karenandmarcelaway

Buenos Aires Note: We have been getting emails from a few people asking where the early blog entries are. There are 18 entries with photo's etc, so far. Just go back to the home page of the blog with this url: http://www.travelblog.org/Bloggers/karenandmarcelaway/ Here you can go back and forth to see all our entries and there can be more than 1 page per entry - scroll to the bottom to see additional photo's etc. So if you have time have a look at our early stuff too - we hope you like it. End of Note. We decided to stay in BA for two weeks,(which turned into three) and have been out everyday exploring the city, sometimes in total monsoon downpours. The buses and tubes are a fraction of the London buses (22p for a single ... read more

El Calafate On Marcel's Birthday we left Peurto Natales after a birthday (compleanos) hug from Omar and ran for the 5 hr bus to El Calafate. Oh what a birthday treat. There's nothing like a good bus journey to spend on your special day..... El Calafate is basically a high street full of parilla restaurants, ice-cream parlours and sourvenir shops, one notch higher on the tourist gear than Ushuaia, pleasant but really just a good place to move on from. We had uknowingly booked ourselves into what can only be described as a 'Megahostel'. Where the receptionist meets and greets you and as you view the 180 degree view of the mountains she shows you around the huge atrium like communal space, with big lounges, magazines, computers etc. The hostel was like a modern swiss ... read more

Ushuaia The southern most city in the world (although actually there's a naval town just across the border in Chile which is a bit further south, but we aren't really supposed to mention that as we're in Argentina. There's lot of things we don't need to mention. Like the Falklands, Sorry: Isla de Malvinas that apparrently belongs to Argentina on all maps, signage, and at all borders where they like to remind everyone. (not that we care, it's just interesting.) So Ushuaia..... Until 1989 this was a sleepy logging town and fishing port. Now it is still half asleep, but has woken up to tourists. It's the destination if you are bound for Antarctica or if you need to buy a box of beautiful chocolates or a gortex jacket, Ushuaia's the place to go. In ... read more

WE heart Nicaragua. (exception: Managua) Arriving at the boarder we all had 15 minutos to change money, buy cheap cigarettes or an orange sliced in half with some salty stuff on it.. So we jumped out of our luxery air con bus to be hit by 38 degree wall of heat!!! Oh my god. It was hard just to stand up, wearing jeans 15 minutes is along time, the orange helped! Over oranges we talked to a nice Nicaraguan man who gave us the low down on where to go, what to do, la la la. This was our first of many encounters with really genuine Nicaraguan people (exception: Managua). Back on board the bus with the help of the nice Nicaraguan man,the bus made an unnofficial stop at Leon to drop two two English ... read more

A hard rains gonna fall After enjoying our visit to Tikal we thought we would visit Belize as we were relatively close to the border. After a 3 hour journey to the customs office in Guatemala we were left a little lighter in our wallets after the unofficial 'tax'. On the Belizean side after declaring our contraband banana we found we were stranded with no local transport to the nearest town or bus station and with no Belizean (or US) currency. So after catching an expensive taxi to the nearest cash machine in San Ignacio we got on our first Belizean chicken bus bound for Dangriga via Belmopan - the key difference between guatemalan and Belizean chicken buses is that in Belize only two people sit per seat rather than 4 in Guatemala. The other ... read more