One of the things we most wanted to do while in Zimbabwe was go to Great Zimbabwe National Monument. The site was home to a great medieval city serving as a link between the Swahili traders in East Africa to the Bantu speaking peoples of Southern Africa. This city is proof of civilization in Africa long before the colonists arrived.
Formerly known as Rhodesia, one might wonder where the name Zimbabwe came from (or the name Rhodesia for that matter!). Zimbabwe actually means house of the large stones. Scattered across Zimbabwe are the ruins from a great Shona kingdom that ruled the area in the middle ages, but most of these ruins are small scale. All of course, but one- the …

Can’t say it was actually my first time “diving” into a Dorito’s bag, but it was the first time I didn’t come out with artificial cheese smeared on my fingers. Lining up the camera angle, Danny yelled to me to diving head first… it was certainly going to be a long day. There’s one reason and one reason only we came to the Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia, the pictures. A huge flat expanse of salt (surprisingly called the salt flats), in fact the largest in the world, the Salar is probably one of the only places in the world that you can stand on top of a coke bottle without crushing it. And that’s because you’re not …

Trek the Salcantay Trail…check
Make it Aguas Calientes…check.
Eat hot yummy food…check.
Go to bed early…check.
Wake up the morning following 4 hard days of hiking at 3am…WHAT?!?!?!?
Yeah, that’s right. Not only that, but the volume on the alarm wasn’t high enough so we almost slept in. Getting up really really early after treking all the way to Machu Picchu is practically a right of passage for those who hike to the ‘old’ mountain. One needs to get up that early to hike up an additional 400 meters, straight uphill, to be in line at the entrance BEFORE the buses taking the ‘normal’ people even depart. All this so that you can get one of the coveted tickets to hike straight up Wayna Picchu, …

The center of all tourism for Peru, Cusco is the heart of Peru’s Gringo Trail so it was no surprise that we found Cusco to be the busiest place in Peru.   No one seems to come to Peru without going to Cusco, seriously.  We´ve bumped into several people here that we met in other parts of the country. 
 Walking through the Plaza de Armas is like walking through a shopping mall.  Touts selling everything from massages to jewelry, paintings and sunglasses see your tourist signs and attack! For a few soles you can even get an indigenous woman, dressed in her traditional attire to pose for photographs with her llama, great living for her, great photographs for tourists (and no we did not do …