Owing to laziness, apathy and the global financial crisis this blog has been delayed 4 months. Anyway we landed in NZ from Chile on June 2nd. Lee Cook, "That Maraetai Computer Guy", put us up in Auckland and was a great host. As you can see from the pics it was the perfect place to relax for a few days. Later we travelled to Kati Kati to stay with my auntie Maura and uncle Geoff. They have a nice place with lots of avocado and mandarin trees, oh and a hot tub. We were well looked after for a few days [View Full Entry]

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Uruguay, what a beautiful place. Unfortunately we didn't stay long enough to savour all the delights of this country but we managed to stay on a working ranch, Estancia as they call it there. We heard about this place from a girl we have met in Bolivia and the prospect of horse riding was just too tempting for me not to go. Ed agreed to join me and the minute we arrived there he probably regretted it because apart from the farmer he was the only guy inbetween 5 other girls ;) The deal was to pay 30 Us$ a day [View Full Entry]

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Well, I'm so sorry guys that it took us so long with this blog entry but we have been busy bees and we have been a little lazy too. We have received a few complaints, so here you go! Back in civilisation...what a relief :) You really feel like you're in the western world. Everything looks different than the rest of South America (well, what we've seen so far) and the best, you can walk around the streets at any time of the day and you're safe (most of the time anyway). One more thing that we were happy about was [View Full Entry]

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Why not take a spin down the worlds most dangerous road, dance along to a brass band into the wee hours, visit the local prison or crawl through crevases in a working mine. That's what we thought - why not! Our first port of call was Copacabana on lake titicaca. It was a nice town but bloody cold. There was some religious/brass band festival the weekend we were there. It was really colorful and went on all night and all day. One night a fwe folks from La Paz showed us how you're supposed to dance along to the brass bands. [View Full Entry]

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My mother has a lovely peruvian poncho, that she bought almost 40 years in Peru and she doesn't want to give it to me. When I ask if I can have it, the answer is always: "Buy yourself one in Peru!" Now, that's what I want to do now (not Ed, he's not the poncho-loving type) amongst a few other not that important things like the Nazca lines and Macchu Picchu ;) Anyway, our stay in Peru started with Piura a not very interesting, very hot town near the border of Ecuador. We only stayed for a night to get the [View Full Entry]

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We spent a day wandering around the innumerable travel agents in Quito looking for a good deal. This is the way to go if your dates are flexible as you can easily get $500 or so off the price of a $1700 seven night cruise. Which is what we did! After an initial hiccup with one travel agent who overbooked a boat we eventually got going on the good ship "Intrepido" - a 20 passenger sail/motor boat. It looked the business and turned out to exceed our expectations. The staff were friendly from the captain down and the food was reasonable [View Full Entry]

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Finally we arrived in Ecuador and we have spent about a week in Quito. Mainly dossing and we had decided to visit Galapagos and that isn't as easy as it seems. Well, when you want to go on a cruise that is. After a failed attempt we sorted out our boat and we were really looking fwd to that trip. More about Galapagos in a seperate blog though. Quito is a nice place to hang out a few days and there are a few things to do around as well. We probably could have done more if we weren't that lazy. [View Full Entry]

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Right, after a 3 hour drive and a dozen military checks in Venezuela we finally got to border. It was easy enough to get through...pay $16 exit fee, walk to different place to receive exit stamp, cross border by foot, being asked some question by Colombian border officials and then getting passport stamped. Not bad at all. We went straight to Santa Marta to watch the Oscars but the hotel (bloody expensive btw) didn't have electricity but it came back in time and the evening was saved :) After that we were pretty much hanging out for a week in Taganga, [View Full Entry]

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We landed late in Caracas airport so chose to stay somewhere nearby. The following day we braved the metro in Caracas to get to the bus station. It was spotless. One of the cleanest and most modern I´ve been on. We took the bus to Maracay and later moved onto Puerto Colombia which, according to some, has the nicest beach in Venezuela. Yvonne was still suffering from a throat infection so we stayed there for a few days to relax. The beach really wasn´t great and there wasn´t much else to do there so we were happy to leave. Merida was [View Full Entry]

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we're in Panama. The bordercrossing was by far the easiest and cheapest of them all. 5 minutes and we were through and we didn't have to pay a penny! We were amazed. Once we were through, we flagged down a taxi to get a boat to Bocas del Toro. Obviously we forgot that we never wanted to arrive in a new place on a Saturday and we didn't manage to get a decent priced room at all! We forked out $30 for a skanky room and the next day went straight to Bastimentos. We should have gone there straight away. Our [View Full Entry]

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