My Extreme Adventures Around the World
Huayna Potosí
Huayna Potosí sits just an hour outside of La Paz — which already tells you something about Bolivia.
Where else can you go from a chaotic city at 3,600m to the summit of a 6,088m glaciated peak in two days? This was hands down the most physically demanding thing I've done on this trip.
We're talking crampons, ice axes, a 3am start in the dark, and altitude that makes every single step feel like you're breathing through a straw.
What makes it genuinely extreme is not just the height — it's the fact that you don't need to be a professional mountaineer to attempt it. You just need to be fit, stubborn, and slightly crazy.
I was already deep into Bolivia at that point — fresh off the Death Road and a tour of the Potosí mines — and this was the natural next push.
If you're building your Bolivia trip and wondering how to fit it all in, check out my Bolivia itineraries — Huayna Potosí deserves its own dedicated slot, not a rushed afterthought.
Colca Canyon
Colca Canyon is one of those places that sounds manageable on paper — until you're actually in it.
Located a few hours from Arequipa, it's one of the deepest canyons in the world, and the trek down is deceptively brutal. What gets you is not the distance — it's the combination of a relentless incline and heat that hits harder than expected at that altitude.
Your legs are burning on the way down, and by the time you're climbing back out, your lungs are working overtime in air that's already thin.
I was doing a bigger loop through Peru at that point — coming from Puno and Lake Titicaca and eventually heading toward Machu Picchu — and Colca ended up being one of the highlights of the whole stretch.
Not the most famous stop, but honestly one of the most physically honest ones.
Chapada Diamantina
Chapada Diamantina is the kind of place that doesn't show up on most people's Brazil itinerary — and that's exactly what makes it special.
Tucked into the interior of Bahia, far from the beaches and the obvious tourist trail, it's a national park built for multi-day trekking through dramatic valleys, waterfalls and cave pools.
The difficulty here is not one single moment of adrenaline — it's the accumulation. Days of hiking in heat, carrying everything on your back through remote landscape where the next town feels very far away.
Originally I had planned to trek Lençóis Maranhenses first, but the season wasn't right — so Chapada became the trekking fix instead.
I got here after time on the coast between Barra Grande and Itacaré, and after all that beach time, proper trail suffering felt almost necessary.
If you're building a Brazil trip, start with Rio — ideally during Carnival — then work your way north. Don't skip Chapada.
Acatenango
Acatenango was one of my first real high-altitude treks, and it made sure I knew it.
The trail is steep from the start — relentlessly so — and the cold hits harder than expected once you're up in the clouds, especially overnight when the temperature drops and the wind picks up around the camp.
The crowd is the one thing nobody warns you about enough. It's a popular one, and on the trail you feel it.
I came to Acatenango straight from Antigua — the classic base for the climb and honestly one of the best towns in Central America to decompress before putting yourself through this.
Guatemala has a way of stacking experiences on top of each other like that — from the chaos and beauty of Lake Atitlán to bombing through the countryside on the moto trip.
Acatenango sits at the extreme end of that spectrum — the one that earns its views the hard way.
Mines of Muzo
Getting to Muzo is already half the adventure — it's not the kind of place you stumble across on a Colombia itinerary.
The journey is long, winding and increasingly remote. A lot of people would hesitate going somewhere like this solo, but as I cover in my Colombia safety guide, the country surprised me — even this far off the beaten track.
What stays with you though is not the journey — it's what you see inside. Men knee-deep in mud, sifting through rock for hours for a stone that might never appear.
There's something uncomfortable about watching that, in a good way — it forces you to sit with the reality behind a gemstone most people only ever see in a jewellery store. It reminded me of the Potosí mines in Bolivia — that same mix of fascination and unease.
If you're in Colombia and want something beyond the backpacker trail, Muzo belongs on the list alongside cave rappelling at Cueva de la Tronera.
Mines of Potosí
The Mines of Potosí are not a museum. That's the first thing to understand.
When you go in, you're walking into an active mine where real people spend their days — and sometimes their nights — in complete darkness, breathing dust, crouched through tunnels barely wide enough to fit a person.
The ambient alone is enough to mess with your head. And then at some point your guide pulls out dynamite, lights it, and the whole thing suddenly feels very, very real.
What hit me hardest though was the men themselves — the exhaustion on their faces, the matter-of-fact way they go about work that would break most people in a day.
Potosí was part of a bigger Bolivia stretch for me — I'd based myself in La Paz and built the rest of the trip from there.
If you're figuring out how to fit it all in, my Bolivia itinerary covers exactly that — just make sure Potosí gets its own day, not a rushed stop.
Salkantay Trek
The Salkantay Trek is five days of proper walking — long stages, cold mountain air on the first pass, and the kind of altitude that reminds you early on that Peru doesn't mess around.
The first day is the hardest reset — lungs adjusting, legs finding their rhythm, temperatures dropping fast as you gain height under the shadow of Salkantay peak.
But the landscape makes every hard hour worth it, and by the time you drop into the cloud forest on the lower stages, it feels like a completely different country.
I'd already seen that variety first-hand, from the ancient mystery of the Nazca Lines and the wildlife of Paracas on the coast, to the Inca history of Cusco and the market town of Pisac in the Sacred Valley.
But nothing ties it all together quite like arriving at Machu Picchu on foot.
After five days of earning it, the site hits completely differently.
Rappeling in Colombia
I had never done a rappel in my life before Cueva de la Tronera. So doing 150 metres into a cave void as a first attempt is either a great idea or a terrible one — I'm still not sure which.
The adrenaline of trusting a rope and a stranger to bring you down slowly into complete darkness is something else entirely. Your brain spends the first few seconds trying to negotiate with you, and then you just have to let go.
Getting there is its own challenge too — this is not a place on the standard backpacker circuit, and the journey in feels appropriately remote for what you're about to do.
Colombia has a reputation that still puts people off, but as I write about in my Colombia safety guide, I never once felt in danger — not here, not in Medellín, not in Cartagena, not even tracking down emeralds in Muzo.
Colombia rewards the people who push past the hesitation — and this rappel is probably the best proof of that.
Moto Roadtrip
The Guatemala moto trip is a different kind of extreme — no guide, no group, just you and a bike on roads that don't always behave.
The inclines catch you off guard, the tarmac disappears when you least expect it, and at some point you'll hit a fork with no internet and no obvious answer.
You just have to pick a direction and commit. That kind of decision-making sounds small until you're actually doing it alone in the middle of nowhere, and then it becomes the whole adventure.
The reward is the views — the kind you only get because you went the long way, the hard way, on two wheels through a country most people only see from a shuttle window.
I used Antigua as my base to start and end the loop, and combined with the stillness of Lake Atitlán and the physical brutality of Acatenango, it made Guatemala one of the most complete travel experiences I've had.