Well, what a country of contrasts Venezuela is. Forget the beauty queens - they're nowhere to be seen (although the ladies here do tend to turn the head somewhat more than the belles of Carlisle). The beauty of Venezuela lies in its coastline and its incredible national parks, where for example, the alien landscape of Roraima and the stunning Angel Falls would blow anyone's socks off were they not firmly wedged into a sensible pair of sturdy walking boot. But far overriding Venezuela’s natural beauty is the ugliness of its society. There we go, I've said it. Sweeping statement time and [View Full Entry]

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As a word 'travelling' implies movement, but as many of you may correctly suspect, this isn't always the case. Often travelling involves little more than sitting on a beach somewhere like Goa, buying a pair of fishermans pants and coming home claiming you've discovered yourself whereas all you've really discovered is fire juggling and hallucinagenic drugs. For others, travelling is going to Bangkok and seeing things you've never seen before...often flying across the room out of things you have seen before, but never doing the things you're seeing them do now. But occasionally travelling means [View Full Entry]

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Here's a funny thing. Apparently a big problem for the church in South America is that the people here are more fixated on the virgin Mary than Jesus. Certainly the number of statues and place names for that matter this up. If you didn't know your bible, you'd think she was what all the fuss was about and the little baby is just a bit of a nuisance. How unexpected! But enough about that. What about us? We last left you in Quito, from where we made vague plans to check out a bit of central Ecuador known as the Quilotoa [View Full Entry]

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With heavy hearts, we left the Galapagos and flew to Quito. Darn it. After six months of soil-tredding around South America, covering every blade of grass, flake of snow and grain of sand along the way, we finally cheat and miss a chunk. But what the hell, it doesn't really matter in the long run, and besides, Ant loves flying. Shame Jen doesn't. Every flight sees us display polar opposites of emotions. As the plane gathers speed on the runway, Jen frowns so hard her eyebrows meet as she pretends to read a book, only to be yanked out of her [View Full Entry]

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In the words of Charles Darwin, 'Blimey.' We'd been looking forward to the Galapagos and had a feeling it wouldn't disappoint, and it didn't. Even us skinflint travellers, on one of the cheaper boats and without a zoom lens the length of a child's leg, were treated to a glut of wildlife and turquoise seas which had us dribbling into our snorkels. It was as if David Attenborough and the good Lord on high Himself had conspired to throw at us every imaginable wonder of the world, and then some. For on top of the turtles, sharks, sea lions, whales, penguins, [View Full Entry]

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Peru, as it turns out, has been quite a joy. When it came to it, simple things like edible food and buses with springs inside the seats made life seem that little bit more comfortable. And rather excitingly, we were within sniffing distance of the west coast after a thoroughly long and geographically schizophrenic haul across the middle of the continent. We'd been chilled to the bone, sweated it out on the fringes of the Amazon, been up mountains and down deep canyons...and eventually we were about to be spat out, gasping and wheezing onto the Pacific coast. In some far [View Full Entry]

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So, Peru then. And it's getting more and more like Gulliver's Travels by the day. Everyone seems so short and squashed compared with us, and as we stare at them, they stare back gazing in wonder at the people who look so stretched. We've worked out why this is because we've been eating local food a lot recently. We've found that rice and potatoes feature in every main course (that is rice and potato soup followed by rice, chips and meat for seconds), usually followed up by a 'postre' that shows no evidence of any natural ingredient ever going near the [View Full Entry]

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You would not believe the things that we've been up to over the last week! Blow me off a cliff and call me 'freefall' it's been exciting. Well, more exciting for one of us than the other, it has to be said. Upon arrival in La Paz, Ant's action button went into overdrive while Jen's belly button went into, well, let's just say she wasn't well for a few days. Like most people who worked at Inti Wara Yassi, Jen left with a little present in her tummy. Unlike some others, it wasn't Salmonela or E-coli, and we were very grateful [View Full Entry]

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Hello boys and girls. We expect you're very bored of these blogs by now but we'll keep soldiering on. Like talking to someone who lost consciousness years ago, we feel it's important to keep whittering away in the faint hope that our words will offer some comfort. In fact, let's start with some news for those that don't know. We're due back in England on 20th December, which is less than 5 months now and which means, in the grand scheme of things, we're just around the corner. So if you want us to pick up some milk, just let us [View Full Entry]

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Well you´re in for a treat with this blog. Frankly I'm tired of Ant's dulcet tones, so thought it was probably about time that I put pen to paper. So thanks to the road being blocked off between Sucre and Uyuni (a regular feature of Bolivian life), we decided to head to Tupiza to try our luck there with getting a tour to the salt flats. Memories of India came flooding back as our bus miraculously made it to our destination for 3am, rather than the expected 7am. Staggering out blearly eye, we found a taxi, loaded our backpacks into his [View Full Entry]

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