I am typing this blog with two hands. I typed the last blog with one. Not because I thought it would be funny, or because I lost a bet, or because I like to time myself doing strange tasks but because I had an accident. Actually I've been having quite a few accidents recently. But i´ll get on to that in a bit. On 24th September we flew from Cartagena to Leticia, a teeny weeny town in the far south of Colombia on the boarder with Peru and Brazil. I cant tell you much about Leticia because when we arrived we [View Full Entry]

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On the 15th we left Caracas for Santa Marta, Colombia. Of course the bus left an hour late, took about 10 hours longer than the ticket lady had told us it would and broke down for a good hour when we were nearly there. But this should have been expected given that the transport fairy hates me. All in all it took about 24 hours and was pretty straight forward. On the approach to the Colombian boarder the bus was stopped about 5 times by armed police who came on board to check our documents and search the Venezuelan men. Italo, [View Full Entry]

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Trinidad to Venezuela was one hell of a journey. It started at 6.30am on Wednesday the 9th when i jumped a couple of buses to Pier 1. That was where i met Julia and Patrick, a nice Swiss couple who had been travelling around the Caribbean for a few months! Nice huh. So that was my entertainment sorted for the 3.5hr trip to Guiria, the port on the eastern most tip of Venezuela. Everything was going surprisingly smoothly until we were about 30 metres from the dock. The captain cut the engines and we sat rocking backwards and forwards, backwards and [View Full Entry]

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My dad would call it the scenic route. It definitely wasn't scenic. Chester to London was fine. I went first class. It was cheaper!? London to Heathrow was good, Rayna came and met me on route and hung out at the airport with me. I haven't photo documented this awesome last minute surprise because she'd been out the night before, hadn't had a shower and had a couple of big juicy zits on her face. Not that I minded, but she did. Heathrow to New York JFK was really good, I got a free upgrade to World Traveler Class which meant [View Full Entry]

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I’ve done a Madonna and got myself a Brazilian boyfriend. Mine is much hotter than hers. And has a more sensible name. Although I’m not really sure how to pronounce it. He’s a graphic designer, and a model. Oh and the lead singer in a band. He’s way out of my league, but he hasn’t noticed yet. Actually he hasn’t met me yet! He lives in the jungle in Brazil. Well he lives in Manaus which is in the jungle. So I’m off to meet him, in Venezuela! Fingers crossed he is the 25 year old he claims to be and [View Full Entry]

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When I left England last October I never dreamed that I would end up in the Galapagos, land of the giant tortuga, the archipelago that is home to wildlife that exists nowhere else on the plant, totally fearless wildlife that you can practically rub noses with. But, I was in Ecuador, at the end of my holiday, already over budget and I thought ah feck it, whats a little bit more debt?? After all the inevitable will happen soon enough, I will make my million and my little jaunt in the Galapagos will be but a tiny drop in the ocean [View Full Entry]

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The streak of bad luck that had started in Bolivia didn't show any signs of letting up when I got to Ecuador. I hadn't been there 48hours before I was robbed by what I can only describe as a magician. I had my camera stolen and my purse emptied. I have absolutely no idea how they did it or when it happened. I can only guess that it happened on the bus during the 5 minutes that my bag was up above my head on the luggage rack. Put up there by a man that I later realised was only pretending [View Full Entry]

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After my tour of the mines in Potosi I had 41 hours to get to the airport in Santa Cruz. Loads of time I thought. I was going to take an afternoon bus to Sucre (3hrs) and then an overnight bus to Santa Cruz (15hrs) which would get me in with about 12 hours to spare. But the roads to Sucre were blocked by a protest and all of the buses had stopped running. So i booked myself onto an overnight bus to Cochabamba (10hrs) instead and from there I would take a bus to Santa Cruz (about 8hrs). I would [View Full Entry]

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If I felt posh when I took the Vistadome train up to Machu Picchu I felt like I had royal blood running through my veins when I boarded the Andean Explorer, an Orient Express train which took me from Cusco to Puno! It was a beautiful train, 1920´s decor, full of actual furniture as opposed to regular train tables and seats. I had a big comfy armchair to sit in and there was a gold lamp on my table! At the back of the train was a bar carriage and joined onto that an open air observation car. Mid morning we [View Full Entry]

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After the ordeal that was the Santa Cruz trek I spent four whole days in Huaraz doing nothing! I had the whole dorm room to myself because the protests in Lima (which you may have seen on the news?) where disrupting transport and stopping a lot of people from traveling. The uproar was basically because the Peruvian president's free market policies are only benefiting the business sector and multinational companies. Peru is currently in an economic boom (9% growth last year!) but the wealth has not been spread, prices are rising and the poor, who's pay has not risen are struggling. [View Full Entry]

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