So after a long and gruelling journey over the border from Venezuela which included paying numurous officials off and queing for long periods in the raging heat we finally arrived in Taganga. Taganga is a little fishing village around 5 Km outside the town of Santa Marta. It is very popular for diving and just chilling out on the Carribean. We were particularly excited as it was our first trip to the carribean on our travels. On arrival at Taganga we sought out somewhere to stay. We went with a palce called Casa Blanca which is literally on the waters edge. It was beatuiful with a hammock outside our room overlooking the bay but the price matched the beauty. With the price so high the following day we set out for somewhere else to stay and ... read more

SO we have just finished a four day trek in Los Llanos. Los Llanos is a flatland area that is buzzing with wildlife. We were a bit hesitant at first to book the tour as a result of our last tour in the Amazon which we didn't see very much even though we were promised we´d see crocs etc. The first day of our tour was very relaxed. We got picked up at the bus station in Barinos and met the rest of our group for the four days. Unfortunately our group was not as good as at Angel Falls. There was 2 couples from Germany who didn´t seem to know how to smile!! We had a Spanish guy and also a Russian frmo Moscow who English was not great so he stayed quiet most of ... read more

Arrived this morning after the coldest bus ride ever. The air conditioning on the buses here is so strong my toes were numb by the time we arrived this morning. Heading off at 7am tomorrow for 3 days to Angel Falls so looking forwad to that. Have a decent internet connection here so going to try and update some photo´s! Sorry photo´s wont upload, has taken 20 minutes to laod that one photo so I give up for today!... read more

So our boat to Manaus was a completely different experience to the first time around but again we had to sleep three nights on the boat. Although the first night we were docked and had the boat to ourselves. The captain agreed that we could sleep overnight which saved us finding accomodation for the night. When we woke up after our first night we thought the boat would be crammed with hammocks like previously but to our astonishment only 40 or 50 hammocks went up which left us with plenty of room to swing our hammocks to our hearts content ;) We were due to leave at 1pm but didn´t end up leaving until 4pm which meant we would have a late arrival in Manaus. Our neighbours seemed very nice through our sign language we spoke, ... read more

The last couple of days have been busy between buying hammocks and looking at boats for our trip as well as trying to fit in the cultural stuff in Belem. On the first night we went around the markets to find some dinner, we found a lovely little stand kind of thing where we had steak, rice noodles all four around 3euro, not bad eh?!! We tried to find a bar afterwards to have a few drinks but everything seemed to be closed after dark so we had to have a quite night in the hostel. The next morning Phillipe was´s mother runs our hotel made anne and myself go to his apartment to help him with his paintings, he does a lot of canvass paintings and seems to sell most of them. He needed help ... read more