16 Apr 2013
by Mo
in Family Gap Year, Looking Back, Photos, Top Experiences, Travelling
Tags: Argentina, Boipeba, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, Falklands, Family Gap Year, Paraguay, Peru, South America, Uruguay
11th April 2013. Nine months today since our family of five touched down in Rio de Janeiro on a BA flight from Heathrow, London to begin our Family Gap Year travelling around the world.
Our journey so far…
We’ve almost done a (kind of squashed) figure of 8 around the continent, flown or boated to islands in the Pacific and Atlantic and are now in Santiago, enjoying our last days before flying to Easter Island (part of Chile) and then on to Tahiti in French Polynesia.
Nine months, Nine countries. Our Family Gap Year journey so far…
We’ve been to More
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01 Apr 2013
by Ben
in Family Gap Year, Foodie Central, Kids Stuff
Tags: Blue Puppy, Cusco, guinea pig, Peru, Uchu
Cusco is a cool place to be for kids! We spent Christmas there and then nearly two weeks more in January. The best thing for me was meeting people and making friends. It’s great making friends everywhere on our gap year but Cusco was especially amazing!
Friends in Cusco
The second best thing about Cusco was food! We ate at some amazing restaurants and the food and friends kind of blended together!
First there was More
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14 Mar 2013
by Zoe
in Adventure, Family Gap Year, Kids Stuff
Tags: Andes, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, Flat Stanley, lake Titicaca, Machu Picchu, Peru, salt flats, South America, Titicaca, Uros islands, Uyuni
Flat Stanley has travelled with me in South America for eight months now…..
We said goodbye to Miss Jane, Mrs M and Miss Place at the end of year 2, last July, spent our summer hopping around in Brazil , journeyed the length of the Amazon to Columbia, Peru and the Napo River to Ecuador!
We took a bus way up into the Andes Mountains to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, where we learned Spanish and then flew out to the Galápagos Islands.
You might remember these photos in Quito and at a waterfall near Otavalo, Ecuador
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07 Mar 2013
by Mo
in Adventure, Family Gap Year, Top Experiences
Tags: Aguas Calientes, Chinchero, Cusco, gap year with children, Las Salineras, Machu Picchu, Moras, Moray, Olantaytambo, Peru, Pisac, saqsayhuaman, saqsaywaman, Tipon
Machu Picchu was always a planned highlight of our round the world family gap year – although Martin suggested at one point we skip it and come back when the kids are bigger? No way! – OK so it’s crowded, but you have to go!
New Year’s 2012 Machu Picchu
Probably the first highlight that comes to most people’s minds when they think of visiting South America. It was certainly on my long term bucket list along with the Galapagos islands. But we didn’t have much planned in advance, we hadn’t even heard of the Sacred Valley More
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01 Mar 2013
by Mo
in Family Gap Year, Travelling
Tags: Amantani, Bolivia, Copacabana, floating islands, lake Titicaca, Peru, Puno, Taquile, Uros
January 11th. Six months to the day after we started out family gap year journey in South America, we say goodbye to Cusco and take a 10 hour tourist bus to travel the Route of the Sun, south to Puno and Lake Titicaca.
It’s a much better option than a direct bus, stopping at view points and tourist stops along the way:- Andahualillas, where we visit the so called Sistine Chapel of America (we’d have liked to visit the tiny museum with the mummified alien babies that we’d heard of from Lainie and Miro, our friends in Cusco, but we can’t see it and follow the guide to the church! Ah, the difficulties of being on a tour bus!). It has huge, dramatic frescos all over its insides (photos strictly forbidden!) and the kids enjoy studying them, then we’re off to the amazing Raqchi temple of Wiracocha which in spite of all the sites we’ve visited, still wows, although its hard to figure out how much, if any, is original!
The girls at Raqchi temple
The girls get the Kraps outside Raqchi temple
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13 Jan 2013
by Mo
in Family Gap Year, Foodie Central, Top Experiences, Volunteering
Tags: Chocolatada, Cusco, Peru
Feliz Navidad from Cusco, Peru…. no, too late for that! In fact two days ago, 11th January 2013, was exactly 6 months since we started our Family Gap year adventure…even Feliz Ano Nuevo is belated! At least this blog post will bring us to the end of 2012 and to the New Year!
We arrived in Cusco on a flight from Lima on 19th December 2012 and settled in for a few days at the Amaru ll guest house, ready to celebrate Lara’s 5th birthday and enjoy the buzz of Christmas in Cusco. Here’s our Christmas Cusco diary……
Our Cusco Christmas 2012
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30 Oct 2012
by Mo
in Family Gap Year
Tags: Ecuador, Napo River, Nuevo Rocaforte, Pantoja, Peru, Vencedores
Our last days with Gerson and the crew on our little boat are suddenly nearly over as we make good time and near the Peru Ecuador border. We still have little idea where we’re going to end up or how we’re going to make it to Coca (Puerto Franciso de Orellana) where we’ll end our river journey. We’re not sure but we hope that our Peruvian boat and crew can at least cross the border and take us as far as Nuevo Rocaforte – the Ecuadorian border town, some 25km up stream from the Peruvian border town of Pantoja!
Misty dawn as we leave Ango Terra
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26 Oct 2012
by Lara
in Family Gap Year, Foodie Central, Kids Stuff
Tags: Brazil, Ecuador, Ice cream, Peru, South America, Spanish language
Being four and three quarters and the one child in the family who inherited her Mum’s fussy streak instead of her Dad’s more adventurous, gluttonous one, it was interesting to get her thinking about her favourite foods in our first three months and four countries in South America!
Mo’s cousin Val is a head teacher and the children at her school have been hearing about our adventures in their assemblies. They sent us some questions and Lara’s was about her favourite foods, so we decided to do a Lara interview to try to answer this one!
Mum : So Lara, what’s been your favourite food on our journey so far?
Lara : Fizzy Orange! You can’t get fizzy drinks in England can you?
Mum : of course you can but we don’t have them very often and you’ve had a lot more whilst we’ve been travelling !!
Lara : Yep – I’ve had coke and fizzy orange (that’s my favourite) and Inca Cola in Peru which was bright yellow and Guarana in Brazil.
And I learned how to ask for a straw in Portuguese – it’s a ‘Canudo’ – and now I have to ask for it in Spanish and its a ‘Popote’
Happiness is drinking through a canudo!
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Ben
Lara
Martin Clark
Mo
Zoe
The Clark Family's Amazing Adventures 