Round the world

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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 […]

  • The weather wasn't great during our first few days in Paraty, but at least we were dry after the thorough soaking we received in Sao Paolo. We used the time to do a few "non-beach" tourist activities, such as renting a boat to take us around the coast, walking in the jungle and visiting a […]

  • 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 […]

  • I really thought this series was finished, but there you go. In the first part we saw a basic, embedded map and then added information windows and labels. In the most recent part we added overlay data being recorded by a tracking device to show our progress in real-time. Here's the thing: a few days […]

  • 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 […]

  • 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. […]

  • We left early on Thursday morning to get to SFO in good time for our flight. Catching BART would have been my preferred way to get there, but when I costed up the options it looked cheaper to catch an UberXL (at around $43) than to pay for 5 people at $8.90 per person (it's […]

  • It's been really great to be back in the Bay Area. My wife and I lived here from 2000 to 2003 – back when (in retrospect, although it didn't seem so at the time) it was affordable to do so – and being back here is in many ways like coming home. Old friends have […]