Carruthers

I leave Buenos Aires at 20.30. This partucular bus comes with free entertainment (or tedium, depending on how you look at it) - a tone deaf Argentine teenager who insists on singing (I'm being generous there) along to his portable CD player. When even my own music can´t drown him out I am forced to lean over and say, ' Excuse me, can you sing in your head please, I don´t want to listen to your music.' It works. The official entertainment comes in the slightly inappropriate form, in my opinion, of two films about transport catastrophes - Flight 93 (about 9/11) and Poseidon. The former is, frankly, not what you need to be seeing when a world away from everyone you love, and hurtling down a dark Argentine highway in the middle of nowhere. Finally, ... read more

I´m on the bus to Foz Do Iguacu in Brazil by 7.30 am. I love the fact that border towns have roadsigns pointing to entire countries - ´Left - Town Centre. Right - Bus Terminal. Straight on - Brazil´. At the Argentine border I am stamped out, and that appears to be it. We cross the bridge over the Rio Iguazu, and I get a tingle of happiness as we reach the other side. Brazil. Country no.19. Immigration formalities are relaxed when it comes to people making the day trip to see the falls. Indeed, on the Brazilian side I am required merely to exit the bus, and wipe my feet on a doormat, before reboarding and continuing on my way. At least they have high standards of cleanliness. Like a fool, I´d assumed that ... read more

Despite an intolerably slow internet connection, I have to do this now, before I get involved in other stuff and totally lose the capability to catch up. I left you after the Pampas adventure... Wednesday 27th September - Rurrenabaque to La Paz. In leaving Rurrenabaque I get to fulfill an ambition. EVERYONE who is foolhardy enough to make the journey to Rurre by road flies back to La Paz. I´m happy I did the bus journey to get here, because only sixteen hours down hellish mountain roads, on a bus full of dog dirt (ok, not full, but you get the idea) can really give you an idea of just how far into the arse end of nowhere Rurrenabaque really is. That being said, it´s not an expereince I am in any hurry to repeat. ... read more

hey all, Well, there´s a lot to get through so make a brew, pop a bottle of wine, light a cigar, or whatever else you fancy doing, settle in, and let´s begin. The last time I wrote anything of any use to anyone I was in La Paz, the day before the bike ride. So I'm going to carry on from there. 18th September - La Paz. La Paz is great. It´s great for many reasons. Partly it´s because it´s beautiful. Partly it´s because it´s really convenient (more ATMs than your average British city), and partly because it has a witches´market. Yes, a witches´market. Here can be found all manner of weirdness, the finest of which in my opinion were the dried llama foetuses, used apparently for luck when starting a journey or opening a business. ... read more

Hey all, Well, I´m in La Paz. I arrived late last night. The journey was fine, although weirdly I was called something yesterday that I´ve never been called before. Even more weirdly, it was by one of the flight attendants! As he served me my beer, he said "There you go cowboy." (In Spanish obviously). Cowboy??!!! Due to a heftier departure tax from Quito than I´d expected, and the total lack of facilities at ANY of the three airports I passed through yesterday, I arrived in La Paz at 11.45pm with NO Bolivian currency, and only a ten dollar note to my name. Fortunately the taxi driver said seven dollars woul be fine. The taxi drive from La Paz´s El Alto airport can be described in one word - DOWN. The airport is built at the ... read more

So it´s my last night in Ecuador. I leave for Bolivia tomorrow evening. I´ve been in this country for six weeks, but it feels like a lot longer. I think knowing a few people here, and also being familiar to some small degree with Quito gives me more of a feeling of permanence than would usually be possible when simply passing through somewhere. I´ve really enjoyed Ecuador, but this is mostly due to the experiences I´ve had rather than to the place itself. Don´t get me wrong, Ecuador is a lovely place, but it isn´t one of those jaw-droppingly stunning locations. Nothing here (save the wildlife) has really made me go, "WOW!". That having been said, there are a great many things I will never forget. Riding on the roof of a train, being stalked by ... read more

It´s been an interesting week at El Arca. Firstly we have a new addition. A nightwatchman called Pedro. No-one seems quite sure exactly what it is he´s supposed to be securing - escaping animals? Wild animals? Animal thieves? Escaping volunteers? Whatever his mandate he cuts an unusual figure for a security guard in that he´s, well, really really short. To give you an idea, he´s shorter even that Javier, one of the Ecuadorian workers, whose colleagues habitually refer to him as ´The Dwarf´. Nonetheless, Pedro patrols with gusto and a large torch every evening, and so far all is well. Since Monday we´ve been building a new enclosure to house a bird I am unable to identify above and beyond 'it´s large and it´s blue'. Rusillo, the mother of the family who own El Arca maintains ... read more

So I´m in the jungle. Well, obviously I´m in an intenet cafe, but the jungle isn´t far away. Since Tuesday I´ve been doing my volunteer work at the aminal rescue centre. It´s great, there are creatures EVERYWHERE. I have a new best friend, in the form of a Marmoset that follows me around and attempts with tedious regularity to get inside my t-shirt. He´s quite partial to pissing on me as well. Among interesting tasks I´ve had assigned to me, I´ve fed live chickens to Ocelots (wrestled with my conscience about that one, but in the end it wasn´t me eating it, and it was necessary), cleaned the swimming pool of the Galapagos tortoises, and built a bridge out of bamboo. Yesterday I was cleaning enclosures. This included those of a number of animals that could ... read more

It's been another grand weekend, but before I get to what I actually did, a note on what I didn't do. I was planning to go to a place called Riobamba, from where begins a train journey down the side of a mountain, along a series of switchbacks called 'El Nariz del Diablo', 'The Devil's Nose'. It's made all the more interesting by the fact that you can ride on the roof of the train. However, life has a way of blowing well laid plans to pieces (an appropriate expression in this case) and so it was that the Tungurahua volcano, about 40km from Riobamba, decided to erupt last Wednesday, covering large parts of southern Ecuador in clouds of toxic dust and ash. Up until the last minute I was considering going anyway, but then on ... read more

It´s Friday evening, and it´s a public holiday so many Quiteños have gone to the coast for the weekend. This is fortunate, because if they hadn´t, the heavy traffic my taxi stops and starts through en route to the bus terminal would be ten times worse. He drops me at what appears to be the arse-end of the terminal, in that it´s nowhere near the building itself. After asking a few people (Ecuadorians will answer a question even if they don´t know the answer, just to be helpful, which leads to a lot of misinformation) I find my way in and get sorted on a bus to Otavalo, which leaves conveniently, three minutes later. This is at 6.45. It is however past 7.45 before we leave the environs of the terminal, due to traffic, and the ... read more