The gentle mastication of a pachyderm is a wonderfully soothing sound. First, the rustle of the grass as it sweeps its giant lumbering trunk over the fodder. Then a whoosh as the tip of the trunk coils itself like an anaconda around a choice mouthful and scoops it up, slapping it against its grey, wrinkled skin on the way up to its mouth to bat away unwanted flies. Next comes the blow of air exhaled through the trunk nostrils, like a breaching whale, followed by the first munch as its colossal pink tongue eases dinner into its cavernous, lubricated gullet. Then, the gentle mastication…chewing and chewing until it’s ready for another trunkful of grass. Having spent a week preparing food (some 250 tonnes a day) and feeding elephants at the Elephant Nature Park, it seems they ... read more

I am sitting in Quito airport waiting for the start of my journey home to the UK after 7 incredible months in South America and to kill the time, i decided to make some lists :-) Thought you may like to see - the question now is...where next?! ;-) Best of the best Angel Falls - Venezuela Antarctica - all of it Bonito snorkelling - Brazil Booze crusing in Paraty - Brazil Botanical Gardens, Rio - Brazil Diving Easter Island - Chile Going it alone in Colombia with Carly & Mark Gruta do Lago Azul, Bonito - Brazil Los Llanos -the birds, the wildlife, the people - Venezuela Macumbe evening in Rio - Brazil Making new friends in Rio and catching up with old friends in Argentina Mud Volcano - Colombia Night in the Amazon Jungle ... read more

It may have only been a week since we ( that is myself, Carly & Mark) signed off the Toucan Trip and ventured forth into the superlative countryside of Colombia but it has been packed with laughs and adventure – lots of horse-riding, a near miss with bandits, spine-juddering roads complete with landslides , coffee plantations and pre-Colombian statues galore. As the taxi took us to Bogota airport, all three of us breathed a collective sigh of relief that we were leaving the Group behind and on the cusp of exploring a country that we were not ready to leave. Quite why anyone would continue with Toucan at this stage is beyond me….a further 3 days in Bogota, a fairly charmless capital city to then pay at their own expense to fly to Quito and simply ... read more

Internet access in Venezuela has been sparse but here we go with my latest blog update and as ever, if you just want to look at the pics, here are the links: Part 1 - Angel Falls etc http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150225978870236.348656.691995235&l=3c05252651 Part 2 - Catatambo, Los Llanos http://www.facebook.com/media/set/fbx/?set=a.10150235473160236.361771.691995235&l=b536f99a11 Victoria, Iguazu, Niagara……the world’s greatest waterfalls and I’m lucky enough to have seen them all. Only one has eluded me…. Angel Falls - the waterfall with the longest sheer drop on the planet; at 979 metres, a ribbon of water cascading down a vertical rock escarpment, deep in the heart of Venezuelan jungle, accessible only by boat... It did not disappoint. Packed and ready for 2 nights in hammocks in the exotically lush national park we were dropped at Ciudad Boliva... read more

I’m currently sitting on a boat in the tiny port of Santarem, a town in the state of Para on the banks of the Amazon River, halfway through a 6 day boat journey that is taking me nearly 2000kms from Belem on the coast of Brazil to Manaus in the midst of the jungle. It’s an epic voyage which has challenged every sense I possess … the noise of the constant forrá music blaring out of the distorted speakers for 15 hours a day, the smell of the blocked toilets and full septic tanks, the taste of the daily repetitive meal of chicken, rice, pasta and potatoes – all in one dish.(its carbs all the way to the toilet), the touch of other people as they bang into you lying in your hammock like an anthropoidal ... read more