GuildfordFergus

After three years, I'm sweeping off the internautical dust to keep all my fascinated friends and family up to date with my holiday travelling. I've recently been to Morocco and Istanbul, but Cental America has, even after a mere three days, proved itself well worth the extra long flight (which consisted of watching films anyway). Landing after dark in Guatemala city; which I'm reliably informed is "like a bomb landed in a giant toilet and rubbish tip", we decided to save its dubious charms for the night before our flight home and head straight for Antigua, the tourist, and former poltical, capital. Having braced my patience for hordes of annoying cabbies and my buttocks for some pretty dodgy roads, I almost couldn't believe it that we easily tagged along in a friend's shuttle taxi, sped along ... read more

'Infested', to me, always seemed a certainty to be an exagerration when describing waters home to crocodiles. Rats can infest a sewer or lice a head of hair, but how can something as large as a crocodile truly infest something? I thought- surely each crocodile- in my child's knowledge of zoology ranking alongside a lion or a tiger- needs a similarly large area? . That was until I visited the Pampas here in Bolivia. We took a three day tour which mostly revolves around going up and down the river spotting wildlife. Spotting implies some sort of difficulty, which there wasn't. Every 50m will be about 3 or 4 crocodiles (or alligators I never know them apart) basking in the sun and they really do look like logs. That was something I also used to think- ... read more

Hello all, I left the tango, clubs and sophistication of Buenos Aires behind and have headed up country, first to Iguazu Falls, thence to Salta. I was a little sad to leave, having made some great friends, none of whom, sadly were coming this way, but also excited to hit the road again. It's been wonderful so far, it feels like I've only just arrived I'm so excited by everything. You may not have heard of Iguazu Falls, but I don't know how they aren't more famous. Higher than Niagara they aren't one cascade but 150 stretched across nearly 3 kilometres of sub-tropical rainforest, divided by small islands, with trees hanging precariously onto the edges. They are beautiful, but also tremendous- easily the most awesome thing I've ever seen. There are walkways to allow you into ... read more

Wider still and wider shall the gaps between blogs grow apparently. As you can see I'm now in Sydney for a brief sojourn of a few days before heading East to the Western Hemisphere and Buenos Aires. I left off in Luang Prabang if I remember correctly. There I met up with Chris and Paul and two Welsh guys, Christian and Alex, whom they picked up along the way. I had to wait a day for them, in which time I visited some waterfalls with a Greek woman and two Spanish men, one of whom looked like Jesus. At first, not that I don't like waterfalls I was expecting more of the very nice but standard issue waterfalls that any self-respecting backpacker stop boasts, I was quite wrong. I didn't know that places actually existed that ... read more

Had a bit of a dash up the coast, something like 750 miles in 5 days, 2 spent on buses! The first was fine, I slept most of the way. The second, after a cock-up by the ticket office ended up being a sitting-up bus with no toilet, full of Vietnamese people. It could, I suppose, have been worse; the film, an ersatz Jackie Chan affair, was played at a considerate volume, people didn't play music and there was one other English-speaker (an Austrian) for me to talk to. I even managed to sleep and to top it all, it was a mere 14 hours, rather than the advertised 19 so not so bad. Perhaps more interesting than the minutae of my bus journeys, my destinations are a touch more interesting. The main sites in Central ... read more