After a few months in South America, towns and cities begin to melt into each other. (“Where was that amazing ice cream place? Santiago or Buenos Aires?”, “Where was that yellow church? Montevideo or Asunción?”)
How to make friends in a new country
If you’ve just moved to a new country then it can be hard to new meet people. We offer a guide on how to make friends in a new country.
Last year, I wrote about the challenges of talking to strangers on the road or in unfamiliar social situations. I shared five ways to break the ice and endear you to your newly acquainted.
One recurring question since then has been: how do I meet people in the first place? This is especially important when you’ve just moved to a new country.
10 delightful words that don’t exist in English – but should
There are few nations preoccupied with social decorum as deeply as the Brits. We can have entire conversations consisting solely of the word ‘sorry’, we express our anger by apologising and when we’re really rageful we do such radical things as refusing to offer tea.
15 lessons from our trip around the world
I didn’t want to write this post mainly because it’s impossible to do this sort of roundup without sounding wanky. I’m sure there are millions of words already written on the virtues of travel and the wisdom won from life on the road.
Adjusting to life in a tiny French village
We sample the simple life in a tiny French village, the perfect intermediary between the sweeping highs of travel and the daily challenges of city life
There are certain connotations attached to country life. It’s either bourgeois and boring (if you adopt it) or insular and provincial (if you were born into it). Five years ago, the thought of spending several months in a tiny French village with nothing more than a bakery and a corner shop would have worried me.
On every corner: the extraordinary history of London
In London, you can walk past something significant every day and never notice. We list 10 hidden sites that illustrate the extraordinary history of London
London lacks many things: picnic weather in July, a resilience to winter snow, an effective solution to the hipster invasion. What it does have in abundance – more so than almost any other city in the world – is an inexhaustible well of intriguing history. It spills forth from domes and spires, flows amid the currents of the River Thames, and rushes through the veins of our subterranean network.
In fact, so bountiful and broad is the history of London, one could easily walk past something different every day without realising its significance. Here we list 10 extraordinary historical sites hidden beneath a banal facade.
What are the hardest languages to learn?
The 10 hardest languages to learn for native English speakers based on data from the Foreign Service Institute at the US Department of State
We’ve written before about the best language to learn based on a number of different criteria. The verdict was French which, as a Romance language, is relatively easy for English speakers. (We stress the word ‘relatively’ because all language learning takes effort.)
Hello, London
Seventeen countries, four continents, one international date line, and a complete circumnavigation later, we’re home
We’re home.
We bid farewell in August last year. Seventeen countries, four continents, one international date line, and a complete circumnavigation later, we’re home.
Things are different. Boris bikes are red now. The Tories have a majority. And Robert Peston grew hair.
Rio de Janeiro: the world’s most photogenic city?
Rio de Janeiro is a vibrant, colourful, life-affirming city. Here, we illustrate why it was the perfect way to end our year-long trip around the world
We are ensconced in a small Copacabana hostel in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is by far the worst accommodation we’ve had in months. Contrary to the decidedly lovely pictures on the hostel website, our bedroom is tiny, stuffy, smelly and inexplicably noisy.
10 types of expats: which one are you?
“¿Por qué Uruguay?” I asked the Armenian restaurateur why he had moved to Montevideo.
He winked at me and smiled. “Por amor.”
Clearly, he was a ‘Romantic’ as defined by InterNations in their second annual Expat Insider survey, updated for 2015. The expat organisation surveyed 14,000 of its 1.8 million members from around the world to assess the living situations and wellbeing of expatriates. With this wealth of quantitative and qualitative data, they defined 10 specific types of expats as shown in the infographic below.
Iguazu Falls boat ride: getting drenched by a natural wonder
The Iguazu Falls boat ride experience was frantic and completely exhilarating! Getting beneath the roaring cascades was like nothing I’ve ever experienced
Atlas & Boots recently co-hosted Lonely Planet’s natural wonders vs manmade sights #LPChat debate on Twitter. We were both firmly in the natural wonders camp, with Mt Yasur volcano in Vanuatu and Perito Moreno glacier in Argentina among our top travel experiences of all time.
6 tips for visiting Asunción, Paraguay
We explore Asunción, Paraguay and share six useful tips
‘Paraguay – The Heart of South America’ is how this landlocked country sells itself. We assume they mean geographically because it could just as easily be described as ‘The Nowhere of South America’. In fact, it often is.
Nestled between Bolivia, Argentina and Brazil (and by ‘nestled’, we mean ‘languishing’), Paraguay has no single majestic attraction like Bolivia’s salt flats, Argentina’s Perito Moreno or Brazil’s Iguassu Falls. Paraguay is not only one of the poorest countries on the continent with more than a third of its population below the poverty line, but also one of the most corrupt.
10 lessons from ‘the world’s poorest president’
Uruguay’s José Mujica, the ‘world’s poorest president’, lives in a 1-bed home, drives a Beetle and gives away 90% of his salary. We share his wisdom
I’ve always had a very specific idea about Uruguay. Crouched deep in the belly of the continent, it was in my mind an expansive plain of rolling hills, laconic gauchos astride thoroughbred horses and tall blades of grass bristling in the sun.
I’m sure my version of Uruguay exists somewhere but the one I found was vastly different. Instead of a South American Arcadia, I found a modern country with liberal views and impressively progressive laws.
7 expert tips for learning multiple languages
I’ve always thought of myself as an avid learner, someone who enjoys challenges and discovering new things. In truth, I’m only avid when I have a choice in what I’m learning. Ahead of our extended stay in France, I thought I would approach French with the same zest with which I studied Spanish.
10 quirky things to do in Buenos Aires
After several weeks in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego at the southern reaches of the inhabited world, we were very much looking forward to thawing out in Buenos Aires, the “Paris of South America”. We arrived in the bohemian area of San Telmo an hour early and stood on a street corner, wondering where to go to await our host and the keys to our lovely apartment.
Beginners’ French: language hacks for word endings
A master of ten languages, Michel Thomas has taught beginners’ French to the stars. Here are some of the hacks I’ve picked up so far
Once our journey around the world officially ends, we’ll be heading to France for a few months before finally returning to London. With only a short-course French qualification to my name (from my school days nearly 17 years ago), I need to improve my French quick smart.
So far, I have been tackling the task digitally with a combination of Duolingo and the Michel Thomas Method. I’ve been using Duolingo for Spanish throughout South America with mixed success, but the Michel Thomas Method is a promising new approach for me.
10 places to see before they’re gone – or perhaps not
Friends and readers often ask us about the Galápagos. Is it worth the expense, they say. Would you recommend going?
The truth is it’s hard to encourage people to visit when we’ve seen first hand the damaging effects of human presence on the islands. Equally, it’s hard to discourage people from visiting because a) it would be hypocritical and b) underneath the frenzied tourism lies a unique destination with some of the best beaches we’ve seen and the best diving we’ve ever done (sharks, rays, sea lions and turtles). Clearly, the islands are worth a visit.
8 things to do in Puerto Natales, Chile
“We wanted an adventure holiday, but we wanted to come back in the evening to somewhere cozy and comfortable,” said Matt and Kirsty, two Americans we met during our stay in Puerto Natales.
Like them, we visited the windswept plains of Chilean Patagonia out of season meaning multi-day treks through Torres del Paine were out of the question. But that didn’t put a complete dampener on our experience. There was still plenty of adventuring to be enjoyed outside of Torres del Paine National Park without spending our days stomping along a hiking trail with only a fitful night’s sleep under canvas (not that I mind that of course).
How to treat travel burnout
Almost exactly a year ago, I wrote a piece on how to avoid travel burnout. The steps described therein really helped us make the most of our time on the road. Step three was particularly effective (i.e. don’t plan more than 60% of your schedule). Between planning, travelling, writing, filming, photographing and filing external commissions, we would have fast run ragged had we not built in pockets of downtime. This worked well until we got to Bolivia.
8 quirky things to do in Peru this year
Machu Picchu may be its brightest jewel but there are some quirky things to do in Peru, from fine foodie festivals to master filmmaking
As our round-the-world trip nears its end in Brazil, backpackers coming the other way have started asking after our favourite country on the continent. We tell them it’s a close call between Chile with its incredibly diverse landscape and Peru with its sweeping natural beauty.
