Having finally made it to the right start point hotel (I got a taxi with a German couple I met from my group, Markus and Franziska, who were also at the wrong hotel) I finally get to meet Brian our Costa Rican tour guide (he looks like a football pro!) and the rest of my group. There's three more from the UK (another couple, Miles and Catherine and solo traveller Ben), Dan an Ozzie who's living in the US, Marian and Doug two Canadians also living in the US and one bonafide American Stu. We get to know each other better over a meal in the evening and they turn out to be a fun and friendly set of people so it's looking like being a great trip. We meet the final two people, Jane and ... read more

At this point Eric leaves me in the hands of a crooked toothed guide and a bunch of geriatric Americans.The guide proceeds to pick up a poisoned dart frog so I begin to doubt his sanity for one and ability to explain the chocolate process for another. On the way to the tour he tells a tall tale about Theobrama, some god of food who loved chocolate so much he turned the woman he loved into a cacao tree. I decide to keep my distance! We arrive at the demo area and sit ourselves on tiered seats to watch the demonstration begin. We are shown a tiny blossom that in the space of just six months turns into a cacao fruit the size of a melon. When humans saw animals eating these fruits they decided to ... read more

With ten hours to kill on my main flight I decide to read a bit of my Costa Rica Insight book. I find out that Costa Rica was dubbed The Land of the Happy Medium by an official at the World Bank and although it is classified in economic terms as a third world country its high standard of living and social development seem at odds with this label. My favourite discovery so far is that Costa Rica got rid of its army in 1948 and since then the government has been able to devote a massive percentage of its resources to more useful and civilised pursuits such as education, health and conservation instead of killing and maiming fellow human beings in the patriotic fervour that is deemed necessary by testosterone fuelled power struggles and waving ... read more

So to the most exciting day of my travels - a visit to the Great Wall of China! This iconic structure is so well known it hardly needs any explanation but here's my bit of potted history to fill in any gaps. The Great Wall of China - or the 'Long Wall of Ten Thousand Li' was first started in the 3rd century BC when disparate earthern ramparts were constructed by individual states. Under Qin Shi Huangdi's unification of China (the guy of Terracotta Army fame) the Great Wall was created through joining up the previously built ramparts. Construction continued right up until the Ming dynasty in the 17th century AD. This huge defensive military project undertaken by successive Chinese Empires, with a total length of more than 20,000 km or 13,000 miles, starts in the ... read more

Everything was going so well the next morning. Our planned taxi journey to the station area of Xian to pick up our coach to the Terracotta Army went without a hitch - well there was a minor blip when our taxi driver decided he would stop for breakfast en-route but apart from that all good. And then we saw the queues for the coaches to the Terracotta Warriors! As they say in Norfolk where Lottie Let Loose hails from 'Ooooh moi gard!' There were literally hundreds of people in the queue (the fact that the Chinese were actually queuing warranted a photo!) and it wasn't moving as far as we could make out. Dennis hadn't ever seen it this bad before, but this is where having a fab local tour guide comes into its own. A ... read more