After a calm weekend spent in Juayua, Fin and I grouped together with a pair of tall Blondes - one Danish and the other Australian - and embarked at around midday for El Tunco, a tiny surfing town about three hours away. Getting on a chicken bus with your backpack is pretty difficult: often these buses are full the point that no seat is holding less than three people, and when you´re in a quiet area such is Juayua, there´s no bus conductor to hike your pack up on the roof, so it´s up to you to maneouvure it in through the hordes of passengers. When you multiply this already tricky situation by four, you can understand that the Fin, me and the two Blondes had a fairly hard time travelling soley on chicken buses this ... read more

It was quite a relief for me when Antigua, which meant language school, was only a bus ride away. Although we had been doing pretty well on the Spanish that I already knew, I was keen to learn a lot more, and still feeling very frustrated at not being able to understand as much Spanish as I could speak. When we arrived in Antigua, we were collected by our new padres (parents), Olga and Hermando, who drove us to what was to be our new home for the next two weeks: a pretty yellow house replete with golden dog called Ringo and volcanic views (literally). Slightly less picturesque than Volcan de Agua, that loomed over the courtyard, was the leather factory next door, where animal skins hung out to dry on washing lines. The family seemed ... read more

Although, by now we had spent a couple of weeks in Latin America (Mexico), Belize was to be our first Central American stop ´proper´ and, having heard that Belize City is a bit of a shithole, we decided to head straight for Caye Caulker, and to spend New Year´s Eve on a Carribbean Island. Heading from the bus station to the ferry port with our newly-aquired friends Kelly and Matt, we saw that previous tales of Belize City´s non-desirability were not exxagerated in the least. It only really warrants one more sentence, so I´ll just say: dirty, scary and unstable. Definitely not a place to convince you of the much-vaunted beauty of Belize. We were all relieved to board a ferry to Caye Caulker, but were less impressed that our bags (and our entire lives for ... read more

After the excessive party times enjoyed in Isla Mujeres, Fin and I felt that it was time to go and experience some 'culture', and headed to Merida, a Yucatan town lacking in beach, but resplendent in shops and markets where we hoped to see a little more of 'real Mexico'. Our hostel did not boast the same level of sociability as Poc Na in Isla, but it at least had a kitchen, and served a decent breakfast (which I still had to digest very slowly after suffering from dickie tummie back on the Island). During our first full day in Merida, Fin and I experienced our first culture shock. Unfortunately, this experience proved to be more off-putting than it was enlightening. After managing to actually understand the Spanish response to my Spanish question about the whereabouts ... read more

I´m going to Miami, haba neba ami ami... Is how Miami - as immortalised by Will Smith - sounded to me, before I actually went there. In my imagination, and not uncoincidentally, in line with said hit song - Miami was a place where the sun is always shining, the skies don´t see rain and the people are unfalteringly beautiful. With the very slight exception of a small amount of rain (barely worth mentioning, were it not for the author´s interest in accuracy), my preconceptions were basically true. Travelling on the local bus through Miami´s famous South Beach, you can look out to see honed bodies, pampered pooches and busty cosmetically altered mannequins (if you can forgive the obviousness of such a statement), but unlike the typical caricatures so often connoted by LA´s Hollywood, these beautiful ... read more