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chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla

Matt & Carla Remember folks 'Regret what you do, not what you don't' and with that thought we welcome you to our round the world travel blog.

As our journey is now over we hope that some of our stories and adventures may help or inspire anybody else who is lucky enough to be currently in any of the locations we visited or planning to travel in the near future.

Do we regret our trip ? .......... absolutely not it was the best year of both our lives and even though we are now back home and things have already started to fall back into exactly the same places they were before we left...... we will always be able to close our eyes or read this blog and draw on some of the most amazing, breathtaking, humbling and unforgettable moments of our lives.
We saw as much as we physically felt possible in 360 days and although only a tiny snapshot of the world outside of our comfort zone we enjoyed EVERY single minute.

We must have been asked a hundred times "what was your favourite country ?" and although of the 14 we visited Japan, Thailand, Lao, Australia, Bolivia and Brazil all stood out - the country that will leave the longest lasting effect on both of us for so many reasons is Cambodia......happiness against all the odds and a special country that touched both our hearts.

Favourite places ? .........those destinations that will always be special to us both:

Kyoto, Pai, Luang Prabang, Phnom Phen, Sydney, Melbourne, Queenstown, Cusco, Isla Del Sol, Buenos Aires, Rio......etc,etc

If your reading this in a dirty internet cafe a million miles from home.......enjoy every minute, it will all be over before you know it!

peace mandc


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Joined on: June 22nd 2006
Last Login: August 19th 2008

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Blogs & Travel Journals

by chilled2thecore, order by Date newest first.

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"We live by the River!"
"We live by the River!"
It may not be the Mekong, Amazon or Mighty Urubamba but the Thames has it charm..especially at sunset
Well Hello !! its been a while - over 6 months in fact - since we typed our last blog in a late night internet café in Rio both full of anticipation, dread and excitement about our return to reality and what we hoped would be our next great adventure. And an adventure it certainly has been ! …so tonight after returning from a failed attempt to meet out travelling hero -Michael Palin - due to mass demand for seats in the gallery auditorium he was presenting a debate on something or other, we find ourselves drinking red wine feeling slightly [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 2 Comment(s) | 11 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=267378] | 2008-04-29 22:22:52

Where the wild flowers grow
Not a chance Luv !
Blue skies and Red wine

The girl (and boy) from Ipanema
The girl (and boy) from Ipanema
Sunset over the madness that is Ipanema beach.
So here we are; 360 days, 62 blogs and 14 countries later. This time tomorrow we will be home. This probably won´t be our last ever blog, as what started as a way of keeping friends and family up to date with our travels, has become an obsession and our own personal record of the experiences (good, bad and ugly) people (friends, enemies and the slightly unstable) and unforgettable moments throughout the past 12 months. But as one adventure ends, many more lie in wait (finding jobs, a new place to call home, getting married) and we head home feeling positive [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 16 Comment(s) | 21 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=196038] | 2007-08-26 23:24:43

So many problems, yet so many smiles
I wanna be a gang leader
The National Grid (favela style)

Reflections of Paraty
Reflections of Paraty
At high tide the ancient streets of Paraty flood making crossing the road a little difficult.
With the clock ticking on our adventure we decided to head south for some relaxation before returning to Rio for a last few days. Our first stop was Paraty and we managed by sheer coincidence to arrive at Rio´s bus terminal minutes before a bus left and bagged the last two seats. 4 hours later we arrived, realised we had the address of the B&B we had booked into but no map and began to wander off vaguely in the direction we had guessed was right before being stopped by an English man holding a sign with Matt´s name, ready to [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 3 Comment(s) | 9 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=195752] | 2007-08-25 23:47:25

No direction home
Lopes Mendes - Ilha Grande
"this time next week luv, we

Looking to the heavens
Looking to the heavens
Reflections of Christ the redeemer, Rio de Janeiro
Touching down in Rio made me realise three things: 1. We are so over long bus journeys (our trip to Rio being our last and longest at 23 mind numbing hours) 2. We only had 2 weeks until we headed home......and 3. I am officially an old fart The first two speak for themselves.... but let me explain the third. When trying to book a hostel in Rio we had discovered that they were both pricey and few in numbers, especially in the area we wanted to be based Copacabana/Ipanema. So with little choice I made the fatal school boy error [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 2 Comment(s) | 11 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=193450] | 2007-08-24 23:52:59

Hallelujah
The mighty Maracana
Looking down on Copacabana

Here come the Alligators
Here come the Alligators
Steve Irwin points = 9 (out of a possible 10)
We left Curitiba bound for Campo Grande, one of several Brazilian starting points for a trip to the Pantanal. These are the country´s ´wetlands´where low mountains and an abundance of converging rivers make for excellent conditions and a strange sounding biological soup in the water providing for a host of animals and birds. The wet season leaves the area flooded, we were visiting in the dry season when despite being winter daytime temperatures soar into the 30´s and combined with very little rain there are fewer water patches for animals to drink at theoretically giving us a higher chance of [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 6 Comment(s) | 13 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=193396] | 2007-08-17 23:25:36

Sunset over the Pantanal
Cowboy and Cowgirl
A Bill Oddie double point score!!

Sunset, skyline and gigantic gerbils
Sunset, skyline and gigantic gerbils
A lone Capivara enjoys the view as the sun sets over Curitiba
Since we have been away we have both adopted the idea that whilst we travel through other countrys and invade other people's lives - as long as we are polite, aware and willing to adapt then good luck and good fortune will follow us around - a sort of traveller's karma if you like. This theory may just be a load of hippy nonsense and I may be being a little over reflective as our trip draws to an end but as the rest of this blog goes to show....someone is smiling down on us. We first met Adriana and Betina [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 4 Comment(s) | 12 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=189322] | 2007-08-13 18:20:10

Isla do mel
Surfing for beginners
All cannon and no balls (thank god!)

Toucan - Iguasu national park, Brazil
Toucan - Iguasu national park, Brazil
Bill Oddie points = 9 (out of a possible 10)
Our whole trip evolved from an attempt to plan a holiday which would take in one sight that each of us were keen to see; for Matt Machu Picchu and for me Iguasu Falls and after almost 11 months we made our way to the small town of Puerto Iguasu nearby the famous waterfalls. Arriving to a beautiful clear day with temperatures warmer than we had experienced for a while we wasted little time in a quick shower and change of clothes (we had travelled 16 hours overnight by bus) before jumping on another bus to take us the 18 or [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 5 Comment(s) | 14 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=189265] | 2007-08-07 14:23:28

The star of the show, with added rainbow
Arty black & white sheraton photo #1
UN.......BELIEVABLE

We left Bariloche and it´s arctic conditions behind us and headed 850 miles north to Buenos Aires. We had made the most of some unbelievably cold weather but from here on in we would continue to head back up towards the equator and hopefully warmer weather at every stop until our journey´s end in 6 weeks on the beaches of Rio. Leaving Patagonia also meant our last glimpses of the Andes and surrounding countryside that had been our home since arriving in South America some 2.5 months ago. The Andes had been a mystical place that I had dreamt of visiting [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 5 Comment(s) | 14 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=185103] | 2007-08-13 14:11:10

Carlos Gardel, Evita and the Fat Cheat
Go Team
25 hours in Uruguay

Look out here comes the 80's
Look out here comes the 80's
Carla's ski wera takes me back to the time when C&A decked out the whole UK in Ski Wear. I think it was the late 1980's when you would see whole families out shopping in Skidaddle ski suits...in mid J... [more]
leaving England last September we had never heard of Bariloche, let alone been able to point it out on a map but constant glowing reports from people we had met meant that we ended up on a 17 hour bus journey there from Mendoza. Located in Argentina´s Patagonian lake district the town thrives in the summer months for trekking, cycling and other outdoor activities and comes to life again in the winter when thousands of tourists make it their base to take on the slopes of Cerro Catedral - supposedly South America´s most important ski resort. We arrived after our journey [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 9 Comment(s) | 9 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=181165] | 2007-08-07 13:23:18

What do we look like !!
High above Patagonia
The beginning of the so called "green run"

-20 but still smiling
-20 but still smiling
The views at the top of Mt Arenales brought a smile to even the most frozen of faces
Travel update: up until arrival at our third stop in Argentina and our 94th destination of the trip, Mendoza, we had been on the road for 307 days with a scheduled 53 days remaining. I have become a more patient and slightly thinner version of my previous self - complete with shaved head and one of those silly triangular tufts of hair below my bottom lip (which is now long enough to trap scraps of food) - Whilst Carla has become my fiance and less of a worrier who has had one haircut in 10 months and now constantly wears a [View Full Entry]

chilled2thecore - Matt & Carla | Read The Full Entry | Subscribe | 7 Comment(s) | 11 Photo(s) | 0 Video(s) | [diary=179277] | 2007-08-08 21:00:42

Oliver of the Antartic
Matt of the Antartic
Carla of the Antartic



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