Blogs from South America - page 5666

Time for a little insight into the day to day trials of travelling. From the previous entries, it may seem as if we are having an amazing time, and doing and seeing loads of exciting things.. while this is undoubtedly true, I havent mentioned the less glamorous nitty gritty daily details... the chaos of bus stations, and finding the right bus with our decidedly basic spanish, of arriving in a town at night, struggling with the humidity and the bulky 20KG backpack that bumps into everything, and thus arriving at our destined hotel too tired to look anywhere else, and as a result sleeping in a dingy cockroach infested hovel... Anyway, just to give you an idea, here´s a little story about our last 36 hours in Venezuala that might give you greater insight... Our penultimate ... read more

Right then... after a week of bumming along Venezuala´s North West Caribbean Coast, cold beer, fresh fish, and warm, tropical seas, we decided to get our adventurous hats on again, so with my trusty old exploring sun hat and lots of insect repellent, we set off on an overnight sleeper bus (which was quite palatial, with fully reclining beds, but broke down at 5am) to the hot, sleepy town of Cuidad Bolivar. Simon Bolviar A quick history lesson here.. (I get that from my mum). Simon Bolivar is THE national hero of Venezuala, he was the man who liberated much of South America from the Spanish in the early part of the 19th Century. In the grand tradition of South American revolutionaries, he then set about creating his own dictatorship, and was eventually overthrown. But history ... read more

You know how some of the best nights out are sometimes the ones that arent planned?? Well, I think countries are a bit like that as well... Originally, Venezuala was just going to be our gateway to South America, and a stepping stone to other, more celebrated destinations... but plans change, and when a combination of expensive flights, stories of Colombian coach robberies, and a primary school full of innocently named tropical storms caused us to abandon Central America to another day, we then found that Venezuala was a quite amazing place to spend a few weeks, and we´ve been delighted to stay here.. Venezuala is a hot exciting country on the northern flat bit of South America... it has all you´d expect of a South American country - towering mist covered Andean mountains, remote Amazonian ... read more

Well I'm In Peru now, I crossed over about 3days ago with a Frech guy I met in Bolivia, and we stayed a couple of nights in Puno and which is a little town on the edge of the lake and one night on an island with some locals out on the lake which was cool. ... read more

Shoot I'm buggered. and yes I did get eaten by a lot of things. At the moment my feet are swollen up even fatter then normal because I got so ravaged by mozzies and sandflies and ants and caterpillas. But the rest of the time I had an absolute blast. It was hard work but well worth it. The first 4days we spent hiking with our backpacks fully laden with food and mosquito-nets and stuff, then we got to rest on days 5 and 6 after we made our raft out of balsa trees. I saw a gang of spider monkeys swinging through the trees above us, an aligator, turtles, heaps of cool birds and butterflies, piranas and other wierd fish with lots of teeth, fresh water sting-rays, fireflies and yes of course, a gizillion mosquitos ... read more