Caro 1

This Website could Not cope with inputting Myanmar so Not much hope for me getting it right ! We are now at the end of this short but beautiful journey. It has been different from many though I'm not sure why. Perhaps its the delightful people, the amazing geography and sights , its po!itical history , or maybe just that for so long its been a closed country. It is a country full of contrasts trying to cope with an influx of tourists but without much of the infrastructure or know how to support it. A country of around 55 million with 8 ethnic groups dominated by the Burmese and boarded by two great nations India and China not to mention Thailand and Laos. India and China have influenced the culture food and development of Myanmar ... read more

Its been a fascinating experience, and as some if you may know we have not had access to WiFi until we returned to Havana for the third time at the end of our tour..local Cubans have the Intranet, most have no access to the wider world. Our group was small but perfectly formed , All very interesting, widely travelled with views to match!! I was the only singleton so to speak and all made me feel very comfortable so thank you guys for your support and enclusion. The tour was packed with a variety of different places to visit food to taste people to meet and snipits of knowledge was passed on to us by our fab guide Ellie who turned out to be an accomplished musician ,writer, band leader as well as her guiding skills ... read more

Helloifor the last time! It was with great excitement that we contemplated our trip to the amazing Galapagos. A very early start saw us on the coach to the airport a 2 hour flight to Batra some 1000 kms from the Ecuadorian coast . It is a very arid small island that was the base for the US during the second world war. A further coach trip to the port where we took a taxi boat across the bay, another coach across the island of Santa Cruz one of the 5 inhabited islands amongst the 16 that make up the Galapagos. And that is when the rain started ! The final port destination was in chaos , what with road repairs carnival time and elections pending. The coach couldn’t get through the road works so we ... read more

Hola my Cherubs. Finally arrived in Quito capital of Ecuador after a long old journey going up north to Bogota in Columbia and then down south again to Quito, a total journey time of 7 .5 hours, Direct flights to decrease the carbon footprint do not seem to be on the agenda! Anyway was totally exhausted after the previous days delays and fell asleep in my room and missed the group briefing – so that was a good start! We are 12 people all from the UK and very different , there are electrical engineers, a barrister, civil servants, a voluntary organisational manager and more, most retired, only 3 of us still working- quite an interesting bunch. Ecuador is the smallest of the South American countries but very compact , the guide books say you can ... read more

Southern Patagonia is wild ,desolate , windy and home to Chile’s most famous and well visited national park- Torres del Paine. Its crowning glory are the three stunning granite towers (torres) and the whole area is a hikers heaven!! It is full of spectacular lagoons, glaciers, rolling untamed grasslands, and high snow covered peaks. It also the site of Chile’s oldest human habitation , indigenous peoples now alas no longer. The park has an array of wonderful wildlife apart from sheep cows and amazing horses, and we saw foxes, guanacos (a relative of the llama tribe) by the score, the Andean condor ( check out my photo!) and the nandu described by Darwin ( resembling the ostrich but smaller). We also found flamingos, many ducks and the lesser spotted something or other!! We travelled from Punta ... read more