Daren
Begg is a well travelled New Zealand born doctor who at the time of writing was living in South Africa. This book describes his travels in South America over a four month period with his daughter Mary (also a doctor) in 1967.
They zig-zag through the continent, like any good Kiwi traveller they are budget conscious, and regularly pass by fancy hotels in favour of modest guest houses. Where they don't scrimp however is when they take internal flights that save them time that would otherwise be spent on road or rail. They also splashed out on some scenic flights to view South America's waterfalls - albeit the first two waterfall visits are failures due to cloud and fog.
They cover plenty of ground in their four months, taking in Guyana before flying to Trinidad & Tobago en route to Venezuela (no direct flights), then Colombia, Ecuador with a side trip to the Galapagos Islands, then to the Peruvian Amazon, Brasil, Paraguay, Argentina & Chile.
Highlights of their trip as a reader were probably some of the places I enjoyed visiting myself, such as Iguassu Falls (at the borders of Brasil, Paraguay & Argentina), Asuncion on a raining Sunday, the cities of Santiago and Buenas Aires.
Also places I didn't get to visit including the Galapagos, but strangely they also visited the island of Floreana and were hosted by Margaret Whittmer who by this time was living on the island with her sister. (The Wittmer's were central to bizzare goings on on the island in the years prior and central to much speculation of murder and coverups among the German people (and an Austrian) who chose to live on the island (Review of Wittmer's book Floreana; I also read another on this topic, but did not review it).
At the conclusion of his journey they had reached the most southern point they could - having first reached Rio Gallegos in Argentina (I got to here) they continued to Ushuaia right on the Beagle Channel and then on to Puerto Williams over the channel in Chile.
Overall it was a fairly vanilla summary of their travels, and was written at a steady pace without much threat of getting over excited.
3 stars
Begg is a well travelled New Zealand born doctor who at the time of writing was living in South Africa. This book describes his travels in South America over a four month period with his daughter Mary (also a doctor) in 1967.
They zig-zag through the continent, like any good Kiwi traveller they are budget conscious, and regularly pass by fancy hotels in favour of modest guest houses. Where they don't scrimp however is when they take internal flights that save them time that would otherwise be spent on road or rail. They also splashed out on some scenic flights to view South America's waterfalls - albeit the first two waterfall visits are failures due to cloud and fog.
They cover plenty of ground in their four months, taking in Guyana before flying to Trinidad & Tobago en route to Venezuela (no direct flights), then Colombia, Ecuador with a side trip to the Galapagos Islands, then to the Peruvian Amazon, Brasil, Paraguay, Argentina & Chile.
Highlights of their trip as a reader were probably some of the places I enjoyed visiting myself, such as Iguassu Falls (at the borders of Brasil, Paraguay & Argentina), Asuncion on a raining Sunday, the cities of Santiago and Buenas Aires.
Also places I didn't get to visit including the Galapagos, but strangely they also visited the island of Floreana and were hosted by Margaret Whittmer who by this time was living on the island with her sister. (The Wittmer's were central to bizzare goings on on the island in the years prior and central to much speculation of murder and coverups among the German people (and an Austrian) who chose to live on the island (Review of Wittmer's book Floreana; I also read another on this topic, but did not review it).
At the conclusion of his journey they had reached the most southern point they could - having first reached Rio Gallegos in Argentina (I got to here) they continued to Ushuaia right on the Beagle Channel and then on to Puerto Williams over the channel in Chile.
Overall it was a fairly vanilla summary of their travels, and was written at a steady pace without much threat of getting over excited.
3 stars