The next day after arriving back in San Jose I was back at the airport to meet Tara and she treated me to a night in a nice guesthouse near the airport before our flight to Drake Bay the next morning. The treat turned into a trick as we seriously think it was haunted. The guy drove us there, locked us in, there was no one else there and then the tv started turning on by itself. We slept that night with visions of the creepy woman from ´The Ring´crawling out to kill us. But as I am still alive writing [View Full Entry]

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After all the excitement in Cartegena the 4 of us headed to Santa Marta on New Years Eve after Lisa had been to court to give her evidence re the attempted robbery. We left it quite late to get to the bus station and just caught the last bus to Barranquilla which we got on as the bus driver told us the buses would keep running till 9pm from Barranqilla to Santa Marta. It should have been predictable that we arrived in Barranquilla and there were no buses, so we reluctantly splashed out on a taxi to take us the rest [View Full Entry]

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After a quiet christmas spent baking under the ferocious sun of Santa Marta I took a 5 hour bus ride along the coast to the old colonial city of Cartegena to meet up with Tina, Lisa and Aimy whom I had met and travelled with in Costa Rica and then the excitement really started... We spent the first part of the day strolling around the old town within the city walls. Once we got to the walls themselves, Lisa decided to take a photo of the 3 of us when a boy ran past snatching the camera out of her hand [View Full Entry]

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After being so lucky to have locals looking after me in Bogota and finding out that whenever I ask the price of anything it is always double what they are told I have been extremely frustrated travelling on my own and am constantly wary of the locals. I met an old man at the bus station on my way back to San Gil from Barichara who tried to befriend me, I was thinking he´s old enough to be my grandad, surely he could´t hurt me and it turned out he just wanted to show off his country and make sure I [View Full Entry]

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I really wasn´t sure what to expect, official channels scream of the dangers of Colombia whilst everyone that I met that had been recommended it as the best place they had been to in South America, so here I am to see for myself. I had planned to stay only a few days in the capital before travelling round the country but 10 days later, I was still there. The hospitality of the local people is phenomenal, I have been adopted and have a new Colombian family. I met an Israeli in Argentina who knew a Colombian girl and now I [View Full Entry]

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It´s been a while and there´s so much to update, I was supposed to stay in the jungles of Costa Rica for 10 weeks of voluntary conservation work but ended up escaping after 6 weeks following the second evacuation from camp due to flooding with water up to my chest and the threat of having a piece of me chewed off by the Caiman, but anyway that is another story to be told later. So, safely back in San Jose I decided that I would spend the extra time I have going back south to Colombia for a month before heading [View Full Entry]

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Ecuador, this is probably a very skewed view of Ecuadorians tarnished by the bad experiences I have suffered here but if I´m not being robbed then I´m being ripped off. The family I stayed with squeezed me for every last dollar I had left and there weren´t that many left as I still haven´t received my new bank cards yet. After the week of spanish classes I went off to see the only worthwhile sight in Quitos, Mitad del Mundo - the middle of the world. The sight of the monument declaring the middle of the world is actually a few [View Full Entry]

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My last 2 weeks in Chile and I took the lazy option and booked a tour of the north of Chile. Not too sure about the beach stops in the middle of winter, ...but anyway I will stop there as all I seem to do is complain about the cold, ....well I am English. The lazy option turned out to be brilliant, the group was really good fun and I had lots of laughs with the crazy driver and guide in between sleeping all the way on the bus and getting up whenever our tour guide told us it was time [View Full Entry]

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Good food, good wine and excellent skiing, what more could I ask for, maybe some central heating. It's so bloody cold I really don't know how the Chileans manage to survive the winters here without heaing in their homes!! This is one of the most expensive and stable of the South American countries but apparently gas is too expensive. I wish I could speak better Spanish but as far as I can gather from my conversations of a mixture of bad Spanish and bad English in response, the Chileans seem to think that the economy was better under Pinochet although they [View Full Entry]

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Being a pikey traveller, I decided to still take the bus even though I had been warned that the mountain pass through the Andes is frequently closed during the winter due to extreme weather conditions, well the 21 hour journey turned into a 48 hour journey. I decided to splash out an extra 5 GBP for the long journey and went first class in a fully recling bed seat - pure luxury. However, once we reached Mendoza on the Argentine side of the Andes we were told that the pass was closed and we would have to return each morning to [View Full Entry]

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