We thought the Cuestra de Lipán and the Salines Grandes were the best that this side of Salta had to offer: they were pretty spectacular, after all. We decided to visit the Pucará de Tilcara – a re-built, 12th century, pre-Incan settlement – and a village called Humahuaca thinking they'd be easy, gentle visits for our last day in the Tilcara region. We enjoyed the Pucará: it was interesting enough, although as we've been to Machu Picchu on this trip it was always going to be "just OK". Many of the buildings had been rebuilt using traditional methods: Inside you…

Since the last post, we took a daytime bus – lasting about 4 hours – from Tucumán up to Salta. This was actually quite nice, although at one point we sped past a traffic accident where I happened to look down into a burnt out car and saw the remains of the driver still in it. (Luckily I was the only one in the family who noticed this.) I admit it shook me quite a bit, especially as I get the feeling that such accidents aren't all that rare, here. And given the fact we were due to rent a…

I wasn't expecting very much from either Córdoba or Tucumán. They were originally just waypoints on the path to Salta and beyond. This is pretty much exactly what Córdoba ended up being: it's a big, fairly unexceptional (in our view, anyway) city. For sure there are things we might have visited that would have improved our view of it, but we decided not to spend an excessive amount of time trying to discover another side of Córdoba: we focused more on the kids' schoolwork and recharging our batteries after the more hectic days in Rio and Iguassu. On our first…

We've been in Argentina for most of the week, especially if you count our stay in Iguassu (where we stayed in Brazil but ended up spending most of our time in Argentina). It's probably a good time to reflect on some experiences between the two countries, before things blur even further. I enjoyed Brazil, but certainly felt we were more at risk there than in Argentina. This feeling might have been driven by horror stories friends (and the media) reported, but still – it was tangible, and I don't believe at all misplaced. Luckily nothing bad happened, but the feeling…

Our last stop in Brazil ended up being one of the trip's highlights, so far: we arrived in Iguassu on Sunday night, and stayed in a hotel on the Brazilian side of the famous Falls. (We were sure we'd asked the travel agent to book a hotel on the Argentinian side, but then it's our fault we didn't check the itinerary.) We only had one day to visit the Falls – many people take 2 days to visit both Brazilian and Argentinian sides, for comparison – and as the Argentinian side is more extensive and varied, we decided to head…

Apparently Brazil has very few extended bouts of cold, wet weather – even in their winter, which is, of course, right now – but one of them started just before our arrival. Sao Paolo had just gone 40 or so days without rain, and so many people welcomed it. Fair enough. From our side, we were hoping for better weather to discover Sao Paolo, but in the end we spent more time than expected catching up on work and schoolwork. Our Airbnb was very central – just a block from the famous Paulista Avenue. There are many, many pizzerias and…

So we made it to Brazil. After a 4:30am departure from the hotel (ouch), we took the 6:55am flight back from Cusco to Lima. We ended up having to collect our bags and recheck them onwards to Sao Paolo, as LATAM needed to issue us a new ticket after cancelling the previous leg due to our "missing" the flight from LA to Lima (this is when we were re-routed via Dallas and Miami, as you'd be forgiven for not remembering :-). The wait in Lima was a little long but not insufferably so. The flight to Sao Paolo was otherwise…

We were always expecting these few days to be special – one of the highlights of our trip – and they haven't disappointed. We didn't want to take any chances with the Peruvian leg, so we had the complete itinerary – including airport transfers and hotels – organised as part of the overall round-the-world trip. The week started well: I mentioned in passing, last time, that we had one fewer bag than expected on arrival in Lima. It took the airline a few days to sort out, but we were finally able to pick the bag up just prior to…