Hi all, Welcome to the special Christmas edition of my blog!! Although to be honest, there is nothing particularly special or Christmasy about it, I just happen to be writing it around Christmas time and though I should wish everyone a ¨Feliz Navidad´ before you all piss off on holidays! You will be pleased to know that Christmas can be just as tacky here as other places in the world. There are fake Christmas tress everywhere and Christmas carols being played left, right and centre. It is nice and hot so I feel right at home, although many of my fellow [View Full Entry]

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Hi again everybody, Well, after having a lot of fun in Guatemala I decided it was time to move on to different and exciting things in the rest of Central America. So after two very unexciting days on buses I made it Nicaragua. I went straight to a place called Isla de Omtepe, a volcanic island in the middle of a huge lake! Ok, so I know I have written a lot about volcanoes and a lot about lakes - they are a recurring theme here in Central America - so I won´t bore you with too many details except to [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Guatemala (again!). Only a few more hours and I will be leaving Guatemala, so this is my last blog entry from here.......but it is yet again an exciting episode in my travels. After the exertions of hiking I spent a few days hanging out an Lake Atitlan, a beautiful lake that is surrounded by volcanoes. It is an amazingly picturesque place, so much so that half the hippies from the western world have moved there to find themselves. It was a tough couple of days spent reading books, swimming and strolling around the lake. I highly recommend the area [View Full Entry]

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Hi everyone! Hope everyone is going well and is looking forward to the Melbourne Cup and election (in that order). I am still in the highlands of Guatemala and have just returned to civilisation after a big hike to the wild west. To elaborate: I have just completed at 4 day hike with my favourite trekking organisation, Quetzaltrekkers. We walked 75km in 4 days over hills and rocky mountains with packs on our backs, so it was no mean feat. It was an amazing trip - we saw some fantastic scenery which included everything from cloud forests to granite plains that [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Guatemala! I have been here for just over four weeks now and everything is going tops. Most recently I spent two weeks at a spanish language school in a rural area. I slept at the school but ate my meals with Guatemalan families from a nearby community. This was a really eye opening experience, as I was out in the country side and living life like a true Guatemalan (apart from the red hair and the fact I cant speak spanish). The communities out there are really poor - one house where I was eating there were 14 people [View Full Entry]

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Hello from Guatemala - hope you are all going well. Another quick update on my travel adventures...... My latest travel adventure has been climbing the Tajamulco Volcano, the highest point in Central America at 4220 metres. This was a two day hike with a local tour company called Queztaltrekkers (highly recommended if you´re ever in the area). We hiked straight uphill for six hours on the first day, slept in damp and overcrowded tents overnight, then got up at 3.30am (that´s in the morning people!) to make it to the summit by dawn. Now someone pointed out to me that Tajamulco [View Full Entry]

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Hello everyone!! Well here I am in Guatemala, the first stop on my Central/South American journey. Everything is going really well so far and I am enjoying myself a lot. For those who are too busy to read the whole entry, here it the executive summary: Number of places visited: 2 in Guatemala Amount of spanish learnt: not enough Number of tortillas eaten: too many to count Number of crude comments from latino men: Not sure, I can´t understand them Number of people I am taller than: Everybody, I am a giant here Number of food poisonings, scams or rip offs: [View Full Entry]

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