TomandKat

When we arrived in Darwin we met up with friends that we had met on the road who were to quickly become our adopted parents on our trip. Mal and Kay were spending 3 weeks in Darwin for the Darwin Cup and had secured us a pitch in the caravan park next to them. Meeting Mal and Kay meant that our Darwin experience was very different from what we expected. Aside from the usual tourist things we did, we also got introduced to the world of horse racing. Mal and Kay follow the horse racing round Australia and we found it very interesting finding out how the races are run, how the horses and jockeys are trained and how to place a bet. On one occasion they took us to breakfast at the racecourse where we ... read more

Our plan once we got back to Australia was to go to Melbourne and buy a car to head off on a road trip west towards Perth, up the West Coast to Broome , back east towards Darwin and back down the centre through Alice Springs to Melbourne. A mere 15000kms or so over the next three months. So step number one was to find a car that we could afford, that we could sell again in a few months and most importantly wouldn’t break down in the middle of nowhere. We trawled all the free papers and all the car yards and we were surprised how expensive they all were for what you get. Eventually after a tip off from another car yard we found ourselves in the back streets in yard with a few ... read more

Our flight out of South America entailed a long flight to Auckland and then a little overnight stay in an airport hotel before an early morning flight to Melbourne the next day. Well that was the plan before we got to Buenos Aires airport to check in. When we got to the check in desk I was processed through fine but there seemed to be a little problem with Kat's. They kept saying there was a problem but not what it was. The check in staff asked whether we had a flight home, which we do not as we don't quite know the date we'll want to go back to the UK yet. The staff then went away to confer to each other. When they returned we were beginning to get a little worried. I happened ... read more

We left Rio and headed to Paraty, a small beach resort with nice old cobbled streets and buildings. Unfortunately our hostel wasn´t great (rude British owners who passed the attitude on to their staff) and nor was the weather (rain but still fairly warm) but we managed to entertain ourselves walking down the badly cobbled streets, cobbled so badly that you had to watch your step all the time. It wasn´t beach weather either so we did our usual and headed to a bar. Fortunately we found one of our favourites so far that had a huge beer menu with beers from all over the world. We resisted the urge to drink ales from home (at huge expense of course) and settled for some decent Brazilian beers rather than the usual Brahma rubbish. Our next plan ... read more

We came to South America without Colombia particularly in our sights, although we were planning to come here. All the stories over the years of kidnapping and the drug war had made us a little apprehensive of Colombia like most of us in the west. However, the more people we spoke to who had been through Colombia, the more we were looking forward to it. So we got to the border of Colombia with Ecuador, again all ready for the bag searches for drugs and weapons that we had been told to expect. However, this turned out to be the simplest crossing we had done so far. We literally strolled into Colombia and were in the country before we knew it. Only becuase of experience of previous crossings we knew that we would have to go ... read more