The Final Blog

We are closing in on a year since we brought our trip to a close and in that time, the world has changed entirely. Three years ago we knew that our decision to pack everything in and head off around the world was a relatively unusual one, certainly none of our friends were doing it. …

A whip around the Scottish Borders

Given how long it's been since our last post you could be forgiven for believing that we had, on the spur of the moment, decided to settle permanently in Edinburgh. We did not. Honestly, we've just been a bit crap at writing, but our story isn't quite finished yet. As we drove away from Edinburgh, …

A quick jaunt to Edinburgh

Our long, soggy drive culminated in a night in Dunfermline. We found ourselves in a truly lovely guesthouse which was about 1000 times nicer than anything that we would have found in Edinburgh for the same price. We achieved the makings of a carpet picnic, did some more life admin (job hunting, sigh) and then …

Wrapping up the NC500

We were due for a stomp. We’d heard that Sandwood Bay has the most gorgeous beach, which is a big claim in Northern Scotland, and that you can only reach it on foot, so it was an obvious choice for a leg stretch. We’d glanced over the reference in Lonely Planet, registered something about 4km …

Setting off on the NC500

After a far more successful collapse of camp we set off on our first day on the North Coast 500 route. According to the blogosphere, this hasn’t yet become massively popular, but we encountered a fairly hefty number of campervans on our way around so if you haven’t been before, go now. We did the …

Caro’s first ever trip to Scotland

We’d bought the books and skimmed the blogs but, true to form, we’d done very little research on Scotland before we set off from Suffolk for what was likely to be one of the last times. We had no idea what we were doing, to the extent that both of us were under the impression …

Saying adios to South America – Salta and its surroudings

We arrived in Salta slightly sad that we had completed our last long-distance bus journey of our trip, the 46th in fact (James loves a list). Fortunately, we’d been accosted by a herd of goats whilst we waited at the border between Chile and Argentina, so that made it a bit special. We’d decided that …

Trying not to get robbed blind in San Pedro de Atacama

We’ve said it before: San Pedro de Atacama is bastard expensive. Even if you do things on a budget: self-guided, no tours, make your own food, etc. it’s impossible not to spend a good chunk of money. We even held off on doing laundry for 3 days because it was bound to be cheaper once …

Journeying across the Salt Flats

There is absolutely nothing to recommend Uyuni other than its proximity to the salt flats. Many people walk straight off the plane and on to their salt flats tour and the rest stay for one night before heading out again. We could easily appreciate why; it isn’t the prettiest of places. Nonetheless, we actually stayed …

Me Tarzan, you Sweaty – Madidi National Park

We were determined to shoehorn a visit to the Amazon into our plans somehow, it seemed crazy to come all the way to South America and not visit this most vivid, vibrant and bio-diverse of places. We had thought initially that it would take quite a lot of effort but it turned out that visiting …