El Peñol is a big granite rock about 2 hours drive from Medellin. The scenery is lovely on the way, going up and over the mountains to get there. I went on Sunday, on my own, and got there at about 10am more or less. I got the bus and unfortunately there was no one who would engage me in conversation on the way there, bit disappointing. Anyway I got there and walked from the road up to the rock- only about 10 mins walk but still people were hiring horses to get them up. I opted against flogging the decrepid [View Full Entry]

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Hi y´all! I´ve been here in Medellin for about 2 and a half weeks now and all is going well. I´m staying with Gali (a Peruvian sort of missionary) and the other Cruzadas here and they´re really nice. I arrived with the intention of teaching English for a week in a school but that fell through due to Bureaucratic reasons beyond my control! Anyway I´ve since found my voluntary work (actually Maria Elvira and the other sort of missionaries found it for me), helping out in an orphanage for girls. It´s not really an orphanage actually. It´s more of a weekly [View Full Entry]

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I very nearly didn´t get into Colombia. Justo and I traveled from Maracay in Venezuela, overnight to Maracaibo and when we were nearly in Maracaibo I went to get my toothbrush out of my bag and discovered that it had been gone through and my passport, driving licence, credit card and some dollars were missing (everything was in one of those silly waist-pouches which are uncomfortable to carry around). I wasn't that worried about myself but Justo really wanted to go to a Cumbia festival in a place called El Banco in Colombia and without my passport it would delay matters. [View Full Entry]

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Que calor que hace! No se si puedo decir mas que eso, estoy herviendo aca en Colombia, pero al mismo tiempo es hermosa. A ver si puedo poner algunas fotos.... besitos I forgot to finish this, back then but now I've forgotten what I was up to. Most of those photos are from when I was on my own, (before I met up with Justo again) for the first 3 weeks of my trip. I had a great time and did quite a bit of Couchsurfing and met lots of people who were absolutely fantastic and looked after me superbly. The [View Full Entry]

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Hola, fui con David hace casi un mes para el Cumple de Couchsurfing in Choroni. Habia bastante genta alla, como 23 chicos de CS. Pasemos demasiado bueno y queria poner estas fotos antes pero estuve muy vaga... Acà estan algunas, espero que los disfruten. Besos, Helen [View Full Entry]

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Here I am in Caracas- finding it horrendously expensive even though I´m not paying for accommodation. Should be leaving fairly soon. I´ve been having a great time and have been accompanied most of the time by various hospitality club and couchsurfing members, so that´s been great fun. I´ve tasted the national beer, Polar, and I can safely say it´s far nicer than Brazilian beer, ha ha... I´ve already been hauled in by the police and had to wipe lots of photos from my camera because I was apparently in a restricted zone. On Monday night David met me at the airport [View Full Entry]

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After leaving Henrique and Joao Pinheiro poor lonely Helan sat on the bus until Sao Paulo. There Leo (EF student from 2005) came to pick me up. We went back to his house and I had a fab welcome from him and his family- everyone really extra nice to me and Leo sorted out a very nice bbq that afternoon which was great. Churrasco...mmm. I spent the day talking to him and his family. That evening I met his girlfriend (10 years together!)Lugimila and we went with Vivi, his sister, to a Samba pub where the music was wonderful. I drank [View Full Entry]

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Ok it´s time this got written. I´ve been staying in Joao Pinheiro now since 6th August, staying with Henrique (Brasilian I met while travelling and with whom I travelled for about 6 weeks in Bolivia and Peru, along with Leo) and his grandmother. Henrique´s family own farms and so I´ve really enjoyed myself a lot ¨working¨with Henrique, riding horses, feeding and playing with foals, watching cattle getting tagged, riding the range, and accompanying H on all the jobs he has to do around the town too. Farms are called Funil and Chapadinha, there´s also another one belonging to H´s uncle calle [View Full Entry]

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Am just back from a Catholic Festival in Minas Gerais, it´s about 70 mins from Joao Pinheiro. The weirdest festival I´ve ever been to. We went on Sat afternoon until Monday evening. It´s a mix of wasted non-believers and wasted belivers. Everyone drinking beer all day long and going to mass! At 5am mass starts and it´s blared out all over the village from loud-speakers! Weirdest thing about it is that there´s NO live music at all. It´s all crappy pop music at horrendous volumes from a million different cars (which subsequently caused lots of battery problems, ha ha). WRECK MY [View Full Entry]

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Hi again, Am desperately trying to update this (as usual) before I forget all the little bits. But d´habbitude am so bored of it that I´ll not bother with all the main bits. oops wasn´t supposed to admit that.. Anyway in Manaus I got on a very different boat to go to Belem. This time instead of having 8 passengers we were between 250 and 300- incredible. Of the 4 nights I slept there I only slept in the same hammock space twice. One of those times I was woken at 4am cos I was sleeping above the cargo hold and [View Full Entry]

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