Our plan was to head south to Castro on a bus but as luck would have it an old Chilean couple staying at our hostel offered us a ride in their rental car. They were on holiday from Santiago but the man had family from the UK so he spoke perfect English. We awkwardly carried…
Tag: hiking
Chile’s Lake District and hiking around Osorno Volcano
Chile is a wild country; it’s extremely long and narrow, home to deserts and glaciers and prone to earthquakes and volcanic eruptions. Mother Nature sure had fun here and we were treated to a birds-eye view of the landscape as we took a flight from Santiago to the Los Lagos region (the Lake District of…
Waterfalls, Alpine Meadows and Idyllic Camping in Northern Vancouver Island
As soon as you go north from Campbell River things become a lot more wild. The towns shrink to villages and the traffic dwindles. Our first port of call was Elk Falls Provincial Park where a short walk led us to a swing bridge and two overlooks to view the mighty falls from. It was…
Hiking and wildlife watching along the Icefields Parkway | Jasper National Park
After hiking almost everyday for the past two weeks we were shattered and had clocked up roughly 130km and climbed up and down 7000m of altitude, plus waking up at 6am everyday took its toll. It was a shame as it meant we didn’t have the energy for any big hikes in Jasper but luckily…
Walking to the hidden gem of Lake O’Hara | Yoho National Park
Lake O’hara has always been a bit of a mystical place to me. It’s basically just a very protected area of Yoho National Park that is only accessible with a shuttle bus, therefore it remains a tranquil paradise. The shuttle system is to limit the number of guests so within minutes of the tickets going…
Mountain passes, a wolf pack and a hungry grizzly in the Canadian Rockies
There were a few passes we wanted to hike around Banff which we hadn’t tried before so the first one we set out on was Healy. It was a hell of a long way, 18.3km but I’d read great things about it so off we went on a grey morning with rain imminent. It turned…
Hiking in Kananaskis Country | Canada
Even though we’d visited the Rockies twice before we were still excited to return and hike some different trails. For our first few days we based ourselves in Canmore and did a few local hikes. The trails were within our beloved Kananaskis Country that I talked about in my previous post, but because they were…
My 30th birthday summiting a mountain and boating in K’Country | Canada
Kananaskis Country has some of the best scenery in the Rockies but because it’s just a cluster of provincial parks and not a big name national park, the crowds just seem to stay away, and that’s why we love it. My 30th birthday was coming up so I was delighted to be spending it in…
Turquoise lakes, Icebergs and Lynx in Glacier National Park
Glacier National Park receives way more visitors than it can cope with. It’s tucked away at the most northern section of Montana, bordering Canada and should really be a pain in the butt to visit, yet the dramatic peaks have people driving cross country to get there. We arrived in the late afternoon and popped…
Returning to the jaw dropping Sawtooths | Idaho
As much as we always want to explore new places, we also love returning to our favourite spots and Idaho is one of them. It was a hell of a long, lonely drive heading west from Wyoming, through Montana and then finally into the Famous Potato State. We passed ranches with cowboys corralling their cattle…
Grand Teton National Park | Wyoming
Mountain ranges surrounded us on all sides as we made our way north to Grand Teton National Park. It’s the perfect park for us as it has incredible hikes, plenty of wildlife and free camping in the adjacent national forest so we never feel the need to rush. We arrived in the late afternoon so…
Arches and Canyonlands National Parks | Utah
Arches National Park is one of the most popular parks in America and we were actually kind of dreading returning to it after our previous visit 9 years ago. We did all we could to beat the crowds though, waking up as the sun was rising and having breakfast in a car park before hiking….
