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 [View Full Entry]

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Day 113 We had a long overnight flight to LA and arrived inconveniently at about 2 in the morning. We weren't sure what to do really as it was too late to go and stay somewhere in LA and too early to turn up at the Rules house (one of the families who Tom stayed with when he was doing his football coaching the year before) in Huntington Beach. We decided to make our way to the hire car office to try and sort out some wheels and then make a decision from there. This wasn't as easy as we anticipated [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Day 95 Left Portabello for Panama City with our sailing gang and had a pretty rapid journey which was pleasant, even though we had to sit on upturned buckets on the bus! Bit of a hassle finding a vacant hostel when we arrived but we got there in the end! Didn't really get up to much in the day, and just had some drinkys in the evening. Day 96 Went to visit the almighty Panama canal and saw some big big ships passing through the locks. Decided that we wanted to go straight to Bocas Del Toro because there wasn't that [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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More snaps for your viewing... [View Full Entry]

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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, [View Full Entry]

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Day 84 Because if all the delays we didnt get into Bogota until about 5 in the eve. Went to El cafecito which was unfortunatley renamed El Cafeshito in Colombia. Didn´t live up to the Ecuadorian standards and was in a bad spot and it was pretty dead. Had food and caught up on naps after all the travels ready to go somewhere better the next day Day 85 Moved to Platypus, right in the middle of town and much better. Spent the day cruising Bogota, bit of shopping and tried to sort out the perennial cashflow issues. Tried to enjoy [View Full Entry]

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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 [View Full Entry]

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Day 68 Bus arrived in Trujillo and had to sit around for hours waiting for the connecting bus to Piura. From Piura we had another little wait and then got on the next bus to Mancora, a little beach town in northern Peru, which didn´t arrive till about 11pm. Stumbled to the hostel which was a hell hole but we were too tired to do anything about it so decided to crash out (despite the shower full of dead cockroaches). Day 69 Left nice and early and didn´t have to pay as the owner was there and was pretty disgraced when [View Full Entry]

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