We've been in Canada for 6 weeks now, and a number of things have struck me about the place. The thing we Kiwis have found most alarming is the sheer ruggedness of the wildlife here. I thought it was odd that our flatmate instructed us not to let the cats out of the house during the day. Being cats, they spend most of their day in respective baskets snoozing, but I figured they could probably do with a good run around the yard. At the very least, the cats could use the garden rather than making a mess of the litter [View Full Entry]

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The story as told by Ben: "Both me and Kat did our 8km race today. We both had a great run but neither of us positioned ourselves very well so spent the first few minutes elbowing children and old people out of the way. Not very smart with a crowd of 2000 runners. Felt shattered at about the 5km mark when this chick came up on me and I decided to keep pace. Eventually she broke me, took off and finished 2 seconds in front, next time I'll leave the hardcore girls alone. Came in feeling pretty knacked at the finish [View Full Entry]

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The rest of Mexico passed in a blur. We had about 5 days left to get back to Mexico City in time to catch our flight to Canada. We stopped in Palenque just long enough to catch the next bus to Villahermosa. There, we wandered around till all hours of the night trying to find a hotel that still had space and wasn't going to charge us super large sums of money. We stopped by one hotel that was straight out of a horror movie. The door handle just about fell off as we opened it. It had clearly been jimmied [View Full Entry]

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Our entry into Belize marked the first of a number of battles with border guards. First up was the exit from Mexico, where the guy tried to get 100 pesos out of us for the privilege of leaving and being able to return again. Who knows what the real story is, but we refused to pay as we were roughly aware that it should be free to come and go. We mentioned this down the line of other travellers but they all paid various amounts based on their personal circumstances. Some people from France paid US$25 each, all of which I [View Full Entry]

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They call the stretch of land down the east coast of the Yucatan peninsula the Mayan Riviera. It is a great spot on the carribean sea with white sand beaches, the most amazingly blue sea bordered by jungle. Ben was dreading the thought of ´beach days´ but I really wanted to stop here and enjoy the coast. Our first stop was Tulum, and we picked up an overpriced cabaña on the beach. Cabaña sounds reasonably romantic, but it was little more than a concrete floor (some were just sand), some sticks for walls and a thatch roof. We walked in to [View Full Entry]

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We said goodbye to San Christobal at some ungodly hour of the morning, and set off for Palenque, the first of our Mayan ruins. The road was hilly, windy and full of speed bumps on the strangest stretches of road. Beside each was a group of children that would jump up and try to sell us coconuts, fruit, chewing gum etc. We stopped off for a swim at Agua Azul, and admired the waterfall at Misol-ha before arriving at the ruins at about 2pm. We decided to get a guide in order to understand the place a bit better. I´m not [View Full Entry]

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Back on the Bamba bus, we slid our way down to Puerto Escondido down an extremely windy road. It didn´t help that the driver had to get all the way back again that evening, so he was nailing it on the corners and throwing us around in the back. The system of speed control on the roads here is in the form of speed bumps. We occasionally hit these at ridiculous speeds and hit our heads on the roof of the van. On arriving in Puerto Escondido, the skies opened up and it began to bucket down. Stepping out of the [View Full Entry]

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Having dealt with bus stations for a good 4 months now, we decided to do Mexcio a little differently. We joined the Bamba Experience, which is a travel network of vans to take you from place to place. Day 1 was a drive to Oaxaca. It is only recently that the NZ government has stopped warning people from going to Oaxaca. That is because for most of last year, the city was paralysed by protests and riots. We asked about this and were told there were no problems. Not sure if the guy just didn´t know or didn´t want to put [View Full Entry]

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Our visit to Mexico City began with a series of interesting experiences. First, we wandered into our dorm room and found a group of fellow travellers smoking joints, turning the room into a bit of a hot box. Then, to get our bearings, we went down to the square outside the Fine Arts museum. There, we were confronted by a bunch of nude campesinos protesting and banging drums. We really wanted to visit the museum (since there was a big exhibit on Frida Khalo), but the line stretched into the square. This meant nude women would occasionally come over and explain [View Full Entry]

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We spent our final 2 weeks in Argentina puddling around doing very little - for the most part. On the advice of fellow travellers, we opted for a quick detour up to Iguazu Falls. This was no small journey at 3000km return. However, on the overnight buses it was not too taxing. The falls were pretty amazing. However, the day we were there, a huge thunderstorm was raging overhead and we had to make mad dashes across the metal walkways while lightning flashed (all the while holding an umbrella with a metal pole). Strangely, the lightning didn´t seem to bother anyone [View Full Entry]

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