Day 116 Time to jump in the car back on the backpacking trail again and head up Route 1 towards Santa Barbara for our next stop off. We made the most of the Rules fridge for the last time and packed up a big fat picnic for the journey. The drive was really nice as most of it ran parallel to the shoreline. We stopped for our picnic in Malibu and admired some of the beach houses before getting back on the road. We arrived at the Bittencourts house (another family that Tom stayed with whilst he was coaching football) late afternoon and met the family (Bonnie, Bill and Maddie who was about 8). We didn't get up to much in the evening and the house was a lot quieter than the Rules so we just ... read more

Day 102 Had a very early start ready for our 3 flights to Roatan. Tom was obviously looking forward to seeing his old buddies although slightly apprehensive that they might not remember him! When we finally arived on Roatan we jumped on a busy bus that would take us to Punta Gorda which is the village where Tom lived. Amazingly one of his old students was on the bus and remembered him so I think that was a bit of a relief! When we reached our destination at 5pm after over 12 hours travelling we were pretty tired so were keen to find a bed. Mary Lou who did all Toms cooking when he was there hooked us up in one of her friends guest rooms which was actually really nice. Big room, flushing toilet and ... read more

Day 90 Guess what, another early start ready to set sail. Met up with our team and took taxis at 6am to the port to meet captain Mark and Melody. Away by 7, we were all very excited about getting out in to the open sea. About 2 hours in to the sail we were lucky enough to be joined by a group of about 10 dolphins jumping up and down alongside the boat. A good start! Spent the day reading books, listening to Ipods and getting to know everyone. We seemed to be ok with the sea sickness but Julie the danish girl was really suffering! Mark had told us about a new discovery that listening to music extra loud balances out the veritgo so helps your body to cope better, tom had his in ... read more

Day 81 After lots of hanging around we finally wandered down to the beach with our group and jumped on a little boat. After about and hour we were in and around the whale site and keeping an eagle eye. Almmost straight away we found two humpback whales out to play. The males are around 12 metres long and the females 14 metres. Pretty massive. We got to see pretty much every stereotypical view of whales you can imagine, loads of jumping, swimming along with their fin out the water, slapping their fins. All this made for a good hours entertainment, with the whales sometimes as close as 10 metres from the boat. Maaad. Needless to say we were snapping away and took about 100 photos, which when we got back to shore and reviewed them ... read more

Day 76 Up at 6 to go and catch our 9.15 flight. When we arrived got told that we had been moved to the 11.15flight. Not happy. Did all there was to do in Guayaquil airprt until finally got in the air after another delay. We were really excited about having someone holding our names up on a board when we arrived so were devoed when the woman didnt make herself known and i had to goon a little hunt to find her. Bad start. Then got a bus boat and bus to reach the hotel where we had a nice room, until we realised there was a school trip filling the rest of the hotel. Mental. Spent the afternoon at the Charles Darwin station (which Claire thought was a train station - "Why are we ... read more