Nusa Islands

A trip to Bali should definitely include a trip to the neighbouring islands of Nusa Lembongan, Nusa Ceningan and Nusa Penida! They offer so much and have quite a different vibe from Bali with incredible cliff drop walks and remote and abandoned beaches. DAY 1 After waiting a little while at Kusamba port, we took a fast boat…

Bali

  In the run-up to our backpacking adventure I’d spoken with a few friends about our plans to travel to these incredible Indonesian islands and they didn’t have one bad thing to say about it! Of course sometimes that can backfire with expectations being too high, but not in this case, my experience of Bali…

Israel

When my friend Sophie mentioned she was going to see her parents in Israel towards the end of the year, I casually and jokingly said “Can I come?!” to which she replied, “probably, yeah”. Although my comment had an element of hopeful wishing, I hadn’t considered a likely yes but as soon as those words were…

Brazil

Finally we had come to the twentieth and final country of our 16 month world tour and by this point we were pretty shattered! Long bus journeys throughout South America had taken its toll on us and we were actually looking forward to arriving home in England for the summer. Of course we still explored…

Argentina

Argentina is a great place with lots of culture, history and beauty. At this point, our worldwide trip was winding down and with a small bank balance left, we had to be selective about how we would spend our time. We had spent a couple of weeks relaxing with family in Uruguay and so then…

Uruguay

Uruguay wasn’t a place that we travelled around that much and the main reason we went was to visit family who lived on the outskirts of Montevideo. We flew from Bolivia to Montevideo where we picked up and driven to their lovely place which was perfect for relaxing, it was Autumn season so not a…

Bolivia

Our introduction to Bolivia was a bus ride across the border with many other tourists and we managed to get through with ease. We read in our guide book that no fee needs to be payed for UK residents however once we’d left the border we were asked to pay a fee of 1 Bolivianos…

Peru

Peru was so so so incredible! It was a bit daunting crossing the border as we arrived in Piura (north Peru) late evening and wanted to get off the bus near a hostel we’d pin pointed on Liams iphone however they let all the locals off but said we had to get off at the…

Ecuador

Ecuador greeted us with rolling mountains surrounded by beautiful green countryside and I enjoyed watching the scenery go by. We breezed through the border with no problems, one of the simplest crossing we’d done, and after taking a taxi from Ipiales to Tulcan for $0.75 we then jumped onto a bus heading to Quito straight away. Seven…

Columbia

Once Liam and I had crossed the border from Venezuela, unlike the numerous bus searches from police we weren’t stopped at all and instead passed by all the army tanks which was a little daunting! We were greeted by the worst landscape, absolutely littered with plastic bags! It was very sad to see and it just…

Venezuela

Our arrival in Caracas airport was met by this lovely lady called Gladys who a friend from university, Marcela, had kindly contacted and arranged for her to collect us. Thank goodness for Marcela as we were quite nervous about our arrival in Caracas having heard and read stories of muggings such as unregistered taxis that…

California

We took our Air New Zealand flight from Auckland to Los Angeles which took about 11 hours and was pretty comfortable. I was impressed with one of the air stewards who kindly brought over a glass of Baileys which they hadn’t had earlier. When we landed in LA I was surprised at how easy it…