KerryAndGraham

Well, our last stop was the U.S.A. We first went to Pensacola, Florida to visit Diane, Nathan and baby Brandon then on to California to see a bit of L.A. and San Fransisco. We'll let the pictures tell the stories for us..... read more

Loads of photos in this one. You´ll have to click the link at the bottom (or top?) to see more... Mexico City As we were pretty much expecting it to be, Mexico turned out to be one of our favourite countries. Partially as a result of this and partially because it is so big & spread out we did a lot less travelling around than we had in other countries, choosing instead to savour the few places that we visited and generally just kick back and enjoy the Mexican culture. So, first stop was Mexico City DF. After an initial hick-up with our first night's accommodation (ended up sleeping on the floor of an empty apartment - for next to nothing) Mexico City was a fantastic introduction to the country. We are definitely city people so ... read more

Puno Took a bus from the border around lake T to Puno. First impressions: extremely annoying touts. We arrived at about 9.30pm and were greeted off the bus by 2 jabbering touts. As we hadn't booked a hotel we had to gather for a minute to make a plan. We were still with Tori & Paul so we looked most conspicuous in a group of four & so ended up fighting 5 or 6 of the persistent buggers off, finally agreeing to take a free taxi to look at a centrally located "very economical" hotel. So with the tout squeezed into the boot with our 4 rucksacks off we went. The hotel was crap and after he insisted on taking us to another crap one we gave him the slip and in our fatigue justified the ... read more

Well, we´ve posted lots of photos here for a number of reasons: * we think Bolivia is stunning * we spent loads of time here * and we found a fast internet connection There are so many photos, stories and stuff that we did in Bolivia that we want to bang on about so I´ll get going.... The "Death" Train: Quijarro To Santa Cruz Well, we´d heard tales of this so called Death Train so chose the nicer of the two trains that were running on the day that we crossed the border. The result: a surprisingly pleasant (if a little cold because of some over-zealous air conditioning) overnight journey. We were not expecting much - we assumed that the ¨tourist train¨, although more comfortable in terms of seating and space arrangements, would be twice as ... read more

by Graham and Kerry but without Kerry´s edits yet.......... Salvador - CarnivaaaaaaAAAALLLLLLLLLLL!!!! Forget Rio and Sao Paulo, Salvador is THE place to go for canvival......well that´s what we´d read anyway. Salvador was the original colonial capital of Brazil and was at one time the second most powerful city in the Portuguese empire. It has a much greater african influence than Rio and SP and is the original carnival centre. There loads we could write about carnival but we´ll let the pictures do the talking (mainly because I´m very, very lazy)....... Ok, lets get the negative over and done with - staying in Salvador (or Rio or SP for that matter) is pretty expensive. We booked our hostel/hotel and the flight to Salvador about 5 months in advance and accommodation prices were about 7 times the normal. ... read more