Jo and Mark

To say that we were worried about Colombia would have been an understatement.......Well that was true for the first 6 months or so anyway. Then we started to hear really good reports from lots of other fellow travellers, all of a sudden we were really looking forward to this leg of the trip. We weren't disappointed either, Colombia is one of the most beautiful South American countries that we have travelled through, period! Although it was another whistlestop visit, most of the time taken up travelling on buses.....(NOTHING NEW THERE THEN!) We felt really quite safe....Oh, apart from the totally crazy bus drivers here, speed isn't the word, they're speed demons and think nothing of overtaking truck after truck on blind hairpin bends on mountain roads, and, they've also got a tendency to do more than ... read more

After a day in Cuzco, it was time to check in and have the pre trail briefing............Don´t think so! We went to the travel agent at the pre-arranged time only to find the office shut!! The only shut office on the street had to be ours, it wasn´t feeling too good! We had no idea where to get the bus the next morning, the tour agents didn´t have a clue whether we were still going etc. etc. We arrived at the office.......Open at last!....... at 7 the next morning, off we went at half past. We arrived at KM82, the designated starting point of the inca trail by late morning, after a good feed we were off, almost immediately, the beauty of the trail is apparent, the scenery and varied landscapes become more and more spectacular ... read more

Another mammoth 24 hour journey brought us to Peru, the border crossing was pretty cool, in an old North American gas guzzling tank! Peru is an amazing country, one we´ve both been really looking forward to, some strange customs we had to quickly get used to, beggars use buses to give you their story then give everyone a handful of sweets and collect money afterwards, on the same bus journey, we wondered why it took the local women an hour to get dressed in about 5 layers of clothing before they got on the bus, we soon found out why, the bus stopped at a checkpoint and people with guns and black suits and balaclavas got on and started searching bags etc, (good job they didn´t check our underpants while they were at it!), we thought ... read more

We (Mark, myself & Gertie) got the ferry to the North Island, we arrived in Wellington & looked around there & then headed out to the east coast. We visited a place called The Pinnacles which were huge rock formations that resembled pipes from an organ. The walk to The Pinnacles took 3 hours & thanks to some very heavy rain the previous night, it was extremely muddy. On one part of the walk there was a massive area of mud which Joey decided to take running at full pelt (instead of taking time to look at the land & decide the best way around). The mud was so soft she quickly became shoeless....thanks to shoe eating mud! The mud was basically like quick sand & sucked her shoe & sock off, however, she kept running ... read more

Just a day trip, but a really great one, the sharks, turtles and rays were really awesome in the walk through aquarium, we also got to stroke rays in the ray enclosure, all told we had a brilliant day.... read more