Nick Pharazyn

Hello all It feels good to be writing in here agin, it´s been about a month since my last entry which is unfortunate but then again time has been flying by very quickly and ... well I haven´t got any excuse in terms of free time, I´ve had plenty here in BA, I just haven´t been organised enough to get this done sooner. but ¨better late than never¨ as they say. Here is a rough outline of what I have been doing in the past 6 weeks, broken up into days so you can see the general breakdown and what I did. after Puerto lopez; 3 days in quito, about 2 weeks in the amazon then 2 days at a bird lodge in the eastern andes, 1 day in Quito, 4 days in Vilcabamba, 2 days ... read more

Hola there Well, 9 days isn´t a week but it´s an improvement from the gap between previous entries and, to my credit, the gap ^WAS shorter than 2 weeks. progress in short. So, where was I? ah yes, off to Puerto Lopez. Well the trip to get to Puerto Lopez was alright i guess.. I´d actually booked a ticket for an 11.30am bus but when laden with feelings of impending doom, I tend to be reluctant to get out of bed, so consequently I got up late and left too little time to pack before I left and ended up catching a different bus around 1pm. I had to go through the manabi province to get to puerto lopez, which is in it´s extreme south. The bus I got on was very slow to leave but ... read more

Hola all. Well it´s been 3 weeks since my last entry which is quite a while I guess.. It´s strange, because while in some ways it feels like I´ve been here for a substantial period of time, which I have; almost a month, it doesn´t actually feel that long ago that I was making that first entry of the trip. time can be funny like that. Well the bus trip down here is worth a mention. I caught a taxi from my hostel in La Mariscal ( the tourist area of Quito) to the bus terminal of the company which I was catching a bus down to the coast with, Reina del camino. I´d bought my ticket the day before and was just standing around waiting to get on the bus when all of a sudden, ... read more

¨Hola¨ all Well here it is, the first bulletin from the ground in south america.. gawd it´s been like 10 days since I left.. I have been flying recently and so has time (from my perspective at any rate) and I meant to make an entry much earlier but because this is me this is going to be freaking long as and I just didn´t have time before as things have been so busy/hectic. The flight to Brisbane was quiet and unremarkable. The weather was fine and the spooky spectre of turbulence ( I describe it thus because I´ve watched too many episodes of ¨Air crash investigation¨ on nat geo channel) troubled us not. I was flying with V Australia, which is a new airline, a new branch on Richard Branson´s vast tree that is the ... read more

Hola all right so this will just be a quick entry.. WELL - I e-mailed NZ's honorary consul for Ecuador some time ago asking if I needed a visa to stay longer then 90 days (I want to stay for 15 weeks - 2.5 more than the 12.5 that 90 days represents ). Well, I know you need a visa if you want to be there more than 90 days at one time but the point is my time would be split like.. 60 days/ 45 days with a break of 8 weeks in between when I was in Peru, Bolivia and northern Argentina. Well this lady assured me ("100%")that that was ok because I was going out of the country and would be coming back, so I could just be reissued with a new "T3 ... read more

Hi all Wow this feels really good! Last time I was writing a blog was 3 years ago for my last trip. Here I am making the first entry of my second travel blog for my return to Ecuador and to explore greater south america - what an awesome feeling of anticipation and excitement this is! I worked for just under 2000 hours sorting mail (working full time for 13 months) to be able to go away so I feel like I've really earned it too.. But really, this feeling.. there's nothing like it! What exotic places and crazy adventures await me on that most adventurous of continents? On my last trip I was expecting a simple stint of 8 weeks doing conservation volunteer work in the amazon followed by a week of leisurely travel to ... read more