One the dreams that I have fulfilled recently was a trip to Mexico. The historical heritage of this country is enormous, the amount of ruins that you can see is endless so it is impossible to see everything in just a few days. For this reason you have to choose, which is what I did. After much contemplation I decided on Teotihuacan and Tulum, two very different places, far apart, from different cultures, but equally wonderful.

Teotihuacan, "City of Gods", is located 45 kilometres from Mexico City. It is an area of...

Read More…

We were in Ancud after a trip from Puerto Montt. The day was overcast and we were not really eager to continue our journey. We had rented a car and we were going to use it to recover the investment. My friend Leo and I wanted to show Gary, our English friend the largest island of Chile, called Chiloé. We set a goal of reaching Castro, the capital of the island, which we never made it, but had found some unexpected treasures along the...

Read More…

The thought of not reaching the resevoir was such a disappointing one that I knew I had to plough on. At km 11 I had a mini break-down, my legs were screaming for me to stop, my whole body in pain and I felt as though all the energy had been sucked out of me. At this point Roberto took all of the load from the back of my bike and put it on his. This greatly improved things but the exhaustion was overwhelming. At km 13 I said to Roberto, “the next truck that passes, I'm going to stop it”.

Luckily one passed us almost immediately, it stopped to pick us up and we spent...

Read More…

When I told various friends and colleagues about the trip I had planned with my boyfriend Roberto the reactions were nearly always the same: “Impossible, you won't be able to do it”, “How many kilometres??” and “To the Embalse, on your bike??” A 200km round trip, 50km of it off road and half of the trip uphill, in just 2 days; we had not chosen an easy path. However, always up for a challenge we packed our bikes with our camping gear and got ready for an early Saturday morning start.

Leaving Santiago...

Read More…

Here the large trout, which eat frogs, mice and birds, are hand caught at a depth of less than 30 cms. You just need to relax and get in tune with the fish, feel like a fish, imagine under which root, which curve in the creek, under which shadow and at what time you would feel comfortable there, hidden in the turquoise waters.

Here wild pigs or boars come close to our homes, sometimes for food, especially in late autumn and early winter, when the wild fruits of the forest are gone, and sometimes they come to mate with our sows. Here we have...

Read More…

Cooking together tomato and chicken, I attempt to make space for it among the medley of flavours that stains the moist air of Saket, a residential neighborhood in southern Delhi. I couldn't swear that the recipe is an invention of mine, but it would be too ambitious to call it "chicken cacciatore", just because it reminds me of the same dish that my nonna used to make.

Therefore, I have renamed it Saket Chicken. Life away from home also entails creativity in the kitchen. It takes a bit of what you...

Read More…

The still air carries the smell of New Delhi in the summer: The spices of the street food, the sweat of the people, the dregs of the city sneakily abandoned in every corner, with minimum discretion. The heat is relentless. Beads of sweat slide down your body a few inches before ending its brief journey at the edge of your clothes, soaking in and   darkening the color of the fabric. There is no room for silence. The rickshaws honk their horns at every metre and the engines of the old decadent Tata trucks, loaded with all kinds of...

Read More…

Late January, summer in the southern hemisphere. Heat and a single idea: Lets walk Lake General Carrera, Patagonia, the largest lake in Chile which is situated between Chile and Argentina where it is known as Lago Buenos Aires. So in the blink of an eye we are at the starting point of our adventure: the city of Coyhaique. We headed to the town of Chile Chico (Little Chile), paradoxically the largest city bordering the lake.

The microclimate is the perfect ingredient to make our journey a comfortable one where everything comes together in the General Carrera Lake National Reserve. Flora and...

Read More…

Finally the feeling was too strong and my best mate Kineret convinced me to find a guiding job in the deep south.

Tierra Patagonia is the hotel I now guide for here in Parque Nacional Torres Del Paine, a world Unesco Biosphere Reserve. This hotel is a monumental architectural feat. It is designed to blend in with the landscape it has been built on - a sparse Patagonian steppe. It was coined Hotel Del Viento by its main architect Cazu Zegers for good reason as the strong explosive winds, all the way from the southern icefield, flow right over the top of its...

Read More…

"Where are you?" asked my favourite person in the world, my uncle Mike in England. "You live near Antarctica now?" asked my friends and family down under in the land of kangaroos.

This place boasts stories of giant savages, natural wonders, dense colourful forests, deep, stunning lakes, unique untouched landscapes, rare beautiful plants and animals, huge glaciers and mountain ranges sculptured by unpredictable extreme weather conditions braved by the most inquisitive and determined explorers over centuries such as Sir Francis Drake and...

Read More…

The alarm clock rings at 3:30 AM. We are camping at San Pedro, in the Atacama Desert, the driest of the world. We wake up early in the morning for a trip of almost 100 kilometres that will take us to the Tatio Geysers, one of the highest located geothermal fields of the world. We will ascend to more than 4300 in just a couple of hours from 2300 meters above the sea level in which we find ourselves before staring the excursion. The objective is to arrive at the geysers before 6 AM, at that time the fumaroles of hot water and steam can be appreciated in its maximum...

Read More…

Apart from the natural beauty and abundant wildlife that can be found in the Torres del Paine National Park, the wind plays a crucial role here, both good and bad. The good, in this region near the end of the world, is that the weather changes all the time, when you think you will not have a chance to witness the famous granite towers (covered by clouds a lot of the time), the wind blows and removes them quickly and put these spectacular mountains before your eyes. For the bad, many of you may have heard, it was a key factor in the spread of the fire that affected part of the park last...

Read More…

A few days ago I visited one of the most beautiful and unique parts of northern Patagonia, Chile. The place I am going to write about is truly one of the most unexplored by tourists, there are no roads that lead to this place and can only be reached on foot, by horseback, by boat or flying! The latter was the method that I took to reach my destination: Lake Las Rocas.

The lake is located in southeast of Puelo, Chile, a small town that takes its name from the river that runs into the Lake Las Rocas and situated near the border with Argentina. On the lake there is a small island,...

Read More…

The classical civilisations have left important in-prints throughout Greece, Italy and the Mediterranean. The question that arises is: where today do you go to experience the world as it once was? The museums and the temples? Places such as the Acropolis in Athens do not truly reflect the atmosphere of this era. There is still a place where you can still encounter a reconnection with the past: Termessos, this is the place to visit, placed fifteen miles from Antalya in Turkey.

It is set in an area surrounded by greenery, situated on a mountain...

Read More…

The surprises of the mountains

By Aike Parvex Pichaida

In early 2010 I worked as an expedition guide and logistics commander for geothermal geologists studying geothermal energy in the Maule Region, central Chile. This area is mountainous and is
located between Vergara Paso in the north and River Melado, in the south, in the Cordillera de los Andes.

The mission of this expedition was to explore the area designated to collect information and data for research in geology and volcanoes. The idea was to take samples of radiation...

Read More…

Friends of mine had moved to Toronto, I had a holiday due and thought why not go to visit them, they had told me the city was interesting with plenty to do and during the summer with the hot days and situated on lake Ontario had the best of all worlds.
I had been in Toronto for a week and had taken in a baseball game, gone up the world tallest free standing tower the CN Tower, travelled to Algonquin Park (a vast area of forest, wild life and mosquitoes!), been to Lake Ontario which is on the shoreline of Toronto and had a day out...

Read More…

I was born in Germany, just outside of Frankfurt. My parents are Chilean, both of them are of European descent, my father's side from England, my mother Germany.
About four years before I was born they left Chile and moved to Germany looking for a better future. When I was 18 my parents decided that they would move back to Chile. I considered what was best for me at the time and thought a new adventure with them was where my future lay. Up until this point, I knew the country as I had visited on several occasions on family summer holidays. I...

Read More…

I was a child when I moved to Mexico with my family. My first memory is traveling by car and being mesmerised by the neon signs as they changed colours. Like all my memories of Mexico it is colour that is present in all of them. With my family I travelled a lot, to different places, to the coast, and into the country. What I enjoyed most was when we went camping the simplicity of setting up our tents near the home of a fisherman on a beach as there were no hotels, while his wife prepared us a delicious fish with tortillas. The fisherman took us...

Read More…

"My hair is getting messy and going frizzy", my friend said as we walked towards the Torres del Paine in the Torres del Paine National Park in Patagonia, Chile.

The wind that day in March was intense, but it was not one which pierces you to your bone. "You women are always more concerned with how you look instead of enjoying this wonderful walk", I said. Paula, who is an independent woman, did a gender defence and argued that women can do more than one thing at a time.

As I was contemplating my response to her statement,...

Read More…

I wanted to cross the Andes Mountains by coach. I felt that having flown over them on several occasions, and having seen them in different seasonal states, it was time to get a view of these majestic mountains from the ground. I knew it was risky at this time of the year the route can become frozen and impassable. But here we are in July 2012 and the temperatures this year have kept the "bioceanic corridor” clear, the route which runs from the Pacific to the Atlantic Ocean. The journey takes about 7 to 8 hours from Santiago, Chile to Mendoza,...

Read More…

In the summer of 2011, just before my 70th birthday, we went up the Norwegian coast on a ferry through the fjords and past North Cape, the most northerly point of the European mainland.  We then flew out to Svalbard where we saw a polar bear and went to 80 degrees north only 600 miles from the North pole.

Christmas was spent with our son and his family sailing to the Bay of  Islands  in New Zealand on their yacht True.  We also explored by...

Read More…

For a European, walking along the shore with the view of the Strait of Magellan it must mean that I am travelling again as my mind wanders back to the history books from school lessons. Along with the Egyptian pyramids, suddenly those places take shape in my mind and what until then was just something printed on paper. It is now fuelling the imagination of my current adventures. The explorer’s utopia becomes reality before my eyes. Time stops, and this is the feeling that pervades my entire stay in the southernmost region of the world.Read More…

During the winter in this part of the world (May to September), the influx of tourists is low, the days are short and cold, which does not mean it is closed for the adventurous. Despite low temperatures, there are many sunny days and lots of activities for you to partake in.

I had a friend visiting from France for a couple of weeks. We decided to visit the Parque Nacional Los Glaciares in Argentina's Patagonia region, a vast territory of 600,000 hectares full of ice sheets and glaciers. Within this protected area is...

Read More…

They will tell you that Dubrovnik is beautiful they will tell you that you must see it and I will tell you the same, it is not to be missed.

Perhaps the most striking feature of Dubrovnik is its old town surrounded by huge walls dating from the 14th century. On the top of the walls there is a path that can be walked and from where you get a wonderful view: the terracotta roofs of the houses contrast with the turquoise waters of the Adriatic Sea. It is a great place to take pictures of the city from different angles.

We flew in on a Sunday evening....

Read More…

When I first visited Antarctica on an Argentine supply ship in 1986, I knew little about the continent.  Mostly I imagined that it was a place where explorers had suffered and thought that it was huge, flat and boring – perhaps perked up by a penguin waddling here or there.

Imagine my surprise, then, when our ship, the Bahia Paraiso, sailed into its namesake waterway, Paradise Bay.   After several days of cruising through fog, the clouds suddenly parted to reveal a landscape of magnificent mountains rising straight...

Read More…

A blank page lays before me. A pad of paper. It is a virtual space, but the fact remains that it is, empty. An invitation: to fill it with your word, what I love, what it represents to me. It seems easy: think, write and paper becomes marked signs that reflects part of my life, which is made known to others, reviews that make up a tiny box, part of the enormous puzzle of our universe. Colouring, through words, the target of the page.

But the simplicity of the request is quickly transformed into an intrigue of thoughts, semi-philosophical reflections, in a...

Read More…

I left Poland over 10 years ago, before we joined the European Union, I had friends that had already moved over to the UK and I felt that there were more opportunities for me over there. I had the basics of English, but I worked hard to learn. I took jobs to pay my way and now I have recently finished a 3 year photography course something I do not think I could have thought about doing back then.

Every year I try to get back home to see my family and go hiking with friends. We try and get a week in the mountains hiking planning a route that includes good...

Read More…

It was January 2008. My best friend, Karla and I had decided that we needed to reconnect, having drifted apart since we had started university. We had gone our own seperate ways, catching up may be twice a month if we were lucky. From childhood we were used to seeing each other every day.

Thinking about the situation, I decided that the time was right to reunite. We planned a trip for February, some of our group of friends wanted to come; quickly the number had risen to seven. Uruguay was the chosen destination, but we decided...

Read More…

Within my close circle of friends there is an in joke  with regards to my traveling. I’m not sure where it came from, or which of them started it, but there is a phrase they use to describe my adventures – movie moments. Serendipitous moments, as another friend would say – and fortuitous past times in your life that just seem to click.

We talk about when the next movie moment will occur, when they’ll have one of their own and they like to joke that my life is full of these so called “movie moments.” I’ve finally...

Read More…

An archaeological wonder: Pompeii, Italy It is a journey that makes great day trip, if you are staying in Rome. We caught a train from the central train station to Naples a two hours trip and then switched to a local train that passes through several villages and runs parallel to the coast so you have a beautiful view of the Tyrrhenian Sea before reaching Pompeii along the 16 miles journey from Naples to Pompeii.

Before continuing, a little bit of history. In 79 AD, a catastrophic eruption of...

Read More…

My first visit to Romania was an unforgettable experience. It was a country that impressed and surprised me in many ways. I left with some great memories. Memories that I would like to share.

I think it is important to remember some of the history and origins of this nation. Romania was one of the countries behind the “Iron Curtain” which did not fare particularly well during the Soviet era. Once considered the "breadbasket of Europe" for its rich...

Read More…

I could not believe how isolated the place I was going to live was. It was 1942 when I made the decision. I had met my husband while on a holiday, in the south of Chile, we met, we maintained contact by letter, we fell in love and got married, so fast. He owned a farm in then the very isolated area of the Chilean Araucania, my decision to marry him meant I would have to leave Melipilla a small village outside of Santiago and move to an area where no one lived.

The largest hurdle was not the fact that no one lived in the area, but...

Read More…

We passed several control points to reach Confluencia. The camp is located at 3,368 metres above sea level it is the first stop for those who decide to climb the Aconcagua the highest mountain in the Andes. Rangers filled us with fatherly advice and thrilling stories of those that had tried to climb the south wall, the more challenging ascent. Then we continue towards Plaza Francia at 4,100 metres from where supposedly you can see the south face of Aconcagua, but just our luck today there is fog and wind.

Read More…

We were just teenagers, walking along the railroad tracks that passed through the countryside where I used to spend my holidays all those years ago. It was around midnight and my cousins and I were wondering what to do.

We had fun in the country, we liked to explore the forests in the area and swim in the river Maule in whose waters all of us learnt to swim. As we swam in the river we  often saw the canvas Canoes my great-uncle had made. He was a master at making them and now we preserve them as a unique treasure.

Read More…

This is my story it is about making decisions in pursuing a career, wherever it may take me. I have always had a passion for music, which has led me to where I am today.  It turns out that wherever I have found myself in the world, my guitar is with me and it has ‘played’ a pretty important role in my career.

I grew up in Lima, Peru and my musical influences came from my parents – my dad was a classical music aficionado and there were a couple of Beatles records that my mum loved. I used to play air guitar and rock out to the Beatles like I was John Lennon himself. Fast-forward a decade and the imaginary guitar became an electric guitar and I formed a band. When it started to pick up, my dad was...

Read More…

We had decided to hitchhike to Patagonia. “Here we are”, said the driver of the old bus we had taken a lift with. We were now in the vicinity of a tiny hamlet called Puyuhuapi, a cold and rainy rainforest area, very characteristic of southern Chile. We were in the middle of nowhere to more than 250 miles from the nearest city to the north and about 125 miles to the next city south, with the Argentinean border 30 miles to the east and the coast 30 miles to the west. “It is part of the adventure”, we said and started to walk with our luggage in a southerly direction with the hope to catch another vehicle. This road is desolate with some luck it is possible to find a lift.

Read More…

There are many ways to choose a holiday destination. An evening looking at 200 photos with a friend who has just returned from Madagascar could end with insomnia. However, it could lead some people to a travel agency to browse the “Exotic travels” catalog.

I know a 11 year old boy who had forced his parents to spend a Sunday  in Monteriggioni, near Siena, Italy just because his last computer game was set in that pleasant little town. The game dealt with a ghostly congregation that must save the world from who knows what danger! Technology has some unintended consequences in the minds of the young.

The more logical use a method to organise their trips: once they have visited the capitals of Europe...

Read More…

This is my journey as a photographer and traveller. I started travelling in 1978 at age of 17 I worked in a kibbutz in Israel for six months. That was when I picked up the “travelling bug”, 33 years later I have visited more than 40 countries always with my camera.

After a trip to Egypt I was enlarging some photos I had taken there. The man in the photo shop told me I should take photography seriously and advised me to start an exhibition with my photos. It did not happen as I was already preparing for my next trip.

Then I started working as a travel agent for “Nouvelles Frontieres” for four years in Holland. I truly loved it as I could talk all day about remote places. My...

Read More…

Last year I spent 12 days on an adventure tour in Mongolia. We spent these days in an ex-Russian army van driving along dirtpaths (roads don’t really exist in Mongolia) which is somewhat akin to trying to stay seated inside a washing machine.

We left the capital, Ulan Bator, and despite the discomfort of the transport one became distracted by the landscapes. Mongolia is a nomadic country. As such there are no fences; the sky and rolling hills create the horizon. One has the feeling of a giant park, seeing only horses, yaks, sheep, goats and occassionally a white round tent known as a Ger. These are the tradicional Mongolian nomadic home.

Read More…

Sometimes you find yourself in the strangest places celebrating things in the strangest ways. The previous night was New Year’s Eve 2009 and just before midnight we found ourselves in a Spanish bar and were given 12 grapes with our drinks to eat them before midnight an old Spanish tradition. The fact we were in Cambodia who knew what else lay in store for us?...

On New Year day we had all retired at a reasonable hour of about 4 o’clock. Seven of us had come from different places and different times somehow we had all made it here to Phnom Penh. We had somehow split into two groups although our departure time for our planned trip was 12 o’clock by 9 o’clock we had decided to add a little excursion...

Read More…

I sought to develop a project that would allow me to leave the big city and get closer to nature. I moved from Buenos Aires to Puerto Montt. I had two cities in mind, Bariloche and Puerto Montt, and my project was always to unite the two cities.  I felt that Puerto Montt had a lot of unexplored potential for tourism and there was space to develop my idea. So I decided to stay in Puerto Montt and use this as my base.

I visited the Valley of Puelo River, in Cochamó 60 miles east of Puerto Montt for the first time with my mother, who is French and a pioneer in the valley. She went on to live on an island called Las Bandurrias, situated in the middle of Las Rocas Lake.

Read More…

"It has been over twenty years of intense, constant travel through Chile in pursuit of extreme light. The light emerging from storms, clouds, fog, and rain. The light barely intimated by fleeting, unique, irreproducible moments.

That is the light that keeps me forever on the alert. The light that compels me to walk for hours just to lie in sometimes patient, often fretful wait. To rise in the dark after a sleepless night in a tent, taking no notice of the cold or fatigue, to wait with bated breath until that wondrous instant is caught on film.

I do not pursue great...

Read More…

I will never forget the journey that I did with my family to Puerto Madryn, in Patagonia, Argentina. Although it was a few years ago, I remember all the details, landscapes, flora and fauna, the part that really stands out was the whales. In this part of Argentina you can spot the southern right whale, whose main feature is that its body is curved. They can measure up to 16 metres long and weigh between 30 and 40 tons. Between June and December the whales come near the shore to mate and give birth, so this is the best time to make this trip.

From Puerto Madryn you have to travel around 60 miles to Puerto...

Read More…

I finished my packing. I had a lump in my throat but I was anxious about my departure. After many years of savings, applications to universities, intensive English classes, I was a few minutes away from leaving for London to do my postgraduate studies. It was always my dream to study in England and at last it was coming true. But this dream gave way to an even bigger one: to see the world, other cultures, visit other countries, meet different people from places that I never knew they existed. Probably this desire is shared by many who have lived most of our lives in the confines of South America.
 

The fascinating thing about...

Read More…

The sea was dark blue so vast and deep, the waves so wild. A feeling of fear encapsulated my whole body, but there was something I do not know what, that kept my eyes staring at those waves. The swaying of the ship that brought us to the end of the world from Italy. In the time we travelled the only way to cross the Atlantic and reach Chile was via the Strait of Magellan.

That is the memory I have of my nonna Dina (grandmother) telling us about how our family came to live in Chile. I do not think it was an easy decision to abandon their home city of Rovigo (located in the Veneto region, northern Italy) and to venture so far from home, with no idea of what they would find thousands of miles away.

I think I...

Read More…

I came back from Tanzania and it was not until yesterday I finally finished my last malaria tablets, which were destroying my stomach. It is a small sacrifice you need to endure if you want to experience the pleasure of Tanzania.

The Serengeti and Ngorongoro parks are marvellous! Serengeti means in Masai language “infinite plains” and they continue as far as the eye can see. It reminded me of Patagonia, in retrospect of vast swaths of land both sustaining life but in different ways. The Ngorongoro Park is like Eden where the Masai live with their cows and goats alongside zebras, gnus, elephants, cheetahs, leopards and lions. Surprisingly the Masai do not fear wild animals, but the animals keep their distance...

Read More…