My original plan was to try and get from Paraguay all the way down to Uruguay and Montevideo. Due to border and bus schedule logistics however, this would prove too problematic. It was much easier to get to Buenos Aires and with a load of newly made friends waiting for me there, I thought that I might as well head there first for my planned week in the Argentinian capital before going across to Uruguay after. To get down to Buenos Aires, I boarded my first overnight bus of the trip - fourteen hours from Encarnacion. It was pretty painless in the end. I managed to type out a blog entry before getting a pretty good sleep - the semi-camas are pretty much like La-Z-Boys so I had no trouble sleeping. With only four passengers in ... read more

So there I was sat in my dorm, surrounded by my other eleven dorm-mates. After another night without much sleep and two flights, I was exhausted. From the 33⁰C heat of Brasilia, it was a relatively chilly 16⁰C here in Foz do Iguacu. It was raining. Hard. I wasn’t feeling particularly sociable and I had administrative shit to sort out. I was feeling pretty miserable. I wanted my hotel room back. That night, I was supposed to have a quiet, early one – but by that stage I thought it’d better to try and make some friends to feel a bit more comfortable in my new surrounds rather than moping around alone. I got talking to two Brits in the hostel’s outdoor common area – Billy and Lloyd – and a Dutch guy, Siros. I didn’t ... read more

And so six months of travelling through Latin America has begun! As predicted in my last blog entry, leaving Barcelona was hard - my three months there has to go down as three as the most fun I have had, and I've managed to attain intermediate level Spanish to boot. The lifestyle was amazing, I made a lot of friends, and I got into a wonderful comfort zone that was difficult to leave. As such, I was determined to enjoy it to the very end and had a typically massive night out (one of many in my last week) the night before I left for Sao Paulo. Exhausted, the TAP Portugal flight I took wasn't great - a ten hour one with just one average meal, an average entertainment system and ridiculously cold air-conditioning; something I ... read more

I had always thought that the lyrics to that Vengaboys song were "we're going to eat pizza." But no - it is about that notorious Spanish party island in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea. Ibiza. When I was at university, I remember watching all of those party documentaries such as Wild On (with Brooke Burke) and Booze Britain, on which Ibiza was regularly featured. Thousands of miles away, in my parents' house, I could only sit and admire the sun, sex, beaches, boat parties and superclubs that were appearing on my screen, wishing one day that I may be able to go. Just over a decade later and my dream was finally coming true...except that it wasn't really much of a dream anymore. Massive clubs, electro music, world-class DJs, 25€ a drink...it isn't really my ... read more

Did you know that The Flintstones is banned in Dubai? They're not allowed to show it and so they don't. But Abu Dhabi do. My stint in South Africa now over, I was now on my way to London via what seemed like a joke as bad as the one above - a fifteen hour stopover in Abu Dhabi. No matter - I have a habit of making the most out of long layovers such as the ones I had in Singapore, Segovia, Seoul and Dusseldorf. Arriving in Abu Dhabi at 7.30am and departing for London at 2.00am the next morning, I pretty much had an entire day to check out the sights and sounds of Abu Dh... read more