Caipirinhas

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 the rest of the town, most shops seemed to be wholesale only or a minimum purchase of 12 of any one item, and we weren't able to buy either of the two things on our ... read more

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 highly recommend it if you ever come across it) full of violence, sex, drugs and transvestites, perfect for a lazy afternoon on a bus, with passengers of all ages. Bogota We'd met some people who'd ... read more

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 and other debris, washed out to sea from rivers on the mainland during the rainy season. Animals like tortoises can survive for long periods without fresh water, but there are no native amphibians on the islands because they would not ... read more

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 had to have the perfect pair of wellies, and they were so rude to our poor guide (Satu). One of the key things on a trip like this, whilst walking through the rainforest or sailing ... read more

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 on to walk up to a lookout past the stations of the cross to watch sunset over the lake. In the fading light, it looked more like a sea of cloud. Unfortunately that walk nearly ... read more