Rare Adventures

Tag: adventure

A crazy night in Huacachina

Some memorable nights come about after a well laid plan, and others come about spontaneously, and after 4 hours overdosing on adrenaline I was ready for a beer or two and whatever would follow.

The scene was set when we settled in the bar overlooking the oasis, with our Scottish chums Dawn and Reg from the dune buggy. The first beer arrived and was gone in a flash, on to the next one and Dawn started to tell us about an obnoxious, misogynous chap called Dave who was from London, he had clearly got up her nose but apart from that we were getting along just fine with tales of mountain biking and then time for another beer.

Suddenly, the atmosphere changed, Dawn started hissing and then said, “there he Is, Dave from London”, as a chap walked along the balcony and took up a seat near us. To our disbelief, it was “John from Raynes Park”, or Dogbite John as we were calling him. Admittedly he seemed to have his faults but there were daggers looks flying between Dawn and John. This which was a bit awkward as he moved over to talk to us, I decided it was time to have another beer and focus on mountain biking with Reg.

Wooksie pointed out there must be a mistake, as he was called John not Dave, but Dawn had made her mind up and put up the barriers. So, we drank up and headed on to the next big event, the BBQ, which involved lots of lovely foot and lots of Pisco Sours, this evening was really beginning to escalate.

Then our Scouser chums Helen and Glenn appeared and joined in the evolving party spirit that was driven by adrenaline overdoses, free beer and now a bottomless jug of Pisco Sours, along with some young people who thought we were younger than we were.

Poor old John was excluded from the fun, so my wife Wooksie, being a truly lovely person went over and kept John company, Dawn continued her hate session and I got to know the young people as we;; as Glenn and Helen.

When the free beer and Pisco Sours ran out, most people of a certain age retire to bed. So we bid farewell to Dawn and Reg from Scotland along with Dog bite John and I decided to test the water with our new Scouser chums about going on to a later bar.

To be fair, they took no persuading at all so we headed to the infamous “Wild Rover” bar. our coach was due to leave at 6am, but 1 more drink wasn’t going to hurt us, what was the worst thing that could happen anyway (there was the problem right there, that is my out of control mantra).

Wild Rover bar

When we entered the bar there was some strange formalities, like I had to prove my age and my identify, which took at bit of time but it was immediately obvious that this place was built for fun and young party people, and luckily for them we had arrived!

Things started quite slowly with a bit too much Abba for my liking but the young people seemed to be enjoying themselves so I put up with the music and joined in. The more we talked (or by now shouted) at Glenn and Helen the more we realised we had loads in common and the night accelerated even further when we discovered that a jug of Pisco Sour was an amazingly good investment, so we bought two jugs just in case they ran out of jugs.

Wooksie was now picking up a head of steam as well, normally she is quite reserved but clearly the company of Helen was encouraging her, then Bettina from the dune buggy arrived and things seemed to take off even further.

An unfortunate incident was thankfully avoided. Wooksie, who was happily dancing to the music and singing along when she headed to what she thought was the dance floor. Thankfully someone noticed that the aforesaid dancefloor was actually a swimming pool and disaster was avoided when she was ushered in another direction.

Meanwhile, the DJ had now decided to insert some karaoke into the evening mix and there were now young people on stage singing along to the tracks. Glenn and I were moving closer and closer to the stage as we were singing along with increasing enthusiasm and picking up momentum, After “Blue Monday”, Joy Division was just too much for us to take, we couldn’t control ourselves any longer, grabbed the mikes and gave the young people a great version of “Love will tear us apart”, to be honest we didn’t need the microphones.

At this point, we noticed a disturbance at the bar, to our amazement one of the bar staff was now walking along the bar pouring free tequila down punters throats. It was just like the scene from Coyote Ugly, amazingly I’d always wanted to do that. The young people were a bit tentative in their indulgence so Glenn and I hustled our way to the front to have copious amounts of tequila poured down our throats whilst Wooksie looked upon with horror.

By 3am, the best of the evening had been had, then we remembered that we had a bus to catch in 3 hours, it had completely slipped our memory, Wooksie was having a lovely time with the cool people near the bar, Glenn and I were still telling stories and becoming friends for life.

Turning the music off didn’t quell our enthusiasm and eventually we were politely ushered from the establishment and sent on our way home. We wandered the streets wondering where we lived and eventually, we found our hotel and got our heads down by 4am.

Breakfast started at 530am and unfortunately it turned out the kitchen was right beside our bedroom, and the preparation started at 5am. So our was curtailed after about an hour by the sound of clanking pans.

It’s always amazed me how much damage one hour’s sleep can be to your physical state, I went to bed at 4am very happy and when I was awoken at 5am to the sound of banging pots, I felt like a dead rat had crawled into my head, farted a lot, had thrown up before dying on my tongue.

At 5.45 we gathered all our gear together, grabbed a drink and some fruit and headed for the rendezvous for the coach to see the Nazca lines, which was only 4 hours away in a minibus.

Dawn and Reg were waiting for us, with big smiles on their faces and were happy to share what a great nights sleep they had enjoyed and asked us how our night had gone.

I think our eyes told the story, but it was time to head on to one of our big events of the holiday, the Nazca lines.

06/01/2026
Rediscovering Freedom: Our Adventure to Peru

As the last offspring left the nest, it was time to enjoy our new freedom and start travelling to far flung lands again.

23 years earlier we had completed our last pre kids adventure trekking and rafting in Nepal, Next on our list was the Inca Trail in Peru, but fate intervened and child number one was on the way, and that trip was put on ice.

The last of our offsprings was heading to university so we decided it was time for us to get back on the road again. Now that we had our freedom back the destination was easy, Peru here we come.

After some research, which included the BBC TV series “Race across the World“, we came up with an itinerary. Contacted a few trekking agencies and settled on Alpaca Expeditions tours out of Cusco, there was a 6 week lead so by mid-August we were booked up and ready for the off in late September.

It was at this moment that I had a closer look at the Inca Trekking route and discovered it was VERY steep and at high altitude. This hadn’t really registered 23 years ago, so every weekend we were out doing at least 20km walks up and down any hills we could find around Bristol, with plenty in Wales and in the Mendips.

Our training culminated in a trek up Mt Snowden, the highest mountain in the UK, we dropped our youngest off at Liverpool University, gave him a hug and a wave, and headed off to north Wales for the trek armed with all our new gear and our cockapoo Tess for company.

The trek up Snowden was roughly the same as the toughest day on the Inca Trail but without the altitude. It was quite tough but manageable, even Tess the Dog started to look a bit tired on the way back down.

We headed for our hotel, had a nice meal and went to bed. At this point things took an unexpected turn, I woke up in the night in agony, it later transpired that I had trapped a nerve in my back, probably on the steep decline at the end, and not to be left out, Tess the Dog threw up in the hotel room, probably a bit of exhaustion.

So, the last few days before departure to Peru were spent in the physio going through untold pain with the manipulation, followed by sleepless nights, and more pain.

It was difficult to know the true source of the pain, was it my back or was it the physio. By the time we headed to the airport my walking had improved from a shuffle to a limp but still not a lot of hope for climbing a mountain, but we had a couple of weeks in Peru before the trek so there was hope.

We flew to Lima via Madrid with Air Europe airlines, which seemed to be quite a new low cost airline and they were very good. We upgraded to business class to give my back a chance and by some freaky miracle, lying a bit awkward on the flatbed seemed to do my back the world of good, though it is never fun arriving in a county at 2.30am.

We had 3 days allocated to Lima to recover and look around and it was probably more than we needed. Thanks to Business Class we didn’t need the recovery day and were up and walking around by mid-morning.

Lima is a typical third world capital city, heavily congested with clapped out vehicles, mad people on motorbikes and packed buses, all the guidebooks send tourists to Miraflores as the epicentre of fun, and to be honest it was quite a nice place to chill out on the first afternoon.

There are lots of restaurants and you can generally get buy speaking English, there are Irish bars and wandering bands of minstrels playing Peruvian music, and you will be faced by your first deep fried guinea pig which is a bit disturbing.

After an hour or so sitting around it was time to test my back a bit more and do some more exploring and we discovered a very spectacular waterfront. Lima is built on a cliff top overlooking the Pacific Ocean, so technically this was our first glimpse of the South Pacific.

The lower level has the motorway running beside it but there was a pier with a loverly bar overlooking the rocky beach and the local surfers enjoying the waves, I noted their thick wetsuits from bar and decided the water was no place for a bloke with a bad back.

We headed back to Miraflores to test the Peruvian food for dinner and a pint in the Irish Bar before heading back for a good night’s kip. Next day we were beginning to regret having an extra day in Lima, then we decided to take a tour bus to fill the day up and see the city. This turned out to be a very good idea, as there was a lot of good stuff to see and the bus was really the only way to see it.

The city is spread out but we discovered that the muddy hill behind our hotel was actually an ancient pyramid that had only been discovered 25 years ago, up to that moment the local kids had used it for dirt bike riding.

The tour took us around to the main square of government builds which was very attractive, and over the coming weeks we discovered that pretty every city in Peru had one of these. Our fist ancient monetary and some sites of some bad moments between the people and their government which litters their history.

So that was our trip to Lima, a good start but now the real fun begins.

29/12/2025
Best tours from Bariloche
After a day in Bariloche it is time to explore

Following on from my summary of Bariloche, it was quickly time to move on and explore the amazing scenery in the area. After a bit of research we chose 3 tours to cover while we were there.

We chose to go on the Spanish speaking tours as they were much cheaper, clearly a European surcharge going on. In our experiences the tour is fine without the commentary, it mainly focuses on local species and trees, which I for one, can do with out.
- Cicruito Chico
- Tronodor peak and glacier
- 7 lakes road to San Martens de la Andes
Here is a quick summary of our experience.

Circuito Chico

Our first tour in Spanish, when we boarded the minibus, I did my Spanish Good Afternoon and stated– Yo no hablo Espanol – we could not speak Spanish.

It quickly became apparent that we were not the only English speakers on the bus, a few Americans and Europeans. After a few minutes, the tour guide asked if anyone on the bus spoke SPANISH, only 3 people put their hands up. At this point there was lots of laughter and a good, humoured guide explained she only had a few words of English but would do her best, and she did, and we had lots of fun teaching her.

One of the main attractions is a tour of the local lakes. This was only a half day tour but took us to some spectacular locations with stunning views. After visiting Norway earlier this year we had seen some spectacular scenery, but this was probably better.

First view involved a chair lift to the top of peak where we could get a full panoramic view of the region, the scenery is awesome speaks for itself in the photos. We ended up on viewing platform that provided for a 360 degree of the Lago Nahuel Huapi national park.

We then went on a road tour of the shoreline, with numerous little lake side beaches, ferry port and a final look out with a view back along the lake.

This was a really great tour, it was only 4 hours but we seemed to see so much of the landscape that it is probably all you need to get a feel for the Lago Nahuel Huapi national park.

This tour is an absolute must do tour – it is stunning and cheap

Tronodor Glacier

The second trip of our visit was to the Tronodor peak in the national park. This is the highest peak in the region and is an extinct volcano. The images are spectacular so we thought we should try it out.

We booked the Spanish speaking trip again, but things were a bit different this time. All the passengers were Argentinians speaking Spanish, and the guide knew no English whatsoever. Our theory that it wouldn’t matter if we didn’t have a commentary turned out to be solid, my little bit of Spanish helped to understand that the commentary was all about plants and nature so we didn’t miss much as it was just one huge pine forest.

It was an incredibly long day, 10 hours in total on a packed minibus is hard work anyway, but as 90% of it was on rough mountain tracks to get to the waterfall and peaks made it that much harder.

The first stop was the beautiful Cascada Los Alerces waterfall. We arrived after a couple of hours bouncing our way along the tracks so the walk to the falls was really welcomed. There was a really cool boardwalk built through the forest that enabled people like us to see the splendour of the beautiful falls.

We then headed off to the Ventisquero Negro glacier, which hangs off the side of the Tronodor peak. The stop off for lunch was a bit of a disaster as the café didn’t take credit cards, so we sat around dreaming of food and grateful we pocketed a couple of pastries from the breakfast bar.

Eventually we arrived at the car park for the glacier and headed off to experience the views. The benefit of being in the mountains during spring is that as the weather warms up the high level snow starts to crack on glaciers, as was the case here.

On a clear day I am sure that the scenery would have been more spectacular, but on a cloudy day we missed that, and once you have seen one lake you have probably seen them all, so

While we stood and watched in awe at the size of the mountain and the distant glacier. We heard those telltale booms that tell us that the snow is breaking high up on the mountain and hoping that we would see an avalanche of snow coming off the ridge, luckily on this occasion we saw some snow flurries rolling down the gully.

After an hour spent in this placid location it was time to head back onto the minibus and the 2 hour journey on tracks back to the entrance to the park, and the luxury of tarmacked roads!

On reflection and bearing in mind that we are heading towards South Patagonia and the Glacier National Park, maybe we didn’t need to go through the trauma of all those hours on the minibus to see the glacier, as there was very little else to see as we travelled through the miles of pine forests. However, the waterfall was fabulous, and we have seen the best of the Bariloche region.

If you have never seen a glacier then this is a must do, if you can cope with 8 hours on a minibus on rocky roads

7 lakes road to St Martens de la Andes

This was a our last trip so we were getting a bit saddle sore in minibuses by now, so it was nice to have a coach. The journey from Bariloche was interesting and worthwhile.

This was another Spanish speaking trip but the guide, Stella, was great and worked really hard to explain to us in English what was going on. She had a huge passion for the vegetation and history that fired here enthusiasm.

As you head out of Bariloche you realise that the scenery is basically scrubland and desert and the road is dead straight, in fact, the Romans would have been very proud of it.

In a distance of about 10 miles along the lake, the climate changes from huge levels of rainfall with ski slopes into desert scrub and hardly any vegetation, no trees, nothing.

The early part of the drive around the lake was through the scrubland but as the altitude rose so did the vegetation. As moved through the lakes the dense forest from the Tronodor trip reappeared and made for spectacular scenery, if only the low cloud wasn’t blocking off the peaks.

After 4 hours of checking out numerous lakes we arrived in St Martens Andes at which point I was hugely relieved that I was only doing a daytrip. It was a rather dull modern lakeside town which nothing of interest to do other than eat lunch and walk back to the bus station. There were no walks or anything, but as luck would have it, the rain poured down so we just had a little wander and got back on the bus.

A must do if you like looking at lakes, I might have overdosed

I

Storm over Bariloche

That is a summary of our trips from Bariloche. As someone who spends a lot of time in the Alps snowboarding and mountain biking, the waow factor of Patagonia wore off pretty quickly and I’m happy to be moving on to El Calafete and the rest of the trip.
11/11/2025
Rio – first impressions

We all have a view of what to expect in Rio, but is it really like that?

First stage of our South American adventure is a little stopover in Rio de Janeiro. It is a vast city, so the first challenge is where to stay.

To be honest that one is easy thanks to Barry Manilow singing about the Copacabana Beach all those years ago, so we headed there, which is the main tourist zone, but also has a big contingent of locals at the weekend enjoying their city.

We did a really good city tour which I will blog separately, these were my first impressions of a city that I had wanted to visit all my life.https://rareadventures.uk/2025/11/04/rio-in-a-day/

The beaches

The famous beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema are right next door to each other, are both 4.5km long and only separated by a small headland. Ipanema is golden sand whilst on Copacabana there is white sugary sand and both make for great walks to enjoy the beach life.

There is something incredibly exciting about making it to these world famous beaches but in truth, they are similar to any Spanish costa, with high rise apartments on one side, and endless beach side cafes to sit and enjoy a coffee, beer or cocktail. They are famous for the beach football, volleyball and surfing and there is plenty of each, but the surfing is a bit overrated to be honest, I didn’t bother going in it was that average.

The city environment

Rio itself is not a beautiful city. It is set amongst steep, jungle covered mountains which give it a natural green beauty, but the human contribution has turned the valleys and plains into a concrete jungle of old concrete high rise buildings that have had no sympathy for the colonial history and generally overwhelm the older buildings. Probably the highlight of this is the modern Catholic cathedral, it would be hard to find an uglier building.

The massive natural harbour is one of the wonders of the world and as you move around the city there are numerous beaches in each of the suburbs. Having done a tour of the city, I can’t think of any reason why anyone would want to stay anywhere other than on one of the famous beaches, or near it if your budget is a bit tight. It is a very busy city, with traffic jams everywhere and I can’t imagine having much fun in the other suburbs.

The Weather

A big surprise was the weather, when we were doing our checks, it was consistently sunny and 30c. Our first day was overcast and turned into heavy rain, thunder and lightning, second day lots more rain and thick fog, third day we had clear blue sky and sunshine, so we have 4 seasons in 3 days, the only thing we didn’t get was snow. I guess there is a reason why the whole area is jungle, it gets lots of rain!

Luckily, we scheduled our city tour on the wettest day, but in hindsight this was probably a bit of luck, as we were able to enjoy the beaches when the sun was out.

Language

Having spent 2 weeks plugging away with Duolingo to learn some Spanish in preparation for Argentina, it was deeply disappointing to note that the Brazilians didn’t respond to my attempts at being friendly in Spanish. Now I do realise they speak Portuguese, but there are enough similarities to be civil.

I then realised that most Brazilians don’t speak anything but their own version of Portuguese, no Spanish at all (maybe on principle!), and they don’t speak English either, so the early exchanges in the beach bars and shops of the Copacabana were very hard work, which really surprised me bearing in mind it is such an attraction for visitors.

Global Cities

If I had to compare Rio with one city it would be Sydney, with the beautify harbour and beaches and a population that loves the outdoor life.

A few years ago, I concluded that there are some cities in the world that are very different to the rest of that country.

The first time I noticed it was on the US, where New York stands apart, Los Angeles was nothing like the rest of the US or New York, similar if you travel to Australia then Sydney is totally different to the rest of the country and London is the same.

The difference with London is that it is also the capital city, unlike the others. I put Rio into this category, as a global city, where people flock to experience that individual vibe.

In all those cities, you can stand and watch herds of people passing by and it is difficult to spot what race that country is. In Rio there is such diversity in the population that you couldn’t say “That is a Brazilian”.

The food

First impressions were pretty good from the beach front bars at Copacabana with lots of fish and steak with unusual sauces and tastes.

On the city tour we had a Brazilian BBQ which involves eating as much meat as you can. We were lucky enough to stumble out of a rain storm into a restaurant in Ipanema called Bodega Belmonte which was a really authentic dining experience and we had a great afternoon eating and avoiding the rain.

So, our tour of South America is up and running with a great start in Rio, one of my life ambitions achieved.

03/11/2025
Destination Argentina
Patagonia and Ushuaia here we come

Nearly time to pack our rucksacks for the next adventure. This is a big one on our bucket list and has taken a lot of planning over the last few months.

Anyone in their right minds would be using a travel agent, but that is too easy for us. It would hardly be Rare Adventures if we had someone organising us, just think of the things that could go wrong.

This idea first came up from the BBC series “Race across the world“, when they travelled the length of South America. The scenery was so remote and beautiful that we decided we had to see Patagonia and the most southerly point at Ushuaia.

In an ideal world we would like to have been doing more by road to enjoy the scenery, but the distances are so vast we will be using internal flights as our main form of transport. Wooksie has put a 1 month limit on the trip and we had to be home for Christmas, which apparently starts on the 1st December in her world, the schedule was a bit of a challenge,

It is quite difficult to filter though the information on the internet, there is so much to trawl through and evaluate, but eventually we came up with this route. Driving or train would have been more fun but would have constrained us too much, and by using flights we can spend more time as the destinations.

After all these years, and with all the online information, we still end up buying a copy of the “Lonely Planet” as a simple point of reference.

Argentinian itinerary

Here is our plan, or maybe more of a list of things that might happen!
- 29^th October fly from Bristol to Rio– with a change in Amsterdam with KLM, we spend 3 days enjoying the Copacabana and Ipanema beaches, bars and having a look at Christ the Redeemer and Sugarloaf Mountain.
- 2^nd Nov we fly to Iguazu Falls – for trekking, 4×4 offroading and speed boating around the spectacular falls, it’s going to be a spectacular day.
- 4^th Nov we fly to Bariloche via Buenos Aires – this could be a bit tricky as it’s not a through flight but with a bit of luck we will arrive in the northern part of Patagonia and the Argentinian Lake District in the early evening. Trekking and adventures at altitude await us.
- 9^th Nov we fly to Buenos Aires – we then have 3 or 4 days getting to know the place and popping over to Montevideo in Uruguay.
- 13^th Nov we fly to El Calafate to spend 4 days trekking around the glaciers and mountains in the southern part of Patagonia.
- 16^th Nov we fly to Ushuaia to head to the most southerly point in South America and cruise around the Beagle Channel, unfortunately Wooksie didn’t fancy a cruise to Antarctica which is a disappointment.
- 20^th Nov we start our trip home with more stop overs in Buenos Aires and Rio before getting back for the end of November.
We have lots of adventures and and scenery to explore d and will be posting regular updates on what has happened – onwards and upwards.
26/10/2025