Day 91 - South America here we come

---

Sorry to say not much to report today. Apart from we visited probably the worst airport in the world. For an international airport catering for Americans (and there are a lot here due to the canal and the banking industry) we had high hopes.

To start with it was just like any small airport with not a lot to do. Once through security we knew there would be restaurants and shops. However we were surprised to find several each of the following: Lacoste store, sunglass shop and perfume shop. And one very small restaurant - charging what it liked as it had no competition. It was like a market with each shop selling exactly the same as their neighbours. To cap it off there was not a single newsagent or any shop selling a book or a newspaper. Worst of all there was no 'The Economist'.

We spent a lot of today with our heads in the South America guide book and coming up with likely, achievable, itineraries for the next 76 days. We are doing our usual and probably biting off more that we can chew. We will keep you posted.

Flying south from Panama is not so much a luxury as a necessity. The Panamerican highway runs from Alaska to well south of Santiago, Chile (ie a very, very long way), but even it has to stop for about 100 miles in the area that is known as the Darien Gap. This is one of the most lawless, inhospitable places on earth; if the jungle doesn't get you the bandits/guerillas/drug gangsters most certainly will. By all accounts if you try and overland it there's more chance that you won't come out than that you will. Anyway on balance we decided not to fly.

For those romantics at heart a little side note (for those of you who aren't please stop reading now, I am warning you).

We tried to book into a hostel in Cali at about 11pm, but once we understood what the staff member was saying it turned out that she only had 1 bed in a 2 bed room, and another bed in a 3 bed dorm. We didn't like the sound of that but once we found out all the other occupants were male, we definitely wanted to see if there was anywhere else. Ed gallantly found us a 'matrimonial' room in a nearby hotel for not much more so that we would not have to spend our first night apart since our wedding. (I did warn those unromantic ones amongst us!!)

---

Photos

Richard's present moments before we used it in part payment for our hostel. Sorry.
Post Offices and DHL won't take it, we weren't going to carry it around and as much as we would like to we couldn't drink 2 bottles that morning

Comments

[Rondo]

I thought Miami International was worse.LOL