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!
29th 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.
2nd 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.
4th 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.
9th 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.
13th Nov we fly to El Calafate to spend 4 days trekking around the glaciers and mountains in the southern part of Patagonia.
16th 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.
20th 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.
I always look forward to the next trip to the Les Gets Bike Park, hot sunny days, hard baked berms and swooping down through the trees. The drive from Morillon is about 30 minutes so I needed to pack the bike into the back of the car and get all my stuff together.
The last trip to Les Gets was good but didn’t quite go according to plan thanks to the ever present Gremlins in my life. I had planned to video the runs for the YouTube channel so that people planning to visit could get a little insight into what awaited them.
top of Les Gets bike park
Last time I arrived at Les Gets I put the bike together and got to the top of the Chavannes Express lift, only to discover that the battery in my Go Pro camera was flat. I decided to go back down and try and buy a battery, which wasted an hour and produced no new battery. I had a great day on the bike but no YouTube content, even worse, I had a crash and smashed the camera mount anyway, so that was the end of that.
I wasn’t going to make the same mistake this time, double checked all the gear and packed it into my rucksack, packed the bike, made sure I had all the tools and repair kits, and off I went. In the underground car park I assembled the bike, put all the gear on and the last job was to attach the Go Pro. To my absolute horror the little bolt that attaches the camera to the mounting wasn’t there, how could that be?
View from the Triple 8 run
Gremlin attack
I had used it on the previous day on the Morillon runs, it couldn’t have disappeared from the mount, but it had. I searched the car, all the bags but nope, it wasn’t there. That meant it must have come off back in the garage and I had a spare in the apartment, but it meant a 1 hour round trip, that damned Gremlin. I didn’t bother stripping off padding, just jumped in the car and high tailed it back to Morillon, thank God for air conditioning and the patience of my wife to listen to my woes.
Just over 1 hour later, I was back in the same car parking bay, in exactly the same position I had been before but this time the camera was attached the bike, and I was ready to. I wasted no time getting out of there and up on the Chavanne Express lift for the first run and to make up for the hour I had wasted.
Some of you may have read the blog about my winter season in the Alps, when, after 65 years, I had concluded that quite randomly, I would have a quite irrational approach to risky situations at times, in fact I concluded I had a personal Gremlin living in my head that was trying to kill me.
View from La Nauchets lift, Les Gets
Risk Aversion
In response, I had decided that for my summer season mountain biking I needed to be a bit more grown up. Unlike snowboarding which happens in the ski area near our apartment, I had to drive to the bike parks so if I got injured, I would not only have the problem getting me down with not help, but getting the car home car as well, something as simple as a dislocated shoulder would be a disaster.
I made a rule, not just a promise, that I would only do blue runs, they are hairy enough at times and I still have crashed on them. However, as I had done most of them before. I knew where most of the dangers lay, so that is why the videos supporting this story are of the blue runs, for once in my life, I stuck to my rule.
The ride up on the Chavannes Express took me over the jump park and the Foue Libre trail, which is the run home, not only that, but you also get glimpses of some hairy looking black trails lurking in the woods. When I arrived out at the top of the Chavannes Express, I was ready for action and unhindered by mates.
Les Gets bike park top section
On previous trips my mates, notably The Chemist and The Mechanic have accompanied me. Despite explaining the routes to them they either shoot off in the wrong direction or just shoot off anyway and I spend the rest of the afternoon trying to work out where they have gone. When I eventually find them, they are normally going on about a Strava time rather than the hassle they have caused me, I have even found them in the undergrowth after crashes.
I checked the camera, and everything was working so it was time to go. At the top of this lift you can head back into Les Gets, head round the mountain to Morzine or head over to the Nauchets chair lift that takes you up to top of the mountain and the really steep runs, naturally I headed to the Nauchets lift.
The story of a runaway dog, an imitation Porsche and stunning views
There aren’t many downsides of owning a Porsche, but the cost of servicing is one of them, so at the 2 year anniversary if owning the car and the next service came around, it was the time I was dreading,
The car reminded me about the service every time I sat in it, so a few calls to different types of specialists produced a range of quotes, all of them unpalatable, but the specialist garage that I bought it from offered the best deal.
It was a weird coincidence, that when I was hunting for a very specific model, the best option came up in my home stomping ground of Plymouth rather than around the bit cities which I’d expected. The specialist garage I had bought it from had been very good to deal with, so when their quote was the best, it gave me an excuse to turn the trauma of the car service into an opportunity for and adventure.
I’d had been a previous issue with the car, and the dealer had provided another Porsche as my loan car. So, when I booked the service, I requested the loan car and booked myself into a little pub in the village of Cawsands just outside Plymouth. I was looking forward to a blast through the Cornish lanes in a different model for a change.
Cawsand Bay had a special place in my life. It is a little village in one of the bays off Plymouth Sound, every Janner knows where it is but very few people go there once they grow up. As a kid, the treat with my gran was the 30-minute ferry ride across Plymouth Sound and then a day on the beach swimming and pleading for ice cream.
Then there was Maker Camp, an old military camp on top of the cliff, that had been converted into a school adventure camp. All the schools in Plymouth were allocated their week each summer, so from the last year of primary school and for the first 2 years of secondary school, we would be packed off to camp, where we played football, walked for miles doing orienteering, climbed rocks and cliffs and generally burned off all our energy before it was restocked at the tuck shop,. The food was shocking, even worse than school meals. For most kids it was their first experience of being away from home as well, so there always some grizzlers at night.
As we grew up, the 4 pubs in the village provided a great place for a day out and drinking on the sea front. As we got a bit wealthier and could afford a boat, it became the place to go on a Sunday, normally with a bit of water skiing in Cawsand Bay or maybe fishing before visiting the pubs and catching up with mates.
Nowadays on a Sunday, the bay is full gin palace type launches that have blasted their way over from the Barbican and bob around drinking cocktails or going ashore for a beer and then heading back, so not much has changed over the last 50 years, the village hasn’t grown much and even the ferry still runs to Plymouth as the best link with civilisation, 30 minutes by ferry or 90 minutes by road to a city you can see from the beach.
I was really looking forward to the trip back to the village for the night as there are stunning views and walks, old pubs and a little walk down memory way. After a good trip down from Bristol I dropped the car on time and was looking forward to the loan car, they gave me the keys and told me it was down the road. It took me a while to work it out, then I discovered why the loan car was “down the road”, it was not a Porsche, it was a Skoda. I couldn’t believe my eyes.
Imitation Porsche
Now there is nothing wrong with a Skoda, smashing little cars, very reliable etc, but not what you expect from a Porsche specialist, especially while they are charging a fortune for an oil change. So a disappointing start to my treat, but Tess the Dog seemed happier in the little two door runabout, she took up residence in the back seat and off we went for 50 minute drive to Whitsand Bay, the beach haunt of all Plymouth teenagers once we had access to transport, and the first destination of my trip down memory lane. With the stunning views out to Rame Head. I stopped a few times to take in the views along the cliff road and eventually I arrived in Cawsand Bay and was unexpectedly greeting by a drop of rain, the first in 8 weeks, this was a development I hadn’t expected when I packed for the night.
I parked the car where I wouldn’t be noticed, walked to the pub, checked in, put the walking boots on and headed along the coast path to Penlee Point and on to Rame Head. Initially it was dry and very windy as we reached the first headland at Penlee Point, with stunning views back toward the Plymouth Hoe and the enormous breakwater built by French prisoners of 200 years ago.
I sat and ate my pasty enjoying the views back towards Plymouth and my spiritual home. Tess the Dog was more interested in the contents of my pasty to be honest and was cringing in the gale. we walked towards Rame Head along a stunning bit of coastline on the most easterly point of Cornwall, with the steep cliffs covered in gorse bushes. As a kid I dreamed of fishing on the rocks below, with their deep water and array of species, but now I realised there was no way down to those rocks, and pushing through the gorse might have incurred an unwanted meeting with adders which are abundant.
As we arrived at the Rame the clouds turned grey and as we got to the little church on the headland, why ancients civilisations would want to build a chapel out there I have no idea, but as we got there the clouds opened. Worse than that, it was accompanied by thunder and lightning, the thing in the world that Tess the Dog hates most.
The walk back to Cawsand wasn’t easy, dodging between cover from the showers along the cliff path and finally we made it back to Penlee Point. 1 mile path back to the village and Tess was in a rush, at this point, there was a loud clap of thunder, and Tess the Dog unexpectedly bolted along the path.
She is normally very good off the lead so I wasn’t expecting this reaction, as she got to a bend in the path, she looked over her shoulder and gave me a look, one that I now realise meant “I’m out of here”.
I trotted along the path, whistling, expecting to see her waiting somewhere, but as I closed in on the village, I realised this could be more serious than I thought, she hadn’t run off in her previous 11 years. However, one thing to remember about Tess the Dog is she is a very resourceful girl and attracts attention.
The pub where Tess took refuge
As I arrived back into the village I noticed a group of people outside a pub, crowding around something fury. They were crowding around Tess the Dog. Apparently, she had bolted along the coast path, into the village and straight into the nearest pub where she knew she would find safety. The locals had adopted her and were feeding her bits of their tea, little did they know she was interested in their beer too.
Having solved the mystery of the runaway dog, she was put on the lead, and we went for a stroll around the pubs and the back streets. I had forgotten what an absolute gem of a place it is. As a kid you don’t really think about narrow streets much, and when you arrive by boat I didn’t really ever get past the pubs on the waterfront.
I have been to Cornwall so many times, but it had never occurred to me to spend time here in the village, by road it is a totally remote backwater. All the cottages are beautifully maintained, and probably available on Airbnb, one pub had burned down and has re-opened as a community centre. I would imagine the inhabitants must total less than 200 but somehow the other pubs seemed to be doing fine.
The most amazing thing, was that the shops were exactly the same shops that had been there when I was at Maker Camp as a kid, the little dairy now sold coffee instead, the gift shop still sold the same sort of stuff we used to buy our parents as our gift from Maker Camp, it was as if time had stood still, it was quite amazing how little had changed in 50 years.
I spent an evening in the Halfway House pub, eating fish and chips and drinking beer which is quite a treat to be honest. I would normally have had company, but Tess the Dog was still traumatised and had taken up residence under my bed, and I couldn’t be bothered with Tess being a Moody Mary being needy in the bar.
Next morning, it was back to the hidden Skoda, a drive back to the garage hoping that their car didn’t run out of fuel and to pick up my car. It was a then time to head into the Barbican to see my oldest mate, we went to school together when we were 6, and it was a chance chew over our memories of Maker Camp as kids.
It’s not easy to turn a car service into an adventure, but I reckon I did a pretty decent job.
Our final adventure for this trip was scuba diving. There are a few dive places in Costa Rica and the Canos Island off Uvita is one of them. It has the added benefit of a boat trip across the straights that are used by the migrating humpback whales with Costa Rica Dive
I was looking forward to leisurely trip out to the island a mile or two off the beach, so the powerboat ride came as a bit of a surprise !
I first tried Scuba diving on the Great Barrier Reef off Cairns back in 1997. It was such wonderful experience I came to the decision that it I would never dive anywhere better than there, especially in the cold waters off the UK, so I parked my interest in Scuba diving and was happy with the memories. It is also a very expensive sport, so when travelling with kids and on a budget, it was never high on the priority list so we would always go snorkelling anyway.
That changed when we visited Zanzibar in 2024, despite its beauty and a great hotel, I still got bored after a few days, so I invested in a Scuba introduction course and 4 escorted dives. It was a fabulous experience, heading out to deserted atolls and reefs in an old fishing boat, and then diving down into the coral and swimming with the fish rather than watching from the surface. I was hooked and committed to doing the PADI open water certificate as my next challenge.
Surprisingly it went completely out of my mind until I got to Uvita and saw the dive trips advertised. As with many things in Costa Rica it is priced for the American market and at $299 was an expensive day out, but I decided to give it a go. I was anticipating another pleasant day out, plenty of sunshine, a few whales and lots of fish on the coral at Canos Island, about an hour out to sea.
Things started to go wrong back in our room; I dug out the GoPro to take diving and discovered my battery charger was broken and I didn’t have the cable for the camera itself so wouldn’t be able to use it. Which left me with my little Go Pro camera which only works at depths of up to 10m, and we would be going down to 15m so it could be a problem. You will be surprised to know that I thought, “Pah what is the worst that can happen” and decided to chance it.
First surprise was to wake up at 5am for the trip to find lashing rain and howling wind. Not quite what I was bopping for, but this wasn’t enough to deter the dive trip operators, so we marched to the beach from the dive centre, for boarding onto one of the high powered speed boats bucking around in the surf. Loading the boats wasn’t straightforward either, we had two groups, helpfully named Boat 1 and Boat 2, by the time we got to the beach we had become the names of the boats, so people in Boat 2 had to get into the boat called Mako Shark. I had missed this bit of nuance somewhere as it had been announced in Spanish, so we all assembled on the beach ready for something to happen. One group headed towards the surf, and one didn’t move, feeling a lost soul, I decided to follow the group to the beach as the leader was with that group.
We all marched towards the surf behind the rather disorganised leader, but when we got there, he then noticed that only one group had followed him to the waters edge, the other group were still 300m away stood by the trees. There was then a lot of waving and shouting in the wind, before the aforesaid leader had to run all the way back up the beach to collect to explain to the second group they needed to follow him. While he was away, I asked another one of the dive blokes what was going and solved the problem of which boat I was in, I was in the Mako Shark.
Next surprise was on the boat, which was evidently a high speed launch. We all put on our life jackets, were warned not to put our hands over the side, then the skipper hit the throttle and we accelerating to high speed, like some sort of drug smugglers escaping from the feds.
As you can see, Canos island is not exactly off the coast of Uvita, it is about 50km south and well out to sea, so no either def we were in a hurry.
High speed boat transfer
Out we went through the choppy seas with lots of airborne moments reminiscent of power boat racers. We quickly sped past the island I thought we were going to and headed out into the Pacific Ocean, where we were lashed by rain and wind. Not only that, but we also had our dentures loosened by the high speed crashing of the hull as it bounced off the swell, if there were any whales around, they would have dived out of our way. This was not the relaxing experience I had in Zanzibar for sure and my Garmin watch was tracking our speed at 40kph.
After about 45 minutes we saw a distant island and 75 minutes the skipper throttled back and soon we were ready to dive. After going through the laborious process of putting all the gear on, and armed with my GoPro camera, I flipped back over the side of the boat ready to explore the deep.
First dive into the depths
The next surprise was in the water. Once I organised myself and looked around, I noticed there was no fish or reef but there was a buoy with a long rope. The purpose of this rope was to pull ourselves down to the depths where the reef and the fish was lurking, so down I went pulling myself down by the rope, with the other divers. Suddenly my GoPro camera came to life and started filming, which I thought was very clever so I waved it around filming anything that moved, but then a big red sign popped up to say I was too deep and it was warning me it would not work, and promptly switched itself off – great.
The first dive was pretty good, and I achieved a big ambition, to see a shark in the wild. In fact, I saw 2, one swam past giving us a shifty look, and the other shark was having a kip on the ocean floor. The other big sighting on the first dive was the giant turtles, these really are magical creatures that look like rocks until they move. This is also their mating season and we were giving a grandstand view of a couple of giant turtles fornicating in the deep, it didn’t last long as the male fell off, but they seemed to have had a good time and the male set off in hot pursuit of his mate with enthusiasm.
Giant sea turtle
Second dive on to the reef
Dives only last for 45 minutes and as our oxygen started to run low, we headed back to the boat for the obligatory rest and to clear our lungs before we can dive again. We all loaded back on the boat clumsily in our scuba gear and chatted about what we had seen, my group had been lucky compared to the other group which hadn’t seemed to see anything, but that is the way of nature.
A compilation of of clips from the reef
There are many lessons to be learned about nature, and a new one raised its head. On the boat trip out we had been bumped around a lot which stimulated the desire to pee but didn’t really have an opportunity, then we had gone down into the depths in our wetsuits where our bodies were under pressure, and now we all needed a pee, quite desperately in some cases.
An unexpected problem
The skipper spotted the problem and said that if we needed a pee, take the wetsuit off (apparently, they smell) and jump over the side to do our business. Within seconds the boat was covered in the discarded wetsuits, and the sea was full of people trying to have a pee but failing. We then learned a bit about biology, we normally have the assistance of gravity when we pee, but in the sea it isn’t there as we are suspended, added to that our core muscles are busy stopping us drowning, so it is like trying to pee whilst doing a sit up in a gravity free zone – basically it is a very difficult thing to achieve to any level of satisfaction so we continued only marginally relieved, so to speak.
We all needed a pee but didn’t like to say
After our contortions, we reboarded the boat, kitted up and were back in the water for our second dive. Same process, grab the rope and down we went on a different bit of the reef. The difference was that on this dive it was our turn not to see anything. We were initially greeted by a shoal of fish that looked like zebras, so it started well, but didn’t get any better as we swam around for 45 minutes in the equivalent of subterranean desert, there were amusing moments as various members of our group floated away and had to be rescued by the guide, but to be honest I was getting a bit bored and spent more time focused on trying to have another pee, so was glad to come up in the end.
Back on the boat, the other group had lots of stories about their sightings and generally started getting on my nerves. The truth of the matter was that we had a disappointing day with water based nature, possibly due to the rough weather that had sent the fish off to somewhere else. We then had a very nice lunch on the boat, inevitably a burrito and fruit, but it was much appreciated. I noted that people weren’t drinking much, which might have been on account of most of them still needing a pee.
Before we knew it we were crashing our way back along the coast through raging storms, no sign of whales, and the dramatic arrival at the beach, the skipper didn’t even break from our 40kph before he did the waterborne equivalent of a handbrake turn when we were about 50m from the beach, in a spellbinding manoeuvre that dumped us back on dry land before we knew it.
Lessons from the trip
So, I learned a few lessons from this:
Check how far out to see the reef is, because an hour in a chugging fishing boat is lot different to doing it in a power boat.
How deep is the reef, because the bright lovely coral I saw as a snorkeller is only a few metres deep, when you get to 10m the sun is missing to the coral is going to be dull, if it exists at all.
Check that you have the all the GoPro cables before you leave home and don’t break the ones you have.
Don’t wear your Garmin watch when diving, despite it being guaranteed to 50m, something happened on the dive at 12m, and it is now written off.
I have now promised myself that I will be going on an adventure to get my Open Water certificate, this is the same promise I made to myself last year, but I really mean it this time.
White water rafting has to be one of the most fun things you can do on a trip, it is by far our favourite holiday adventure activity. We did our first raft ride on a river in Thailand back in 1991, but that we on a bamboo raft but I got the bug for flying down rivers and going through the rapids.
Our rafting history
The first chance for white water rafting was the River Tully in Queensland, Australia. That was exactly how I imagined it to be, with warm water, dropping over waterfalls and ending up in the river at every opportunity, though the sight of baby crocodiles sat on rocks watching us didn’t help with the confidence.
Since then, we have rafted on 4 different continents, and probably the most exciting was the Kali Gandackie in Nepal, an epic trip that I will relate at come point in the future. So, when we see white water rafting as an option, we always check it out, and in Costa Rica there seemed to be lots of options.
A bit of research led us to the River Pascuare being the best rapids, the trips are classed by their difficulty. Class 5 rapids are the hardest that can be run commercially, this was what we ran in Nepal. The Pacuare River had Class 4 rapids, so it was going to be exciting, and the trip was organised by Excuriones GTE.
The obvious other factor to consider is water level. Costa Rica has just started it’s rainy season, so though the water levels were quite low, this meant there would be more rocks to navigate (high river levels just go over the rocks so it can be easier), with the recent heavy overnight rain there was a lot of fresh water speeding up the river.
Rafting is dangerous
The thing about rafting is that it is dangerous and people do die. The rivers are powerful, and people can get trapped in rocks, under the rafts, or other obstacles and the power of the water just pushes them under, so the safety briefings are really important, and they were great on this trip. The rafts are accompanied by kayakers who are there to help in emergencies, and they also make useful photographers !
We set off with our crew of 5 people, in a 6 person raft. The way these runs go is that some of the best rapids are at the top of the river where you board. This is because the river is narrower and higher up, so you are into the big rapids almost immediately, which wakes everyone up.
The big rapids start early
The guys at the front get the wettest as they are being hit by all the waves, so they provide protection for the rest of the crew, they are also the people most likely to be thrown over the side by a wave. Wooksie and I took up positions at the front as we and done it before and took the biggest battering in the first half of the trip. In the second half Wooksie swapped with Anny from Barcelona who was clearly up for getting wet and having lots of fun too.
This is the only water sport I have ever known Wooksie get involved with, and she has an amazing track record of staying in the raft whatever the circumstances, I have tried to drag her over the side unsuccessfully on every trip but she is like a limpet attached to a rock.
This river didn’t have any waterfalls, but it had a lot of rapids with the water flowing over and around the boulders really fast. The excitement started straight from the start with a choppy Class 3 rapid to get us going from the start and bring reality to the team on their first run.
The river battered us for most of the 3 hours we were on the water. Some rivers you have sections where you drift along without much to do but we had white water bubbling around us all the way down thanks to the heavy rain on the previous nights.
Beautiful scenery along the way
The cool thing about rafting is you travel through really remote areas, and we saw loads of wildlife, in particular birds, hanging around on the edge of the river hunting for their lunches. There are also villages for the indigenous people that have been living on the river end for hundreds of years, so it is not just the adrenalin stuff.
Being cramped up in the raft can be pretty uncomfortable as you are twisted to face forward whilst your legs are locked under straps and flotation bags. The break after 90 minutes and a stretch on the beach was very welcome even if it took us about 2 minutes to recover the ability to stand up straight and walk again.
Class 3 rapid video
Then we were into the second section of the river and the ride home. This included two fantastic runs through sheer canyons which made for dramatic scenery as it squeezed the water into the narrow gaps at high pressure, so the waves and obstacles were flying past.
This video is of a Class 3 rapid near the end of the ride.
And then we finished up with a Level 4 through the canyon to finish the day in style.
Eventually we reached the end of the run back at the rafting company HQ and ready for a nice lunch, talk about the excitement with our new rafting mates and a sleep on the coach in the way home. The rafting company had taken some great photos on the trip, and I had been experimenting with my new GoPro, so we have some videos as well.
