Category:Essays
After a great five days in Cusco, I headed a little further south to Arequipa, the capital of Peru for a brief period in the mid 19th century, and still regarded by many of its inhabitants as the country’s cultural centre. Being the birthplace of Mario Vargas Llosa, winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2010, helps to re-inforce their gleeful claim to moral and cultural superiority over the coastal den of iniquity that is Lima. I found myself staying at a […]
I arrived in Cusco before sunrise aboard the Bolivia Hop bus, having left La Paz almost 24hrs earlier. The journey had been broken up by spending half a day checking out Lake Titicaca so I wasn’t feeling too spaced out when my feet touched the ground in Cusco. Bolivia Hop, the same people who run Peru Hop, organise taxis to get everyone to their arranged accommodation when you arrive in town and I was amused when my taxi whisked me off up the […]
Intro When doing a tour of the Salar de Uyuni, the salt flats themselves are only a small part of what you get to see when you visit this spectacular corner of the world. I’d heard a lot of good things about the amazing landscapes up in this part of the Bolivian altiplano but it is only when you experience the variety unfolding before you that you start to get a clearer picture. As a commercial photographer, I have travelled to many beautiful locations and this experience has got to […]
Tupiza may not be the most happening town, nor the most obvious starting place for a tour to the Salar de Uyuni (that would be the actual town of Uyuni), but I had met enough people on my travels who said that Tupiza was the place to go to if you wanted a more pleasant experience. Apparently, the attitude from the majority of tour operators in Uyuni leaves a lot to be desired and Tupiza has not yet developed that weary hard edge […]
Salta was my last stop in Argentina before continuing my northwards journey into Bolivia. The featured image above is a close-up detail of a pavement; like Salta, there may be a few cracks around the edges but that does not diminish the beauty at its colonial heart. I only spent two nights here and enjoyed my walks around the town, with Plaza 9 de Julio as its touristy centre and Av. San Martín as its more local based hub. Balcarce seems to be the go-to street for […]
When I was down in Bariloche, fellow photographer Eliezer Gonzalez was staying in the same AirBnB as me and we got on so well that he invited me to stay with him at his place in Córdoba, if I ever headed that way. I took him up on his offer and arrived at the bus terminal very early one morning, after almost 12 hours on an overnight journey from Mendoza. It still surprises me how huge a country Argentina is. Luckily, the overnight buses are a […]
First of all, the bus journey from Santiago to Mendoza takes you through some impressive landscapes so try and get a seat upstairs near the front so you can take it all in; it’s well worth the effort of booking and reserving a day or two in advance (unlike yours truly, the last minute specialist). I’d arranged my accommodation, also at the last minute, through AirBnB and was lucky that Carolina, the host, and her parents, Camila and Enrique (whose apartment shares the same […]
My first visit to Santiago was when I was fifteen years old, on a family ski trip to the resorts of La Parva and then Portillo. Good skiing, great après-ski, amazing views, incredibly strong sun at that altitude that I remember burnt my exposed neck worse than I’ve ever been burnt before (imagine an oozing turtle-neck skin!), it was a good time to be an irresponsible teen. My visit this time was a little less exclusive, arriving bleary eyed on the […]
The Boat and the Border From Bariloche, I hopped on a boat and crossed the border into Chile, heading for Puerto Varas. Having read a few reviews before undertaking this leg of the journey, I would like to point out that the boat rides themselves, with the necessary bus intermissions to join up the lakes, are not that particularly impressive or luxurious – they do the job, nothing special. It is what nature throws up in front of you that takes the […]
After the spectacular scenery of Patagonia, I took a bus back from El Chaltén to the airport at El Calafate and flew up to Bariloche, or San Carlos de Bariloche, to give it its full title. This was going to be my last flight for a while, until I reached Peru in fact, but I had decided when back in Helsinki that it would take too much of my time to bus that far down into Patagonia and then back […]
