Galapagos Lima to Guayaquil There’s not much we can say about the Galapagos that would do it justice, but we’ll try. We took a bus from Lima to the border between Peru and Equador, and met a guy who was going to get us across the border. He was arranged by our travel lady. We met him with only one small problem, he didn’t speak any English! However we made our way to the checkpoint, got our passports stamped and walked across the border! There’s a small village called Huaquillas which is half in Peru, and half in Equador. We walked across the border which was a bit scary as there was a market and there were people everywhere, and they were all staring at us, and I can’t blame them we were the only white ... read more

Into the Jungle - Part 1: Camping in the jungle So after Cusco Penny and travelled by bus back to Lima where we shared the bus with a Russian fellow named Alexei, we talked for a few hours about various things, travel, people, places etc before he went to write in his journal and Pen and I tried to figure out what we were going to do. We were thinking of taking a bus to Puerto Maldonado, then taking a cargo ship by river to Iquitos where we could take another cargo ship down to Manaus in Brazil thus getting into the heart of the Amazon. However this would take us almost two and a half weeks, and would mean that we may not have enough time to get to the Galapagos. The alternative was to ... read more

Inca Trail Wow, what can we say? We had the most amazing hike. It had everything, mountains, altitude, ruins, and a bit of jungle…as well as lot’s of interesting people. Our first morning we were all picked up in a bus, and taken to the start of the trail…I really wasn’t functioning so well as it was about 5:30am when we were collected. We arrived at the trail, and got a group photo just before starting. The trail starts where the train starts, so many people here are going to see Machu Piccu, however we were hiking for 4 days and 3 nights on our way up. Penny was very nervous, and on the bus she met two English gals Jo and Ally who were quite nervous also, so at least she had company! As we ... read more

Toronto to Vancouver So after many months of waiting, finally Penny’s permanent residency visa showed up. That meant that we could now head to Vancouver. We said goodbye to my parents, and jumped in Beast for the highway to catch up with some college friends of mine in Northern Ontario on the way out of Ontario. We stopped in to visit Julie, and her husband Dave and kids. It was great to catch up, and to make things even better Julie supplied us with a big bag of home made cookies…they were awesome! Then we went to Christine and Steve’s friends of mine in North Bay, where I went to college (about 5 hours north of Toronto) where we spent the night catching up. The next morning we met Joanne another college friend and her new ... read more

Well we got off the ferry and we were in Newfoundland. We’d heard from so many people that it was beautiful, and we have to admit we were looking forward to be surrounded by that amusing Newfie accent. So with great anticipation we proceeded to get lost driving through the town center of Port aux Basque looking for the tourist information. After giving up and deciding to head north…surprise it was on the way out of town, with no signage (none that we saw). Bloody newfies ;o) So we went in got all the info we needed, including confirmation that we could drive up to Labrador, then down through Quebec, but it involved lots of dirt road (around 1200-1600kms of dirt road, 18 wheelers, and a whole lot of wilderness…just the kind of adventure we were ... read more