Rock Slide Adventures from Arequipa to Iquitos!

Seeing the rock slide up close for the first time after waiting 48 hours for the rocks to be removed!

We had quite the adventure traveling from our last stop in southern Peru, the beautiful mountainous and colonial city of Arequipa to the hot and humid jungle of the Amazon in Iquitos; the gateway and access point to the Amazon Rainforest in Peru! Iquitos is surrounded by the Amazon River on one side and the Amazon Rainforest on all other sides so the only way to reach Iquitos is to either fly there or travel by boat. Therefore, Iquitos is the world’s largest city that can not be reached by any roads. We didn’t have the time to travel by boat up the Amazon River as it takes a week, so we decided to fly.

We had purchased our plane tickets to Iquitos weeks in advance and just had to make sure we arrived in Lima before our flight departed. We had decided to travel from Arequipa to Lima by bus and even though the bus journey is about a 17 hour trip and wouldn’t save us time traveling, we would be saving money as a bus ticket is less expensive than flying. We had the extra time for bus travel scheduled into our itinerary, but what we didn’t have scheduled into our itinerary was a rock slide. It would have been a great trip viewing the entire southern coastal landscape of Southern Peru along the Pan American Highway, but it actually turned out to be a disaster because of the rock slide. The Pan American Highway is the most important highway in Peru, as it connects all major cities in the country's coastal area from the most northern part of the country to the southern most part, so you can imagine all the traffic that uses this highway that abruptly came to a stand still.

Read more about the rock slide on the Treasures Of Traveling Website!

-- Luke Keeler

Traveling by Bus Between La Paz and Uyuni!

This is a train town you wouldn’t want to miss!

I have had a few sad travel experiences, but my most devastating travel experience was when I traveled by bus between La Paz and Uyuni. It was one of the most sad days of my life. You probably are thinking, it couldn’t have been that awful and you might be right. It was just a devastating day to me and let me tell you why!

My friend Joni and I had just spent the last few days enjoying La Paz, the capital city of Bolivia and were trying to figure out where we should travel to next. Should we cycle down Bolivia’s Death Road, the most dangerous road in the world, or travel 348 miles to Uyuni, the southern part of the country to see the largest salt flats in the world? We were short on time and could only do one of the two activities so we chose to see the salt flats! We boarded a bus for a 10 hour overnight trip to Uyuni. I wasn’t thrilled by that aspect, but I wanted to see these salt flats since we were in Bolivia and we were so close to them.

Read more on the Treasures Of Traveling website!

-- Luke Keeler