Cue the theme music. Strap on your bullwhip and best jungle clothes as Ann and Gordon attempt to emulate Indiana and make it to the lost city of the Tayrona people. Making it there was fine, getting back was a little trickier, but more on that later. Firstly what is Ciudad Perdida and who were the Tayrona.....yep time again for a little history lesson. Colombia has a number of diverse indigenous populations. The Tayrona were one such population who inhabited the Sierra Nevada de Santa Martha which is the mountain range in the North East of the country on the Caribbean [View Full Entry]

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We bid farewell to San Andres and uneventfully flew into Cartagena....officially Cartagena de Indies. First impression was that this city was hot.....unlike the island we had just left the cooling breeze was soaked up by the urbanity of the city. We arrived at our hostel where we met up with Wendy and her friend Will. The mentioned that they had enjoyed the few days they had been in Cartagena so far but that they had some reservations about the hostel.......the oven like rooms were the first cross, and being woken up at 3am and being asked to help roll a spliff [View Full Entry]

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A recurring theme in this trip so far has been the constant need to rug up against the cold. With a month to go we decided that we needed a holiday from travelling in the sun. Given Colombias's proximity to the Carribean.....ie it has a Carribean coastline.....and due to some dodgy diplomacy about 200 years ago, Colombia has possession of two carribean Islands which are about 750km North of Colombia but about 200km's off the Nicuraguan Coast. With Ann recovering from our night out in Bogota we headed to the airport a little early. To be fair the airport was a [View Full Entry]

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Well this is the final South American country that we are visiting on this trip (bar our small re-entry to Peru to get to Lima) and we were excited about it. On our travels up through the other countries we had mixed reports about Colombia. - Some people said "don't go its dangerous.....what with Cocaine traffikers, FARC Guerrilla's and Colombian paramilitary!" - Other people we met said, "Go! It is one of the most beautiful and safest countries in South America. Everyone is very friendly and it has hardly any tourists". The first set of people were those who had not [View Full Entry]

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It was always going to take a while for the high of the Galapagos to fade. However, given that Lucy only had a few days left we figured that a couple of days in and around the spa town of Baños would be a great way to spend that time. Thanks to Lucy we didn't have to slum it in a hostel.....no way....thanks to Lucy's generosity we got to stay in a very exclusive spa resort, with its own pools that overlooked the town of Baños. We had three days in Baños and there is plenty to do to keep you [View Full Entry]

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Here we are back in Quito! Ecuador is a little different to the countries we´ve visited so far mainly becuase it really involves wheel and spoke travel with most destinations ending in Quito and leaving from there....especially if you are in the north of the country. We´re back in Quito miainly as we leave from here to go to the Galapagos Islands and also because Lucy, Ann´s sister is coming to visit and spend a few weeks backpacking through Ecuador. She´s also bringing some additional supplies (ie really good insect repellant and more tummy pills!). With Lucy here we have 3 [View Full Entry]

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After the weather in Tena turned bad we decided against hanging around or heading deeper into the jungle, so instead we headed for the decidedly drier, though somewhat cooler highlands and the Quilatoa Loop. The Loop is effectively the route that covers all the villages/towns that surround the crater lake of a dormant volcano. The loop itself is very long - needing a number of buses to manage to go the whole way around. After catching the daily bus that went in an anti-clockwise direction, 4 hours and quite a few bumps later we were in the small village of Chugchilan. [View Full Entry]

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After finishing at the Santa Marta rescue Centre we continued our travels by heading to Tena, the white water rafting capital of Ecuador. We were hoping to do a multi-day rafting trip, which would mean camping alongside the river as we made our way along...No the bees and mossies of Noel Kempff had not put us off life on the wildside. After checking out multiple agencies we found one that was willing to do a multiday tour...we could choose between 2 and 4 days. Cost unfortunately limited us to 2 days. Surprisingly we were the only ones interested in such a [View Full Entry]

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After spending so long in the jungles and pampas and of course not having worked for nearly 5 months we decided that maybe seeing some of these animals up close would be a good idea! So after getting a confirmation email from Dalma at the Santa Marta Animal Rescue Centre we hastily booked a flight (flights really, there were three of them!) from Santa Cruz in Bolivia to Quito in Ecuador. The best deal we could get meant travelling overnight and get into Quito at 3am......well thankfuly the arrival lounge chairs were pretty comfortable! We did however eventually arrive at the [View Full Entry]

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Once back from the Madidi trip we got a flight to Santa Cruz (via San Borja and Trinidad). Our main reason for coming to Santa Cruz was to see if we could get a trip to Noel Kempf Mercado NP. The Bolivian jungle in Madidi was great but Noel Kempf is noted as one of the most biologically diverse areas on the planet. It doesn´t have the infrastructure that the Madidi does but that was part of the allure. First though we lobbed up in Santa Cruz and stayed at the Jodanga hostel. Not usually into plugging hostels but this one [View Full Entry]

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