Leaving Sydney friends behind we arrived to see more friends from England-ones who we hadn't seen in two years and within that space of time had added another little man to their family. We were super excited -I have been friends with Gemma since my uni days and her and her fiancé mark have been over in Australia for a few years now and and are living the dream in brisvegas with their two sons (Alfie and Oliver) and marks mum Theresa. We had two weeks with the family and it was very relaxing and all about spending time with the kids in the day doing things such as opening the exclusive Harrison/twigg water park -this consisted of a slip and slide and paddling pool with mini slide going into it -muchos fun!, going to different ... read more

Aloha! Next stop was Hawaii and the island of Oahu. We had planned on spending our three weeks island hopping-but due to not really planning things this was out of the question as the only means of travel is flying to the islands and last minute flights are super expensive. We got some sound travel advice on the island from a friend from home and found their was plenty to do for our three weeks. We headed to the north shore first which was surprisingly more difficult than we thought it would be -apparently everyone hires cars when they come to Oahu, which meant we had to find a taxi that would take us to the top of the island which involved lots of phone calls at the airport (this north shore seemed like it was ... read more

After some pretty scary looks and intimidating questions at American immigration (having traveled though south and Central America suggested we could potentially be international drug smugglers apparently) we were in the U S of A, Los Angeles to be exact. Our first stop was to see Craig's pal James and his wife Elaine who live in Anaheim. If you didn't know, Anaheim is also where Mickey Mouse and his friends also live and we were heading there for a day courtesy of James free guest passes (thanks again James) so coming into Anaheim was exciting on two levels, one to see Craig's friends and also to get swept up in Disney fever as this is the stop to where you then go on to the magical kingdom. As you can imagine it was very very exciting. ... read more

It took a total of 4 hours to get to Belize City, there you catch a taxi boat to the island from one of the various companies who are all willing to match any price you been given by a competitor. The border crossing from Guatemala to Belize was quick and easy, the shuttle bus dropped us off only to meet you on the other side. The minibus was full and hot! Glad we brought that water with us! You pass various islands on the way to Caye Caulker and you get that similar feeling to when you get picked up from the airport by your tour operator with many other holiday goers, hoping that the 5 star hotel you just pulled into is the one you booked on superskintbudgetholdidays.com. But I was glad to see ... read more

We crossed at Goascoran and it was uneventful. The bus dropped us off at the bus station in San Miguel, it was very busy and seems like an important jump off point for the rest of the country. Just ask anyone and they'll be happy to show you which bus you need to get, just make sure you pronounce the place correctly! We arrived in a little town called Perquin, we wanted to visited this town and surrounding area because of it's involvement in recent history and events during the Salvadorian civil war. This was lasted approximately 12 years (1980 - 1992) and claimed 75,000 lives, according to the UN. This area was a stronghold of the left leaning guerrilla forces. The town itself is small and remote. We turned up without booking any accommodation and ... read more