Lisa Johnsey
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Travel Blog Posts
Ohh.....all right....just one last stop!
Published: August 15th 2008North America » United States » New York » New York » Manhattan
June 26th 2008
The Big Apple - I just had a stopover of one night and one day to explore the capital on my way home. So I whizzed round like a crazy tourist on a tight schedule taking in the main sites...Grand Central Station, Statue of Liberty, Fifth Avenue (strictly window shopping only, just to see Saks and other famous shops), Times Square, The Empire State building, Central Park. I had bagels for breakfast, rode the subway, walked up Broadway at night with all the lights and billboards, (I tried to get a chinese take away in a cardboard pot but failed and ended up giving away the worst chinese I have ever had to a tramp sitting on a bench in Strawberry fields with a sign that said: Why lie? I just need a beer.), surprised the ... read more
Belize and the home run
Published: July 22nd 2008Central America Caribbean » Belize » Belize Barrier Reef
June 24th 2008
Well I am actually writing this final entry from my friends flat in Bristol on a very wet rainy summers day back in Blighty whilst trying to conjure up a different kind of watery experience! I already feel a long way away from the sand and beaches of Belize, and its getting harder to go back a just a few weeks and remember what it was like so I had better get this written before it disappears entirely...... I'll just have another cup of tea first though....... One of the trickiest things with a boat is working out how long it will take you to get somewhere. You have a fairly limited speed range and all sorts of factors which affect it. While we were sailing we calculated the distance for our journey and then figured ... read more
June 11th 2008
We had sailed into Isla de Guanaja without raising our yellow quarantine flag in order not to announce to inmigration that we needed to clear in, this meant that we could spend our first day relaxing and catch up on some much needed rest. For Guy this translated as cleaning out all the cupboards down below and throwing out a few years of accumulated crap, then tackling the fuel problem and the other various bits of machinery which had stopped working. Whereas I spent the whole day sitting on deck keeping out of the way reading a book! The following day we took the dingy on the long ride over to the settlement of Guanaja which was a cluster of wooden pastel painted buildings on stilts all crammed on to what I guess used to be ... read more
June 2nd 2008
You´ll see from the location of this blog entry that we made it to Honduras at long last. We got here two days ago after 10 days at sea. Apologies for the boating jargon in this blog I hope you get my drift as it were. We managed almost a whole afternoon out of Cartagena before anything went wrong! The first thing to go was the auto pilot. We had all the sails up in beautiful sunshine and open sea ahead of us but something was bound to go wrong sooner or later. The failure of the auto pilot means that someone had to steer manually day and night and since there was only two of us it meant while one was asleep the other was stuck at the wheel for 3 hours without being able ... read more
May 20th 2008
I have had a strange few weeks since my last blog. I was due to leave Catagena and Colombia at the start of May but we have had a few boat problems and so far each time we set out for a test run some thing has gone wrong. I left my hostel on the 9th of May to board the boat and we planned to set off on our test run to Las Islas Rosarios a few days later. We went and bought the provisions and got the boat shipshape but only got as far as the fuel pontoon and back before we started hearing a funny noise. It turned out to be the alternator belt and on going down to change this (which was only a quick job) Guy found that the transmision was ... read more
May 5th 2008
So another big city, and to be honest I have started running out of energy for this traveling lark (finally). My theory is that to properly get a feel for a city you either need friends there or at least 3 weeks. I had neither in Medellin so after a cursory look around the sights like the plaza de esculpturas.....actually that was it, there are lots more sights but I couldn't really be bothered....I took a trip up and down the metro instead. The metro in Medellin is elevated so you get a great view of the city without doing any leg work yourself. It looked like a lovely city and I was impressed by how green it was. Because the buildings are mainly no more than 3 storeys high you can see along way along ... read more
Coffee pickin, mountain climbin, chiva ridin madness
Published: May 3rd 2008South America » Colombia » Manizales
April 27th 2008
My next stop was in the lovely little town of Salento, an hour east of Armenia. The town is a typical pueblo paisa and full of colourful fronted houses around the main plaza and lots of people milling around with their ponchos on. I stayed in the Mountain House hostel which is in one of the nicest settings I have stayed in here, with lovely gardens and an annex down across a field with the best views from my dorm room. From here I took a jeep with some others from the hostel to the Cocora valley famous for its wax palms, where I wanted to go horse riding. The others were all planning to walk so I was a little surprised to find that I was renting a horse but no guide and set off ... read more
April 22nd 2008
When I went to meet the kids I was planning to volunteer with they were sitting quietly watching TV but I was immediately jumped on and hugged by 4 little monkeys called, Jhon, Yahaira, Nicole and Cristian Duane. I clearly wasn’t the first foreign volunteer they had seen and without any further questions or introductions I was dragged out to the patio area where they had all their toys to play with them. I had wanted to do some volunteering firstly to improve my Spanish and secondly to get to know one place from a different perspective. I thought that a month chatting and working with the staff at the home would give me this, but as soon as I arrived that first day I was left alone with the kids and so I quickly realised ... read more
April 8th 2008
I arrived in Cali at the beginning of the month with exactly 31 days until I need to be back on the north coast for my lift out of here to central America. I wanted to work here for a while in order to improve my Spanish a bit more and to see a part of Colombia from a non backpacker point of view. I had chosen Cali as it is not really on the gringo trail but if I am honest the fact that it lists itself as the salsa capital of Colombia was also a big draw. Coincidentally all the people I met at Christmas on the beach were also from Cali and one girl in particular, Wisely, thought she might be able to set me up with some work connections. I arrived here ... read more
March 31st 2008
Whilst in Ecuador I floated the idea that Adam could come with me to Colombia seeing as he didn't have much planned up until his flight from Quito to Peru, so I said why not kill the time with me and see a bit of Colombia to boot. The US government strongly advises its citizens against visiting Colombia as does ours, but for some reason us Brits just tend to take far less notice of any officials or politicians than they do. So while I was painting pictures of lovely people and countryside two Belgians arrived and told us that the San Augustin was indeed beautiful but the road there was crap, they had to wait for 7 hours on route as there was a body on the road under investigation plus they think that's where ... read more
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