Christel and Joost's African and South American Adventure: 2012

A brief one night stopover in Buenos Aires and we hopped back on the plane to fly to the north of Argentina to see the Iguazu falls. We got to the small town of Puerto Iguazu on the Argentinian side where it was hot and humid. The following morning we got up early to get to the falls as they open and make the most of our time there before flying back to Buenos Aires that evening.

We started off our visit by going straight to the largest of the falls, the Garganta del Diablo (the Devil's Throat). A train ride and a walk through the beautiful tropical forest, over the river at the top of the falls, and we slowly start to feel the spray of the falls on our faces as we get closer. The viewing point for the falls was amazing and with every gust of wind you get quite soaked.

We then took a long walk around the lower route of the falls, which took us to the launch point for our nautical adventure. This consisted of putting most of our clothes in a water proof bag, wearing bright orange life vests, taking a seat on the boat and then getting super soaked by the falls as we were rode right under them! What a blast! Luckily it was a hot day so we managed to dry off in the sun...eventually.

Overall, a fun day out seeing some of the most magnificent falls in the world!

We came back from the Galapagos Islands amazed by what we'd seen and experienced, and struggled to come to terms with being on land again with our sealegs ensuring we swayed back and forth for the first 24 hours.

We had hoped to have spent a couple of days in the Amazon, but had been unable to finalise the trip before we left for the Galapagos, so in the end we used our time in Quito to apply for jobs, see more of the town, and cycle down the Cotopaxi volcano. Cotopaxi is one of the highest active volcanoes in the world and forms part of the Pacific Ring of Fire that surrounds the capital. We went with a tour company called the Biking Dutchman, appropriate, and made our way up the volcano to the parking lot at 4,500 metres where we strapped on our helmets and gloves and hopped on our bikes.

It was close to freezing at that altitude, and with an ice cold wind coming down the top of the volcano whilst we were making our way round the hairpin bends, it wasn't the most pleasant of bike rides. Further down it didn't improve much, and the third person that was doing the bike ride with us fell down hard in one of the bend. Even when we got down the steep mountain paths, the trails remained very slippery and filled with rocks. We stopped halfway down for a lovely home-made lunch, the highlight of the trip, and continued cycling until we reached the end point from where we jumped in the pick-up for the drive back to Quito.

That evening we met up with Nancy and Brad, our new American friends from the Galapagos trip, for dinner at Astrid y Gaston, a restaurant that provided us with a mighty fine dining experience (including some fried guinnea pig).

The next day we had a couple of hours to kill before our flight, so we made a brief trip to the Equator where we attempted to balance an egg on a nail, tried to walk straight along the Equator Line (failing miserably), and were shown the way water flowed down a drain on either side and directly on the line. All very impressive.