We left our dear friend in Morelia and continued north, dropping back down into the desert conditions of north/west mexico.. I would say this was by far THE MOST uncomfortable, and disgusting I’ve felt and I’m sure Carlo too (apart from sleeping in the humid climate of Cartagena in Columbia..) throughout the trip. The heat was incredible, dry like a sauna with no escape but paying for an air coned motel room for 6hours, which i think you can guess is one of “those motels..”.

The crossing into the US was another successful and unexpectedly quick accomplishment! I loved the west coast of the US, it’s simply awesome but a complete culture shock to the system after the year we’d had… All I can say is, “Ralphs Supermarket?!” We’ve been used to corner shops that have bars where the door should be, and having to point at the very limited options on display to the shop keeper! so this was like walking into a palace for us.. We must have spent a good hour walking the isles in awe of all the choices!

We made several stops along the way up with friends in: San Diego, LA, San Francisco.. and took our final “excursion” to visit Yosemite Park, which was epic! Autumn in Yosemite is beautiful, and even saw snow on the ground for a couple days! Then, returning to San Francisco had us wrapped into a new production!

The New Production:
The “Omprakash” foundation, we hadn’t realised properly until we met up with our friend & fellow volunteer Lacey (whom we’d met when at Fairplay/Helping hands in Peru) that Omprakash is directly connected to both organisations Carlo and I did productions for in Peru. Over night she’d come up with an idea!
Within the following morning we’d spoken to Willy the founder of Omprakash, and were commissioned to create a film/documentary showing an outreach program of a volunteer, grant recipient & now member of their committee, Vance, who was riding his bike from Seattle to San Francisco and stopping at pre-arranged university’s along the way, to spread the word of volunteering for no costs through using “Omprakash”.
Visit: www.omprakash.org/howitworks – to find out more details.
Video coming soon!

With the tour already well underway, we had a week for pre-production planning and were soon on the road from San Fran to meet the man ‘Vance’ in Eugene, to then travel back south, getting the footage we needed of him riding the coast, the ‘avenue of the giants’, and riding through wine country – which was a definite crowd pleaser ;)

We spent three weeks on the road with Vance, documenting his outreach tour for Omprakash.

I won’t give to much away, you’ll have to wait in anticipation for the finished result… coming very soon!

Omprakash Foundation - Outreach Tour PhotoTeaser

SAN DIEGO

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #1

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #2

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #3

Tori Roze & The Hot Mess #4

2/5 of the Hot Mess

Causing a splash in San Diego with Tori & The Hot Mess

Yeah, we kind of went for that dead looking look.

Tori & The Hot Mess band shoot - Adele's vs

Some 'behind the scenes' action from Tori & The Hot Mess shoot

more BTS

Getting cold 'behind the scenes' but still having a laugh

COASTAL FREEWAY

Freeway 1 - Coastal Freewayway. Beautiful views from our ride betsy

Has there ever been a picture of us on here together?? Don't think so.. must have been that sea breeze

Gorgeous day & Stunning views

I recommend this drive to anyone going to California! We were lucky with the weather being it was October, the summer was still lingering

Hovering over the edge..

I actually have no idea where this was.

LOS ANGELES

LOS ANGELES BABY!

Sleepy seaside town at a place called Shell Beach

SAN FRANCISCO

San Francisco! Taken at Lands End, cool view of the Golden Gate Bridge

Lands End, another point of view

Nice and close using the 300mm.. Golden Gate Bridge

San Francisco Fire Dept

Rolling hills of San Fran

Yeah baby!

San Francisco Blue "Grass" Festival. Were we in a time warp?

Blue grass Festival - and no i dont know who the young guy is ;) ??

Stunning image here by multi talented photographer Adele Thomas

Early morning light overlooking the city of San Fransico

YOSEMITE:

Maybe I looked too much at that Ansel Adams book uh? Or maybe not enough...

This doesn't give justice to how magnificent these trees were.

Yep, it was cold in the van.

Sunset in Yosemite

Shining bright

There's a rainbow faintly showing in the mist

Yosemite Park

Yosemite Valley

OMPRAKASH ON TOUR:

Avenue of the giants. Omprakash Movie

Hanging out. The other awesome VW couple Siomara & Rustin, Vance on a GIANT log.. Ricci in awe

Rustin not stuck in a gigantic tree! Unlike someone else we know whom was! lol

this, not only make's Vance look like a flutterby but is the actual bottom end of a fallen sequoia tree.. its huge!

Behind the Scenes of the Omprakash tour film..

The beautiful & ancient redwoods - Avenue of the giants (Old Highway 101)

Yeah, you know, just some location scouting on the way up..

An awesome day off from shooting

The redwoods. Pretty much incredible.

Same same

A shot from the Omprakash shoot. within seconds a bike running at 300km/h will cross the frame

Yeah! Let's go check out that lighthouse!

First off, I would like to introduce the third and final video we have created for Pisco Sin Fronteras: The Challenge. The idea was to challenge the wanabe volunteer, while also showing the diversity of the international people that come through PSF.
Take a look: (if you see a freaky looking Italian a couple of times and a wind swept English slangy Cornish girl.. we had to make up the numbers.. apparently..)

After one month of volunteering with PSF and putting together some videos, photography and helping out here and there with projects, it was time to get back on the road again.. It was sad saying goodbye to the cool and interesting people we had met, they had made our experience even more unique.


A quick jump in, jump out of Lima and we were back on course, heading north following the Peruvian coast. Spending our nights again in the sticks, the first night in particular was spent on a towering cliff top over looking a bay and the open ocean.. it was a lovely spot with nothing but dunes all around. We had parked reasonably close to the cliff edge on a slight angle which didn’t bother me at all until we were tucked in to sleep that night, waves were crashing into the rocks and it grew very dark, I suddenly felt very disorientated and all I could picture was the van sliding off the edge into sea… I felt like every movement might plunge me to my death! Not the best night sleep as you can guess…


At sunrise we drove on, the scenery stayed dry and dusty with desert dunes, sometimes mountainous, sometimes bumpy and flat. We were stopped by ‘every’ police officer along the way… which made the journey seem to take forever, (we should change the colour of the van to look like a taxibus!) but on the final one that got us, Betsy’s wouldn’t start up… when we turned the ignition it just clicked over.. this turned into 4 days living in a mechanics workshop in Truijjo, with replacing the ignition itself, which technically should have taken… hmm, around 3-4 hours! but we had to wait for the part to come in.


Around one week after, we were crossing into Ecuador. Greeted at the boarder with a warm welcome and given gifts?! That’s never happened before.. we instantly had a good impression about this country. It was clean, green and the people were so friendly. We stayed west passing banana fields and mountains until we entered into the national park where the land became blander in colour, but the ocean came back into view with stretches of golden beaches and restaurants perched along them. Throughout this part of the journey there was a slow but definite tapping sound when accelerating, coming from underneath the van, towards the drivers back wheel.. it grew worse as we progressed towards the capital city Quito, and the taps soon became bangs… hence Quito becoming part of our agenda..


The mechanic changed two parts on the back wheels before finding out, that wasn’t the problem and the banging was still there.. They figured it must be the gearbox! As you can imagine, we were pretty upset hearing this, and it would honestly be the last straw if we had to replace. The diagnosis on Betsy’s gear box was a gear piece had broken into bits and was clanging around inside the gear box, and is not exactly a straight forward piece to replace either, you can’t just pick up a new from a store.. We have three options, SELL! Replace the gear box, or replace the piece.. We don’t want to sell for obvious reasons and the last two options cost $1000 and more. We cant afford that kind of money, so the mechanic proposed to take the broken part to a specialist and ask them to copy the grooves and nooks into another piece we found, to make it fit.. $150. Plus mechanic fees. So, we’ve spent the last 10days and nights on curfew to be back at the workshop by 5:30pm for when they lock up and lock us in. 7ft walls surround us with broken glass shards sprinkled along its edges! At home we call this prison. We sleep in the van that’s perched up on jacks, waiting for this new part to come in.. All fingers and toes crossed that we are good to go by this wknd so Carlo can at least see his 30th birthday out of these four walls and perhaps within four walls of a nice bar? Sounds reasonable.
I think we’ll keep you posted on that one ;)

The "scary view" which kept Adele awake..

Those tires signs on the sand are Betsy's. She was looking to commit suicide.

Carlo is cooking while Adele is taking this picture. The world up-side-down

A lonely man lost in the.. wait, oh snap. That's a woman.

Well, this is pretty cool, isn't it?

The answer is: I have no bloody idea..

On the way out of Peru, breath...

Jungle and bananas

An incredible morning, waking up in front of the ocean after one of the really few dinner out just off the beach... Priceless.

Our prison

In case you missed it in the previous one

The one on the left is the ma*a*uc*er which broke. The other one is our $150.

A series of shots for Angus' (a friend met at PSF) upcoming album. He's not just an amazing carpenter. He's a great musican too. n.1

n.2

n.3&4

n.5

We have never experienced such a diverse way of living.. From sleeping in a mechanics workshop for a week! To waking to the crashing of the waves on a rocky shoreline, to star gazing into a vast expanse of crystal clear sky – showing all of the beautiful milky way in the southern hemisphere and Orion’s belt in the north. After days of driving through the Atacama desert, the driest desert on earth, being able to dreamily take a walk upon the Atacama Salar and hearing the snow like crunch under foot from the crystallized salt… with nothing else but pure silence.. An eerie silence that is actually able to make a buzzing noise to your eardrum.. Life’s really all about taking the good with the bad or the bad with the good.. depending.. for instance, the hell Betsy puts us through some days, the last week makes it all worth while and even thanks to all ’16′ (yep, I’m counting!) mechanics we have had the pleasure of meeting, Carlo has managed to pick up a few mechanic skills along the way! Which of course has already come in handy, many a time.. Especially now, as tomorrow we venture into a new country, Bolivia. We have to acclimatize to being several thousand meters above sea level in landlocked La Paz and lake Titicaca before making another crossing by April into Peru!

Another motor to fix and these two customers also stay the night..

The Burbs of Vina

Neighborhood up the hills of Vina Del Mar

La Pangue observatory in vicuna, where we had a private tour with an astrophysicist called Eric! Thanks again Eric!

Telescope with 40cm diameter lens to observe the night sky in Vicuna, to the west of La Serena

Southern hemisphere, Milky way. Among these stars we were told by Eric, is one very unstable star that is dying and is turning into a supernova! (Which of course has already happened.. your always looking into the past when studying the night sky) and we are due to see this transformation happen within our life time, the effect will be like a 2nd sun and bring constant daylight to the earth and our galaxy for a couple of weeks! Good to know I think?! Eric told us, nothing to worry about though...!

Northern hemisphere.. Orion's belt (the polar bear..) visible on left of observatory

Osvaldo the mechanic in Chanaral, again very kind and fixed the accelerator cable. The list goes on..

Portofino beach at sunset

Hills of the Atacama Desert

It really is the driest desert on earth.. We kept hoping to glimpse a prehistoric geoglyph in the hillsides, to keep us amused.. but nothing but desert hills

The creation of a 'twister' in the distance, not quite as bad as the twisters in the movie..

The Salar de Atacama. An untouched part at least..

All deserts have an oasis

Just before reaching our destination of Arica, at the end of the desert, a prehistoric geoglyph?

Modern geoglyphs.. The new frontier of advertising for Coca Cola

Looking forward..

Due to some very goods news we received recently, we left Ushuaia with a certain urgency to head back north and hoping to reach Santiago in the next couple of days. I’ve been working on finding us volunteer placements in non-profit organisations in Peru and was really pleased to receive all very positive replies! We have been fortunate to have some project proposals come our way and have been asked we provide our skills and services as photographers to help their cause. We have a lot to finalise, however we probably will be shooting documentaries and updating photography for their websites and folios to help generate more fund raising and new volunteers for their program’s. We are really looking forward to getting involved with these organizations and more than keen to work with them on the projects proposed. Which is why we have re thought our plan and now want to spend a little longer in Peru and spread out our time there over hopefully 3 organizations. To make this happen, we will need to be in Peru by the beginning of April and so realised we have little time to get there. Especially as we want to spend at least a month in Bolivia before so..

Which is the reason for the hectic amount of ground covered this last week, not only have we managed to get 3000km north! But also…. we’ve picked up 3 hitchhikers, seen 2 mechanics, had the pleasure of waking up to a flat tyre! (which lead to the buying and mounting of 2 new ones!) And enjoyed two different Argentinian BBQ’s on two separate occasions – offered to us by some wonderfully kind and generous Argentinian people we met along the way..

Encase your wondering why we needed to stop at ‘two’ mechanics, Betsy is a little greedy with how much oil she likes to consume.. Around a ltr of oil in 250km! So we had our mechanics help us to temporarily fix the problem until we can get to Santiago. The first in rio Gallegos with Marcel and the 2nd Enrico, in Esquel. A beautiful little town tucked away in a valley with a mountainous backdrop, hence it’s popularity in ski season.

All being well, the van shouldn’t take longer than a week to fix up at our mechanics in Valparaiso (close to Santiago), we will take what time is needed to have her prepared for the roads ahead in Bolivia… And then we will continue up through northern Chile, stopping in la Serena, one of the worlds best spots to star gaze before entering the heat of the Atacama desert….

Enrico the mechanic in Esquel

Last glance of the gorgeous landscape in Tierra Del Fuego

A hill top cross - Ushuaia

Carlos, the hitch hiker whom walks the earth.. (I honestly thought I was looking at my dad standing on the side of the road! you never know, he likes walking 'alot' too.. Partly why we had to pick him up)

First sight of open ocean seen in weeks - Between Rio Gallegos and Bariloche

Mars?

Because today it feels a bit different.

After a fantastic month together, Giorgia, Lorenzo and little Olivia left us to go back to northern Argentina and then Italy, and we have now realised that this is actually happening, and that the trip is starting. Together with some sadness seeing some of my very best friend leaving, the realisation that what we are doing is real, arrived. We knew that we would have had some tough moments in our trip, and to be honest on one side we already experimented more than we expected, but on the other we know that there is more that has yet to come. But you’re never ready for that moment that finds you unprepared, and forces you to move forward and concentrate on the next move. Or the next shot.

We are in Ushuaia at the moment, the southern most city in South America, ready to face the beginning of the journey. After five weeks of travel the awareness that we can make it is growing on us, together with the conviction that what we shot up until now is closer to a “touristic” point of view than documentary and we both know that we want to go deeper into the culture and experiment more, whenever that means to be bolder or create situations that allow us to focus more and exploit this wonderful opportunity at its best.

The wonderful backdrop driving towards the Glaciers National Park

A view of he Viedma Lake

An extremely windy and rainy view of the national park

The Perito Moreno Glacier, one of the seven wonders of the world

Valley view, still a small portion considering that the whole glacier is 250 km2

A side view

Texture

On the way out from the national park, an icelandic view

Eduardo, metal musician and race car mechanic, special guesting on Betsy

Real men at work

An unreal evening in a lost town, Tierra del Fuego

Blinded by the light

A petrol and a police station, need anything else?

A remote petrol station and its gas man

A ship wreck in the port of Ushuaia

End of the world snow capped mountains and containers. The end of the beginning.

Where to start? 10 Days ago we started our journey south. With nothing but open road ahead of us and a rather freshly tweaked little camper, we flew our way onto the motorway out of the bustling city of Santiago to make the ‘long way down’ to Patagonia.

We drove several hundred miles over a couple of days and camped in the wild of a national park called Conguillio. The roads were horrendous but the landscape in comparison was beautiful. It held a couple of huge lakes, towering mountains, vast hilly woodland and an eyesore of a Volcano called Llaima stood smack in the middle! The devastation of the last eruption in the 30’s (which lasted for almost 30 years!) was still very visible with miles of volcanic rubble and ash left in its wake.

We passed into the boarder of Argentina with ease, even if we did chug along past the officers looking ‘more’ suspicious than we actually were… “Yes Officer, we are driving a BRIGHT orange van into Argentina” – However, thankfully no alarm caused. Pretty much all documents were in check and we were allowed to pass.

Our next stop was a meeting point just after the boarder crossing at Villa Pehuenia in the Lake District. Whereby we were on schedule to catch some friends of Carlo’s from Italy, Georgia, Lorenzo and little Olivia. By coincidence they are here at the same time and have rented a motor home to travel, so we have a few weeks together to head south.

We continue on, following the spine of the Andes, climbing into higher altitudes, experiencing the most breath taking crystal lakes of the Lake District. Surrounded by woodland, a mountainous landscape as far as the eye can see with winding roads meandering in and around these vast lakes, it can seem you are passing by a great ocean. We feel this really is a special part of South America.

*Couple minor problems with Betsy:

• The boot won’t close properly due to the sheer amount of vibration when driving off road – seriously bumpy roads!
• Carlo put the water cap on the roof of the van and drove happily away.. or shall I say not so happily..

On the plus side, she has been awesome so far. Were pretty organsised inside and we’ve made great use of the space. Very comfortable at night in the roof, except maybe a couple nights where the temperature dropped considerably and the weather was howling outside.. I thought, I might die..

Over the next few days we will visit a couple more national parks until we hit northern Patagonia and then we have 700k (3days) of dirt road into ‘no mans land’ to look forward to! Endless bumpy road into a barren and inhospitable terrain…

NO, we’re not dead. And YES, it has been way more tough than we thought.

Apologies for this incredibly late post, but the last two months have been insane. Crazy on one side and extremely boring (un-inspiring) on the other.
The good news it’s that we’re now on the road.

To cut a VERY long story short, we bought a van (the great westfalia, named Betsy) after waiting for it to be fixed for over a month since we first got in Santiago, then we blew the engine three days after, waited for two more weeks for a new engine to be installed, and when we thought we were ready to travel, a list of 20more “little” things to fix came out.

And all this brought us to THE MAN. There’s a picture of him at the beginning of the post, because even if Chile has been terrible under soooo many ways, he’s the symbol of all the amazing people that we’ve met on our tribulation. Javier (El Ja, rally driver, fantastic mechanic and awesome person), Arturo (our “random” friend in Santiago who help us incredibly, and mounted the solar panel) and a list of other people who made our staying enjoyable and less stressful (you know who you are).

So here we are, two tow trucks, 4 mechanics later, and a few miles behind our backs, we’re now heading through Argentina. Ready to start this journey.
More photography and video will come soon.