Flats Tour was really good and we saw some amazing landscapes over the 3 days. On my tour was an Austrian couple, a mum and son from Spain, and a French guy my age (Remi). They were all really nice but if it wasn’t for Remi I think it would have been a bit boring. It cost about $50 more for an English tour guide and the whole tour only cost me about $100 so I didn’t bother. The tour is more about the scenery but the others on the tour did some translating for me. They could all speak Spanish so I was left out of many dinner conversations. I could understand little bits but my Spanish is definitely not good enough to be able to contribute. There was even a slight argument in Spanish at one point which was a bit awkward because I could understand what it was about but couldn’t contribute.

The first day we started at the train cemetery which is just lots of old trains that have just been left to rust. Most of the day was on the salt flats and all you could see was white for thousands of kms. We took the necessary salt flats photos which was lots of fun. We also went to Isla Incahuasi which was a random island in the middle of the salt flats which was covered in cactus. The first night we stayed in a hotel which was made out of salt. Even the tables and the base of the beds were made out of salt.

The second day we saw lots of lagunas (Spanish for lagoona) and the landscape became more of a desert. We had lunch at a laguna which was really beautiful with all the flamingos. The last stop was Laguna Colorado which was coloured bright orange because of the algae. 

We got up at around 5am on the last day to make it to the geisers at an active volcanoe before sunrise. It was absolutely FREEZING and very very windy! The geisers were really cool and you could see the mud bubbling. The sun came up as we drove to the hot springs and it finally started to get a bit warmer. The hot springs were small but so nice and definitely worth braving the cold getting changed. It was amazing to see the snow capped mountains around us and for a bit of the day there was some snow on the side of the road. We also went to Laguna Verde which is very close to the border of Chile and Argentina and some of the mountains we could see were actually across the border. Unfortunately the laguna wasn’t green as the name suggests because there was too much water and ice. This was the furthest point of the tour and on the way back we stopped at some cool rock formations from volcanoes and in a small town called San Cristobal.

When we got back to Uyuni I had a couple of hours before my overnight bus to La Paz so I had dinner with Remi. The bus I got back was the tourist bus so it was a bit nicer but it was still pretty bumpy because of the road and at one point we all woke up because the bus was rocking from side to side. It felt like we were off roading but I couldn’t see anything because it was really dark. Once we were back on the paved road everyone relaxed a bit and we got some more sleep.

It was such a good tour and it was absolutely amazing being out in the middle of nowhere for 3 days surrounded by huge mountains and volcanoes!

I had one more day in La Paz before my flight back to LA to start the journey home. I finally made it to the Coca Museum and didn’t get robbed this time! The museum was really interesting and explained more about the legal and illegal uses of the Coca plant. 

I had to get up at 5:30am the next day to head to the airport to make my way to LA. Unfortunately paying the cheapest price meant changing planes 3 times and spending the whole day traveling! I was trying to spend the last of my Peruvian and Bolivian money and 7 soles a few weeks ago got me a whole meal but in the airport it gave me the choice between chewing gum or 2 packets of mentos – so sad!

 The train cemetery

 Fun on the Salt Flats

 Isla Incahuasi

 Salt Hotel

 Flamingos at the laguna

 Laguna Colorado

 Geisers 

 Hot springs

 Laguna Verde - close to the border of Chile and Argentina

Cool rock formations

La Paz, Bolivia

The bus trip was only 3.5 hours to La Paz which was nice for a change. At one point we had to get across a section of Lake Titicaca so we all got off the bus and got a boat and the buses went over on “ferries”. The so called “ferries” basically looked like rafts and looked a bit dodgy but it was funny to see buses and cars floating across the river (photo below).

We stayed at the Wild Rover Hostel in La Paz which had a bar so we had dinner and drinks there before heading out. We met an Australian couple in the bar and we headed out with them. We didn’t get back to the hostel until around 6am and unfortunately I was quite sick and was up all morning hugging the toilet. At first I thought it was a mixture of drinking and altitude but then I was way too sick for it to be that. I couldn’t keep any liquid or food down all day and just ended up sleeping most of the day. Ever since the trek most people had been sick at some point and Louise hadn’t felt great for quite a few days. Most people get sick at some point on their travels through South America because of the water and/or food. We went to bed really early and luckily the next day I was feeling much better but unfortunately Luke wasn’t. Louise and I explored the Witches Markets and we finally bought some Alpaca jumpers. I also organised my Salt Flats Tour and booked an overnight bus for the next night to Uyuni where the tour starts. Luke and Louise had more time to travel Bolivia so they decided to go to the Amazon first. Luke and Louise left around lunch time the next day to get their flight and I decided to check out the Coca Museum. Unfortunately when I was walking my wallet was stolen from my bag so I had to ring the bank to cancel my card and then didn’t feel like doing much. Luckily I only had about $20 on me and I had another debit card. My bus was at 7pm so I went to grab some early dinner and bumped into Louise and Luke again because their flight had been cancelled because there was no fuel – only in South America!

 Witches Market

Creepy stuff at the Witches Markets

Copacabana + Lake Titicaca - Bolivia

The next day we took a bus to Copacabana which is on the Bolivian side of Lake Titicaca. Copacabana was a cute little town on the lake. We explored the town a bit and walked up a hill to get a great view of the city and the lake. We sat up on the hill for awhile and just enjoyed the view. We stayed at a hostel for the night and then the next day got a boat to Isla Del Sol (Island of the Sun) which is about a 2 hour trip from Copacabana. This is the main attraction of going to Copacabana and is a pretty island with beaches on the North end and more mountainess terrain on the South end. We were dropped at the North end and had a bit of a walk around and walked around an Inca site. We then took the boat to the South end and spent the night at a hostel. The Island was quiet and not as touristy as I thought it would be. Our hostel was on the cliff and had a great view of the lake. It was so peaceful and pretty so we sat outside and enjoyed the view. There was a restaurant at our hostel and the little old lady that worked there cooked us dinner. It was pretty cold and there wasn’t much happening so we ended up in bed by 8:30pm!

It was so nice to finally have a sleep in. We got up at around 9am to get the boat back to Copacabana to get our bus at 1pm to La Paz. 

 Copacabana + Lake Titicaca

 View of Copacabana

 Isla Del Sol - North end

 Enjoying the view outside our hostel

 The view again

Our hostel on the hill

Puno + Lake Titicaca, Peru

On the bus to Puno we got stuck in a traffic jam for 2 hours because of a teachers strike. They had blocked the road and some buses had been stuck there since early in the morning. Some trucks even tried to get round it by driving across the river and got stuck. Unfortunately this meant we didn’t have much of the day left when we arrived in Puno.

Puno wasn’t a very interesting town but we were there to do a tour of the floating islands. Luke, an Australian guy we met on the trek, met us in Puno the next morning and we bought a boat ticket to Isla Los Uros, one group of the floating islands. The local boats have to wait for 10 people before they leave so we had to sit around for awhile before we could leave. The floating islands are made out of reeds and the locals showed us how they are made. It is amazing what a basic life these people lead and how much they now rely on tourism. It was a bit of a tourist trap as they tried to sell us their handicrafts and then we had to pay for a trip on one of their reed boats to one of the other islands in the area. It was really interesting though!

We then just had a bit of a lazy night because we were all really tired. 

 Puno + Lake Titicaca

 Demonstrating how they build the islands

 Reed boats

Part of Isla Los Uros