Pitch Black Arrivals and Coughing Fit Hell Arriving in Guatemala didn't go quite according to plan. Instead of getting to the capital in plenty of time to find somewhere to stay, or even better to move straight on, we arrived in Guatemala City in the dark and in the rain! Guatemala City isn't exactly a great place to wander around with a backpack during the day, never mind at night, so we placed ourselves at the mercy of a taxi driver we hoped was at least half honest and headed for a place to stay. Luckily he turned out to be [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Small Beginnings To actually get to Honduras required a chicken bus ride of the bumpiest proportions, more dust than the Australian Outback, oh and the best border we have been to yet! There is no official immigration post on the El Salvador side due to some kind of dispute, so we merely bumped on through and up the hill to the Honduran side. There everyone piled off the bus and we duley followed. It turned out they hadn´t got off for a stamp though, they were all stocking up on fruit and veg from the little shop there. Predictably immigration [View Full Entry]

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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 morn [View Full Entry]

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A Damp Basement and Two Crazy Yanks We arrived overland from Panama to a cloudy San Jose which was handy as we ended up walking about 20 blocks with our backpacks to find the hostel where we wanted to stay! When we arrived we chose the dorm we hoped would be the lesser of three evils. All had windows onto the street, so all were going to be noisy, two also had windows into the communal area, so we opted for the basement room. We entered with the usual dorm trepidation...who would we find living inside, would they be nice, smelly, [View Full Entry]

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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' [View Full Entry]

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Cambio, What Cambio? We made it across the border without another genital exposing search by the military but did have another very strange experience. There was not a single money changer on either side of the border. Normally we are inundated by people wanting to change currency as we are trying to get through immigration, but that evening there was a money drought. Luckily the bus driver let us pay in Bolivars but then proceeded to drive down every single back road, lane and alley in Cucuta before eventually arriving at the bus terminal. A few hours, some greasy snacks and [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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The People´s Carnival So, we left Rio the day before carnival and every single person we met seemed to think we were mad, especially when we said that no, we weren´t going to Salvador instead, but would in fact be in Manaus. "Of all the places", "Oh my god", "Their carnival is crap" were among the comments we got, but along we went anyway as the ticking travel clock keeps us heading ever northwards towards Mexico. You can see from our Brazil blog what we thought about the rest of Manaus, but here's a quick resume of carnival in Manaus. They [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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