Having become accomplished scuba divers in only a week - Jacques Cousteau look out, we (royal we this) felt it was time to got some extreme action. 'Go to merida' the guide books exclaimed; 'the extreme sport capital of Venezuela'. Fair enuff - so with no further ado off we went... The bus journey into Venezuela was fairly uneventful, even dull, except for crossing the border leaving Colombia. We had got through all the immigration bits and were safely on the road into venezuela, when the bus was pulled over and a couple of 'uniforms' got on. I swear it took [View Full Entry]

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Alter finishing the shamanic healing session it was full steam out of the jungle as fast as possible. We were both a bit fed up of it by then, and decided the quickest route would be down the Amazon and though the jungle into Colombia. So we said goodbye to our new friends from the trip and bought tickets for a float plane (hydroplane that takes off and land on water) that went direct to a town called Leticia, which is in the heart of Colombian jungle and borders both Peru and Brazil. It also avoided an uncomfortable boat trip of [View Full Entry]

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Warning: although I have tempered the language as much as possible, some may consider the subject matter of this blog not to be suitable for tender young minds… I have a hangover. It was my 40th birthday yesterday, and Claire and I partied until far beyond our normal bedtime and are suffering as a result. Luckily this trip doesn’t have an early start and we have time to collect ourselves and find something to eat before meeting the rest of our would-be shamanic healers and head into the jungle. The restaurants in Iquitos are pretty good by most Peruvian standards, and [View Full Entry]

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Fab at Forty Before jumping in our dug out canoe and padling up the Amazon river to face our demons at the Shamonic healing camp, Simon had one particular demon of his own to face, the dreaded 40th Birthday. Our trip to the jungle was once again thwarted by flight cancellations and we found ourselves unexpectedly in Lima airport for the day. This presented us with the welcome prospect of western style fast food, so it was McDonalds all round courtesy of Lan Peru. We may have been delayed but at least we got there alive, one of the planes we [View Full Entry]

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Los Amigos de Quito and multilingual tongue twisters We came to Ecuador expecting to pop our heads in the door and leave soon afterwards, but somehow have managed to spend a month or more here! Before leaving England we had an offer of accommodation from Nancy and Christina who live in London and who also have an apartment in the capital, Quito. And so we find ourselves on a flight, clutching a piece of paper onto which we have carefully copied their address. The taxi driver seems to know where he is heading and in no time we come to the [View Full Entry]

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After our trip to Banos we decided to head for the Ecuadorian coastal town of Puerto Lopez where off the coastline it is currently mating season for the humpacked whale. So with a spring in our step we set off on our first overnight coach journey in Ecuador. Now, although Ecuador is in most respects more upscale than Peru, this doesnt apply to the buses and arriving at the terminal we boarded our bus “Carlos Aray” to find the seats to be hard as iron and stuck in a rather uncomfortable recline positon. This was going to be a long 8 [View Full Entry]

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It’s 5 am and still dark. As usual I have managed to procrastinate sufficiently on writing this blog that it’s the day before we leave Quito and its got to be now or never. Never mind, as work colleagues will attest, dawn has always been a good time for me to be creative and /or productive dahlings, ever since getting up at this time to write overdue English essays on what I did over the summer or copy pictures from the Encyclopaedia Britannica for geography projects due at 9am that day. So here goes… Leaving Vilcabamba was tough and we had [View Full Entry]

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Out of Peru and into Ecuador. We had intended to miss Ecuador entirely, thinking it was small enough to make a separate trip on a different trip further into our dotage (no comments please). But somehow we had seen enough of Peru and Ecuador was in the way between us and Columbia, and therefore needed to be explored some. So we make a break for the border, leaving Claire’s mum in Lima for her own tour and flying way north to Tumbes to cross over. Upon leaving the airport we meet a friendly guy called Walter who promptly ripped us off [View Full Entry]

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Trekking in the high andies 'Well darling, if you insist…' I muttered despondently as Claire declared that she and her mum Pat were off to see the Nazca lines (see The Monument Baggers) and it was too expensive for me to go along as we had already been there. What was I to do?.. stuck on my own in the town of Huraz in Peru, surrounded by the (arguably) best area for trekking and mountain climbing in South America - the Cordillera Blanca, home to most of the Andes highest peaks, which easily top almost everything in the northern hemisphere. An [View Full Entry]

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Well Claires Mom (Pat) arrived as planned in Lima airport and this is an account of what we did next which will particularly interest the archaeologically minded amongst you…(you know who you are!) After a day acclimatising, recovering and eating churros (lovely caramel, chocolate and crème filled doughnut sticks) in Lima we thought it high time that Pat got to discover what this travelling lark is like first hand. As we boarded our bus to Trujillo we were excited by our 8-hour journey up the PanAmerican highway ahead. How wrong could we be? Hundreds of kilometres of sand dunes [View Full Entry]

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