From Honduras we cheated a bit by taking a direct shuttle bus to Guatemala. This went against our usual method of cheap chicken bus travel, but even we need some luxury sometimes! The shuttle was significantly faster than the alternative, although still took nearly 6 hours. Distances here look so short on the map but seem to turn into mini epics every time we travel. Antigua Our first proper stop in Guatemala was the colonial city of Antigua. It is easy to see why this place has become a backpacker hot-spot, with its nice architecture, quirky cafes, bagel shops, etc. The [View Full Entry]

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A long journey (including 5 different chicken buses!) took us from Matagalpa in Nicaragua across the border to Honduras' capital city Tegucigalpa. We had head many bad things about Tegucigalpa and would have avoided it if we could, but it was too late to move on and so we found ourselves taking a taxi into the city centre to get a hotel. Well, I don't know if it is directly because we weren't meant to like Tegus (as it is commonly known), but we found ourselves not finding it too bad at all. It has some nice architecture and is definitely [View Full Entry]

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Nicaragua is a country I could not help but love: it is a fascinating place, full of history, culture, natural wonders and good food. It is also very cheap! We left Monteverde, Costa Rica at 6am in order to start our epic move to Nicaragua. Well, maybe "epic" is too strong a word, but it was certainly a bit of a trial, involving 4 different chicken buses, a taxi, a boat and a long border crossing to finally reach our first destination, the town of Moyogalpa on Isla de Ometepe. We arrived just in time to check into a good cheap [View Full Entry]

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Costa Rica is probably one of the world's best travel destinations, but only if you have the money to be able to afford it. We spent the majority of our week in Costa Rica being shocked by the price of things, especially after 10 months in South America. Sadly, as 'budget' travellers, I don't think we got the most out of the country, but still we did manage to do some very cool things and have left other stuff for when we are older and richer...! San Jose To get to the Costa Rican capital city San Jose from Panama we [View Full Entry]

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Panama City and the Canal And so after 10 months of travelling we left South America and headed up to Central America. We took a flight from Cartagena to Panama City and - apart from big security checks on the Colombian side - it all went very smoothly and we were in our Panama hotel by lunchtime ready for some exploring. We spent the afternoon discovering Panama's historic old town which until a few years ago was mostly off-limits to tourists. It had apparently become very rundown and was not a safe place to wander. But lots of regeneration has taken [View Full Entry]

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When we arrived in Cartagena late one afternoon, it was raining and a big thunder and lightning storm was getting under way. Not the most auspicious start! However, over the next few days we realised that this is just the pattern of weather in this part of the Caribbean - hot and sunny in the mornings and during lunchtime, then at some point in the afternoon the sky clouds over and the rain comes in at high speed. Give it an hour or two and it all calms down again... So we learned to structure our days around the weather. With [View Full Entry]

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To finish our mad treks of South America, we decided to take a 6 day trip into the Colombian jungle to visit the "Ciudad Perdida" (Lost City). Whilst it was not quite Indiana Jones, it was still pretty exciting, with us hiking through the rainforest, struggling across a raging river on multiple occasions, visiting a 'cocaine factory' and finally arriving at the Ciudad Perdida having avoided being kidnapped by FARC... Day 1 We were picked up early from our hotel in Taganga and taken by minibus and then jeep to the village of El Mamey. We took it easy there for [View Full Entry]

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We moved on from Bogotá reluctantly, knowing that we had not seen everything, but feeling that it was a good idea to keep up the travelling pace. We headed north to the city of Tunja and quickly caught an onward collectivo connection to the small town of Villa de Leyva. Known as being one of the best examples of a colonial town in Colombia, Villa de Leyva did not disappoint. It was declared a National Monument in 1954 and has apparently not changed much since then. The town has a lovely laid-back feel, and we enjoyed wandering around, snooping around old [View Full Entry]

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When we first came to South America back in September of last year Colombia was not even on our list of countries to visit. Why would anyone visit a place known for terrorist guerrillas, kidnappings and drug trafficking? But, the more people we met during our travels the more we heard that Colombia is seriously mis-represented by the rest of the world and that it is actually a country worth getting to know. So, it got added to the list... From Ecuador to Colombia The first decision we had to make was whether to fly into Colombia or to cross by [View Full Entry]

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Whilst my blogging has always been relatively up to date I seem to have fallen behind a bit in the last month or so - the travelling life is just too exciting! So instead of covering every bit of Ecuador individually in different blogs I am putting all of our Ecuador experiences into this one blog. So it may be a bit long... Vilcabamba and Loja Our first stop in Ecuador was the pleasant city of Loja in the south. I was immediately struck by how "western" the city was, with lots of fashion shops, wide pavements (sidewalks for you American [View Full Entry]

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