Blogs from South America - page 5387

GALAPAGOS BACK TO ECUADOR After our visit to Galapagos, we were to meet the Crystal Serenity at Lima in Peru, the next country south of Ecuador. But first we had to detour back through Ecuador to get there. This was a long trip, beginning with the obligatory boat and plane trips from Galapagos to the Ecuador mainland. The scoop among our group was that Ecuador is willing to donate the Galapagos Islands for research and conservation, but any air travel to and from the Galapagos Islands must first pass through the airport at Guayaquil on the Ecuador mainland, where many tourist dollars are collected from Galapagos-bound tourists. From Guayaquil we were finally permitted to take another flight to Lima on the Peruvian coast, where our ship awaited us at the port of Callao, 45 minutes away ... read more

COLOMBIA Hola folks! Bit late sending this one...sorry they´re all so long but it will give you a good time wasting opportunity at work to read it all!...those of you that sit and surf all day anyway..Willis and Wren, not thinking of you in particular! Crossed the border to Colombia this morning at 6/7am...remember to wind that watch back 1 hr! Was a bit worried about all the searches and drug planting tales I have heard and thought they might mistake my emergency tooth filler for crack but no need to worry...was not searched or stopped even once, only had to present docs at the official immigration places and that´s it! Got bus Ven/Unitransco from Maracaibo this morning. Was told you can only book a seat direct from Caracas so had to turn up at 4.00am ... read more

Woh! is all I can say about this city, it's really amaizing, lovely, wonderful. It's all I were looking for, safety... you can go for a walk at 12 pm and nobody is going to attack or robbed you. At first it was a bit difficult to get used to this place, because of the light, I came in December (That is the beginig of the summer here) and the day gets dark at 11:40 pm and appears at 3:30 am really unbeliable. About the people, is very polite and nice, something I realized is that there's no poor people and homeless people, that's quite good. The city is no big (40.000 inhabitants), it's colourful, lovely with an interesting history and an amaizing nature. Other thin I noticed is that there's so many people from ... read more

As usual I wasn’t very lucky with my flight across the ocean. This time it was the weather in Frankfurt that put an end to my dreams of the Chilean sun. As we were about to go down in Frankfurt we were informed that that they had closed the airport due to snow that had to be cleared away from the landing ground. After a while of circling around the plane was redirected to Cologne - less than half an hour away. Landing in Cologne I couldn’t even see the slightest snow flake, and did all of a sudden feel very cheated. As we were waiting for the plane to reful and take us back to Frankfurt, hopefully just in time for the connecting flights, we were informed that the plane was needed somewhere else. So ... read more

First of all, Can´t believe today is February, just looked at the date and was surprised. As everyone knows, we are in Santa Cruz for the second time, chilling for a few days until our VISA´s for Brazil arrive, they should be ready in 2 hours if all goes according to plan! Last night we tied one on for Ryans birthday! Started things off right with Champagne and Fillet Mignon for breakfast, then we went to the Internet cafe call center so Jord could phone the FOX in Vancouver, was pretty funny, I had it on the live web cast (although it did cut out at the end -reliable Bolivian Internet) but thanks to Tara we have an mp3 of the whole thing, which I will try and post a link to on this blog when ... read more