Rainforest We decided to spend three days in the Corcovado national park on the Osa peninsula - time for some trekking - been a bit lazy recently. We took the 6am colectivo (giant truck) to arrive at the park just after 8. According the the guidebook and the national park office it should take 5 to 6 hours to reach La Sirena - the park lodge in the centre of the park from which you can do lots of shorter circular trails around the park. Being fully laden with camping equipment and three days worth of food, we reckoned on 6 [View Full Entry]

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After the chaos of Venezuela I was looking forward to Panama city - nice and modern, big shopping malls, and Colon, home to the world's second largest duty free shopping zone - what more could a girl want? In Ecuador we'd met some people who'd spent seven weeks in Colon and said that it definitely was as bad as its name suggests. Surely it can't be that bad.......according to our guide book, Colon '......has lost some of its former splendour.' That has to be the world's biggest understatement. It was an absolute hole. The duty free zone? As run down as [View Full Entry]

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In terms of general uselessness and chaos, Venezuela is light years ahead of any country we’ve visited so far. I shall try and explain. On our first 27-hour-should-have-been-20-hour bus journey, the bus actually ran out of petrol. Maybe it was the 90-minute-should-have-been-15-minute taxi ride at 1am trying to find a posada (hostel) that didn’t have a smidgen of a sign post out the front (and street signs were also non-existent). Or when we arrived for a boat trip, and they spent half an hour looking for the keys before we could set off. Or because several of the major tourist [View Full Entry]

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We stepped across the border - no machete-wielding drug lords. Got our passports stamped - nobody trying to force us to carry 20 bags of white powder of unknown content to some foreign destination. So far so good. First impressions? Bit like home really - grey, drab and drizzly! But it wasn't long before we'd left the border town and were winding slowly down one side of a steep valley with lush green hills all around and a river flowing along the bottom far below us. Beautiful. We had a very high quality movie on the bus, 'Looking for Miguel', (I [View Full Entry]

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Puerto Lopez was a lovely sleepy coastal town with a bit of a Carribean feel to it - loads of beach-side bars with palm trees, hammocks and deck chairs, serving fresh juices and cocktails, with a bit of Bob Marleyesque music thrown in for good measure. Instant relaxation, and we stayed a day or two longer than planned. The whales were the principal reason for coming, and I wasn't really sure what to expect (previous whale knowledge limited to Star Trek IV). They'd cruise along for awhile, spurting water, body just visible, then disappear for a few minutes, presumably diving down [View Full Entry]

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Lots of photos for this one - hard to choose between them all! Exciting new technological developments too - underwater photography, and videos (though be warned, they're not exactly high action videos, especially the tortoise one.....). So.... I'd always assumed that the Galapagos islands must have once been joined to the mainland. Not the case. They are volcanic islands moving very slowly towards the mainland, the most Westerly islands being the youngest. So how did the animals get there? Birds and fish - that's obvious. The other animals are thought to have drifted there on logs a [View Full Entry]

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Arequipa Rob's first overnight bus journey was a particularly pleasant experience - sat next to a fat, drunken, snoring, personal-space-invading Peruvian, so he wasn't in the best of moods when we arrived in Arequipa. Got some yummy eggs and cardboard for breakfast at the bus station and had the pleasure of being gawped at by a very weird man. So now there were three grumpy people. Then we arrived at our hostel - La casa de Tintin - worthy of a mention because it was so wonderful - ensuite bathroom, hot shower, yummy breakfast, cable TV, electric heater, and......a hairdryer.... [View Full Entry]

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We had an 8-day trip into the Peruvian Amazon, to an area of primary rainforest (untouched by man) called the Manu Reserve zone. On the first day, we met the other three people in our group, and I think it's fair to say it was clear from the outset that we were never going to bond. The first signs came with the rubber boots incident. Simple really. We needed to borrow some rubber boots (aka wellies) for the trip - find a pair in your size, try them on, and bob's your uncle. Except bob wasn't their uncle. You see, they [View Full Entry]

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first day in Cusco.......... Wandered around the Plaza de Armas, very pretty and all very well maintained - a pleasant change from Bolivia, though a little touristy. Decided to take it easy and save the sightseeing 'til Rob arrived the next day. Settled into an afternoon of scrabble and papaya smoothies in a little bar called 'Los Perros', complete with its own little puppy. second day in Cusco............. Fetched Rob from the airport, took him for a hearty brekkie, took in a few remains of Inca stonework around the centre of Cusco then decided to take it easy and save th [View Full Entry]

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Not feeling top of the world when we arrived in Copacabana (Her name was Lola, she was a showgirl.........). Russell nearly had us on an 8.30am boat the next day but I wisely suggested that a lie-in might be beneficial. Eventually emerged from the room for a look around and bumped into an old work colleague in the cathedral - small world eh? Wandered along the shore of the lake where there were loads of peddleboats, all unused and looking a bit unloved. That was about as dynamic as the day got, though managed to muster a bit of dynamism later [View Full Entry]

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