Dear Blog Readers, Another early start for the shuttle out of Honduras into Guatemala and another hot and uncomfortable ride. The border crossing was one of the smoothest and we laughed in the face of the money changer who tried to get 175 Questals for 500 Lemperas - we negotiated a much better 195 Questals from a man who saw us as normal human beings rather than gullible tourists. We quickly pushed through the horrific looking Guatemala City and eventually got to Antigua around lunchtime. Antigua is a beautiful colonial city with brightly coloured houses and stone cobbled streets. We stayed at the wonderfully hippy sounding Holistico Hostel which was great and had an afternoon wandering the streets, getting our bearings and looking at a few churchs, or the remains of them, after years of earthquake ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, We left Liberia and Costa Rica behind with a spring in our step fueled on a good smoothie and the most charismatic salesman on our bus to Penas Blancas, the border with Nicaragua. The border crossing was without doubt the worst so far. Dodgy money was changing hands, the bloke giving us entry stamps genuinely didn´t believe Laura´s passport was hers until she got her bank card out. Ridiculous. The only thing that gave me any pleasure was the thought of anybody actually buying the ceviche that a man was trying to sell from a cool box in 35 degree heat. The bus ride to Rivas was decidedly dodgy and we pretty much kept hold of our bags the entire journey. Once at Rivas we got a taxi to the port and a ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, As the crow flies, the journey from Boquete to Pavones should be about 2 hours away. However, our metaphorical crow was severly maimed and limped it´s way all the way there. We got a bus out of Boquete after a fond farewell to our German friends who had struggled up Volcan Baru and made exceptional salads and chicken. We stopped over in David shortly before getting a bus to the border with Costa Rica. The border was ridiculously confusing mainly because of people trying to help us ending up with us going backwards and forwards between each country to get the required stamps. We left the ´balboa´currency for the much less Rocky-themed and bowel-themed ´colones´. The bus to Laurel was 15 minutes late and then we ended up waiting about 2 hours for ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, Welcome to our new set of travel blogs! We hope you can join us on our adventure through Central America for the next three months. For those of you who are new to the blogs - it´s basically a slightly longer than acceptable piece of toilet reading which may eventually boil down to a chronicalisation of our bowel movements. However, I will try and keep it on topic and informative to provide you with sufficient entertainment for the next few minutes (hours). The long flight from Heathrow via Amsterdam to Panama City was notable for the number of meal and drinks rounds that were made. Laura was hammered after two Heinekens. We had our fingers crossed that we weren´t going to be placed anywhere near the screaming baby that drowned out the announcements ... read more

Dear Blog Readers, I’d written a blog about our lives over the past few months but realised it was quite dull and unblogworthy so I will give a quick summary. Everything has gone well. Laura and I have lined up jobs for next year. We’ve spent time with our families – I finally got to see my nephew who is adorable. We’ve laughed and cried at the similarities and differences between our lives back in England and the year we spent in Korea. Now onto a blogworthy blog entry – my first ‘real’ trip to France! It’s quite shameful that even though Laura and I have been together for nearly five years now that I haven’t actually properly visited her motherland. I went to Calais when I was about 14. Laura says it ... read more