Couchies

Three Countries In One Day Ok, we have to admit we told you a wee fib. In our last blog we took you on an adventure overland from southern Nicaragua directly into Honduras and the town of La Esperanza. This was not exactly true, in fact it was not at all true as we actually passed straight through Honduras and into El Salvador. The reason for this "massaging" of our geographical whereabouts is that little El Salvador lies directly below Honduras and the two places we wanted to visit happened to be at either end of the country. To get from one place to the other required (a) a very long, slow bus ride on windy mountain roads and (b) a stop over in San Salvador, the only city rivalling Venezuela´s Caracas as "Murder Capital ... read more

The Six Headed No Tail Snake When you think about cities with historical rivalries what comes to mind? Auckland and Christchurch... pretty tame. Cardiff and Swansea... they´re definitely not friends, and as for Barcelona and Madrid, that hostility can be down right nasty. But here in Nicaragua we discovered two leading contenders for ¨rivalry of the millennium¨. Before we get to them, this story starts with a safe but chaotic border crossing. Having enjoyed the cooler climes of highland Costa Rica our senses were slammed back to reality as we lined up in the fierce early morning heat and dust to enter Nicaragua. Immigration consisted of a small building with six serving windows. From each window snaked a long line that somehow had merged with all the other lines to form one gigantic mass that ... read more

Roads! Where We're Going There Are No Roads If like us you are undertaking an incredible journey through the whole of South and Central America there is one slight hitch when it comes to linking continents on this road trip... there is no road. The Panamericana is a continuous series of roads that starts in Alaska and finishes some 48,000 km (30,000 miles) later at the bottom of the World in Argentina. In theory you can 'drive' the entire distance but to do so you have to cross an area in southern Panama called the Darien Gap. Here the 'road' becomes little more than dirt track, swamp and disease. Challenging enough you might think, but the area is also a hideout for Colombian terrorist groups and cocaine smugglers and is considered one of the most ... read more

Borderline Worries It's not every day you get the chance to thrust your naked genitals into the face of a machine gun toting soldier, so, when the opportunity arose, David took it with both testicles. This blog begins on the border of Brazil and south eastern Venezuela. Information in the guidebook plus stories from other travellers had made us unusually nervous about crossing this border. Apparently, due to its enormous oil wealth Venezuela has never needed nor bothered to develop a large tourism industry, or in fact barely any industry at all, preferring instead the cash rich route of importing everything. Normally this would be fantastic as our experiences have shown us that the places least affected by tourism are often some of the nicest. Not so in Venezuela it seems. As well as being ... read more

Pythagoras´Money Theory It is very fitting that in a country obsessed with soccer our adventure in Brasil is a story of two halfs, and, if we may say so ourselves, a game well played. To kick off we actually have to take you back in time to before our Paraguay trip (see previous blog) when we crossed the border from nothern Uruguay into Brasil (here it is spelt with an S not a Z). With both of us being from island countries we still find it a strange thrill to simply stroll across a road and officially be in another country. For people living in these towns every day is filled with important international shopping decisions such as, which of my available countries has the cheapest petrol today, or where can I gamble or buy ... read more