Day 709 (08.03.09) With some of our adventure team, Nat, Liam and Vic, having left the night before, we hooked up with some other canadian buddies we had made at the hostel for an early morning Bungee Jump. With us and the other guys a little slower to get going than planned (they a least had an excuse having gone out the night before) 6 of us jumped into two taxis. Chrissie was not planning to jump having decided on a more serene paragliding adventure for the afternoon, however was eager to come along to see us plunge into our impending [View Full Entry]

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Day 708 (07.03.09) We were planning a monster day of walking and more adventure stuff, but soon realised that we just wouldn't be able to fit it all in - there's just way too much to do around here for our limited time! We eventually opted for a day out in a local town and a walk around the local area with the mates we'd met at the hostel. Starting off with a fruit feast from the local market for brekkie we found a minibus destined for Barichara and our first stop on our day out. After wandering around the stunning [View Full Entry]

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Day 707 (06.03.09) Another day of adventures, this time we were going down under into the Vaca caves in Curiti not far from San Gil with our now established english and ozzie adventure activities group. Jumping in a minibus taxi a little later than planned we arrived at the office to our rather shy but nice guide Freddie. With hard hats and dodgy caving lamps in hand we took the 5 min walk through some local fields from the office to the cave entrance wondering quite what was in store for us. The cave entrance looked quite innocuous as we approached, [View Full Entry]

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Day 706 (05.03.09) It turns out that San Gil is pretty much the adventure capital of Colombia and the list of activities available is as long as your arm. With still relatively few travellers hitting Colombia the prices are also at bargain levels and the set up for the activities very non-commercial which all suited us just fine. We had perused the list and chosen a few to keep us busy over the next few days of adrenalin fuelled action. With a nice and fairly leisurely 9am start we had an action packed day ahead of us. We had joined a [View Full Entry]

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Day 704 (03.03.09) The small colonial town of Villa de Leyva was given protected status over 50 years ago and so none of the buildings are modern and the cobbled streets are lined with small whitewashed houses with pretty little balconies and brightly coloured flowers tumble over high garden walls. We had managed to catch a brief but beautiful glimpse of the town on our way through in the dark the night before and were keen to wander the towns narrow roads but since we had a whole day at our disposal we decided to head out of town to visit [View Full Entry]

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Day 703 (02.03.09) We'd originally planned to head straight up north to the Caribbean coast of Colombia but having spoken to a fellow hosteller in Bogota and fancying a few shorter journeys we decided to explore the region north of Bogota for a few days first. Our first stop was Zipaquira where we planned to visit the underground salt cathedral which is part of the extensive salt mines in the town. To get there we shouldered our packs and hopped on the Transmilenio bus system to Portal Norte - far easier said than done with all our luggage making us a [View Full Entry]

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Day 702 (01.03.09) Our first full day in Colombia had begun and we set out to get a feel for the city of Bogotá. We love street food as it´s a cheap, tasty and easy way to eat so our first aim was to get some breakfast and check out the street food our new country had to offer. Our fists soon gripped around potato cakes that turned out to be filled with cheese we were suitably impressed and headed towards the city´s main square, the Plaza de Bolivar. On the way we ran into a fairly large protest also headed [View Full Entry]

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Day 697 (24.02.09) As well as the incredible parades happening nightly in the Sambadromo, various areas of Rio host street parties and parades throughout the days of carnaval. We´d heard about a huge street party due to be held in Santa Teresa at 2pm so after a lie-in to sleep off the previous evening´s festivities, a group of us got our glad rags on and headed that way in a couple of cabs. When we arrived we found that the party we´d heard about had actually occurred at 9am instead and it turned out that the city actually advertises this party [View Full Entry]

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Day 700 and 701 (27.02.09 - 28.02.09) We hadn´t had the time or the money (Brazil is one of South America´s more expensive countries) to do Brazil justice on this trip so about 2 weeks after we´d arrived it was time to leave. We´d had such a great time here and have vowed to return someday and really DO Brazil! Flights on round the world tickets can be limited to where it is possible to fly into and out of and when we booked we´d only been able to get a flight out of Sao Paulo and not Rio and to [View Full Entry]

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Day 695 (22.02.09) Today was the day for us to experience all the colour, grandeur and true spectacle of the Carnaval in Rio as we had tickets to the main parade in the Sambadromo. But before we could make it out for the start at 9pm, we still had to drag ourselves out of bed following our previous Carnaval celebrations. Making it up for a spot of brekkie before falling back into bed for a couple of hours we eventually made it outside for a trip to the hippy market in Ipanema where amongst the local artists dsiplaying their work we [View Full Entry]

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