I'll do a last blog post when I get home, but thanks to everyone who has taken the time to read about my holiday. I hope it's been entertaining enough!

I caught the overnight bus to Porto Seguro. There are some quite nice beaches here and some good views from this town´s historic center.

Good nightlife as well, one of the streets translates as "Alcohol Passage" where you can pick up fruit smoothies with a bit of a kick...

However the plan called for me to only be here for one night and then catch the ferry over to Arraial d´Ajuda. This used to be a playground for the rich and famous - now it´s my playground, not quite rich, and probably more infamous.

I decided to go a bit more upmarket for my last few days and checked into a very hotel with apartments spread over about a square kilometre of grounds and a nice pool.

Here´s the village green.

And this is my morning swim view:

My biggest issue now is: beach or pool. Ah, problems problems...

Left Maceio last night and I'm now in Salvador - you'll all be happy to hear that it's raining... But it looks like it might clear up soon. I'll be here for a couple of days and then head down the coast a bit more.

Have to be in Rio airport on the 28th for the flight home!

I'd booked a boat ride around the falls so after a short bus ride and walk through the park we were picked up by the tour company and taken to the boats.

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Once on the boat and fitted out with life jackets we were driven around - and under! - the falls until we were completely soaked.

To dry t out I spent the rest of the day walking around the park snapping photos from all the viewpoints.

Taking the odd photo of the wildlife

and finally getting a shot of Toucan!

More photos can be found here.

I'm now over the border in Brazil and have just discovered how hard it is to book flights online here if you don't have an identity card. What a strange place.

A friend of mine had recommended taking two days here, spending the first day on a boat trip around the lake and taking the second day to visit Perito Moreno glacier. The reason being that if you did Perito Moreno first, the rest of the glaciers would be a disappointment.

So the first day we were picked up at the crazy time of 7:15 (after a night in the town in what the hostel staff described as the only party of the year) and taken to the boats.

They looked pretty sturdy, which was quite nice to see as we hit quite a few rather large lumps of ice on the way to see the glaciers.

We visited 3 glaciers on the trip, I won't post all the photos I took here, you can see them all on flickr, but it was quite spectacular.

Some of the glaciers are quite dangerous and we were only allowed to get within 800 meters of them as the entire front can collapse. This one is about 80 meters high and about 4 kilometers wide.

The distance makes it quite hard to appreciate the scale of the thing. We did get very close to some of the other glaciers and even managed to catch some of them calving (quite hard to capture on film, you're always just too late with the camera).

Stopped for lunch at a nice glacial lake and then returned home.

The following day we did something that I think will be one of my highlights of Patagonia. I was initially a bit reluctant to sign up for this tour, I'm starting to get a bit bored of the whole going on excursions thing, but it was more than worth it.

We were picked up a slightly more reasonable time of 8:30 and taken to the base of Perito Moreno glacier.

You can see some people walking on the glacier in this photo which gives you an idea of the size of the thing.

A quick walk through the forest took us to the start of the ice and it was time to strap on the crampons for our turn.

Walking on the ice was absolutely fantastic and the ice is truly beautiful.

After an hour or so walking on the ice we were treated to some whisky with glacial ice cubes!

We took lunch taking care to stay away from the edge of the lake:

and were then taken to the viewing platforms to watch the glacier calving. The noise here is amazing, sounds like thunder with an almost constant sound of cracking and creaking.

You can see more photos of the glacier here.

All in all, an amazing couple of days. Today I'm catching a plane to Iguazu to see what is billed as the second not to miss thing in Argentina, a massive waterfall.

Started off the walk on what seemed to me to be a cross between a ski slope and a path.

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This soon turned into a proper mountain and the weather started to clear up quite nicely. Bit windy though...

Finally reached the base of the glacier. Of course, you can't see it, it's covered in snow, but it's behind that rock formation...

The view back into town is pretty amazing.

However the weather quickly started to close in and it started to snow quite heavily.

So it was a quick run/slide back down the snow to the refugio for some hot soup and mulled wine.

Felt slightly lazy getting the chairlift the rest if the way down...

Off to El Calefate tomorrow for more glacier excitement.

Here's a picture of one of the bogs we had to cross:

But it was all worth it in the end, a nice pleasant place to have lunch and skip stones.

Back down at the bottom of the walk we had time for some interesting coffee and to play with the huskies that are bred there:

The trip over her from Chile was quite interesting, we drove along the coast of the Straits of Magellan.

We even got to go for a quick boat trip!

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Ushuaia is a surprisingly nice town. We'd got used to these isolated towns in Patagonia being a bit run down and not that nice, but this is very nice place.

There is even a ski-resort down here!

Started off the morning of the first day a bit earlier than we should have as my alarm clock was still set of Argentinian time which is an hour ahead of Chile... Luckily the hostel owners found it quite amusing and didn't mind too much making us breakfast extra early. There then followed a 3 hour bus ride and then a minibus to our refugio at the start of the trek. Around 11 we set off walking towards the Torres.

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It was then a long walk back in the crazy wind to the refugio for a well deserved night's rest to get ready for the next day of walking.

This next day took us past a beautiful lake with a most amazing aquamarine colour.

We stopped at refugio Los Cuernos and sheltered from the wind for the night. After a slightly worrying start the day cleared up nicely and we walked up the center of the W to take a peek at glacier frances.

Quite a few avalanches on the way made this walk quite exciting...

And there was a great view back to the lake.

We then walked onto the next refugio, Pehoe. We got here just in time before the weather closed in and it started to rain.

Fortunately the next day came and the weather held for us so we got to walk for an hour or so up to a mirador to see Glacier Grey.

You can see a few icebergs on the way:

And then you get a pretty good view of the actual glacier:

After a few photos and some chocolate biscuits it was time to head back to the refugio and catch a boat out of the park and a bus back home.

Just in time too, the weather really closed in and it was nice to get back to a nice warm hostel and some decent food...

More photos here.

Tomorrow I'll be catching a bus to Ushuaia, the world's most southernmost city.

On the bus down from Puerto Madryn someone went through the luggage compartment and took anything that looked valuable from our bags, so I'm now minus a mobile phone (though apparently I'm due an upgrade anyway so will get a free new one when I get home), an old broken camera, my pen knife, and for some strange reason, my wash kit - I ask you, who steals a toothbrush??

So anyway, I'm now in Puerto Natales in Chile, quite far down south in Tierra Del Fuego! It's cold, very windy and in the next few days we will be going for a 3 day walk. Time to break out the thermals. After this I'll be heading further down south to Ushaia in Argentina, the worlds southernmost city - from there it is possible to catch boast to the Antartic, but it's a bit early in the year for that so I'll be heading up north to find some nice beaches in Brazil!

First stop was to visit some elephant seals. It's currently mating season, so there are a few bulls on the beach with their harems

and a few pups.

But the highpoint of the day was going out on a boat to do some whale watching.

You can find some more photos here.

The first day was pretty easy, we took a walk down to the port to take some photos of the lake which is absolutely stunning.

Woulnd't mind having a boat here.

The next day we set off for what was billed as a short walk up to a mirador and a some waterfalls. Turned out to be a bit of a mammoth trek up snow covered paths.

The paths were actually quite hard to follow, but fortunately a couple of dogs that had followed us from town seemed to know where they were going so we followed them. Eventually we reached the mirador, it was a bit misty so the view was hard to capture on the camera.

Fortunately there was somewhere to sit down and have a bit of a break.

Next stop were the waterfalls, here the path seemed to disappear completely and we were completely in the hands of our guide dogs.

The following day we jumped on a bus to Peurto Madryn, tomorrow we're off to see some whales and other bits of wildlife, I've already seen one whale out of the cafe's window. Should be a good day.

Lots of nice views on the way

a few cautions

and lunch...

It's been a couple of years since I last went skiing and that was the first time I'd ever strapped on a pair of skis. So I decided to do a few practice runs down the nursery slopes to see if I could still remember how to snow plough.

All proceeded well so it was time to head up the mountain to try some of the green runs.

All was proceeding well down the run, I was even starting to think - this is a bit slow, maybe I should try a blue run, when my wish was granted abruptly our nice easy green run disappeared and was replaced by a hard blue. It was carnage, children screaming, women crying, grown men taking their skis off and walking down. Terrible...

Despite this, a splendid day. I am now exhausted.

This is the view from my hostel room:

Will be here for a couple of days - can't decide if I should go skiing or not. The weather is a bit misty at the top of the mountains.

Lying in my bunk having a quick rest after I arrived I felt my second earthquake of the trip. After pretty much all the places I visited in Peru were destroyed by the earthquake there I'm starting to be quite glad there's only 6 weeks left!

Anyway, Mendoza is the big wine growing region of the country, so it's off on another wine tour.

Can you tell that it's winter time? It's fricking freezing.

Here we can see some oldie world wine making equipment. The grapes would be put into the cow skin and then some slaves would then jump up on down on them to squeeze out the juice. The big earthenware pots would the be used to ferment the wine. Apparently the taste would approximate a good vinegar.

Here we see some nice wines stored in French oak barrels

Apparently the combination of the completion of the railway link to Buenos Aires and a wave of immigration from France, Italy an Spain led to a massive modernisation of the wine industry and a massive jump in quality.

And the production of lots of lovely wine:

Catching a bus to Bariloche tonight, leave at 8pm and get in at 1:30pm - a nice quick 17 hours or so...

There were six of us in our group heading up to Machu Pichu, a Canadian couple, a German couple and a guy from Holland. To get us up the trail we needed 9 porters, a cook/porter, an assistant cook/porter and our guide (Ramirez, a very hard name to say without a sneer on your face and a dodgy accent).

The night before myself and the dutch guy had been given a duffel bag to stuff with a maximum of 7kg of stuff - we had chosen to be especially lazy and hire half a porter each to carry our stuff, a bargain at only $30 for the entire trip. In the end I only had about 4k including my sleeping bad. So the guy got off lightly...

After a couple of hours on the bus we arrived at a place called Piskacucho where we stopped for a bit of breakfast, shopped for walking sticks and bought some coca leaves for the altitude.

After this quick stop off we were back on the bus to drive to kilometre 82 which is where the trail starts. Here you can get your passport stamped to prove that you are crazy enough to start the trail.

The trail starts at the refreshing low altitude of 2720m (8923ft) by crossing the Vilcanota river.

We left our porters packing away the tents, food, table and chairs (I kid you not) and all the rest of the stuff to support our trip. They were soon finished with this and chasing after us along the path:

These guys were quite amazing, carrying a load of 25kg they pretty much ran down the path. Each day they would pack up everything whilst we set off walking, they'd pass us after about 20 minutes and we'd arrive at the next camp site to a cold drink, dinner almost ready and the tents all set up. Quite incredible.

As we walked along the path, we caught a glimpse of the lazy gits going up there by train.

The first day was pretty easy on fairly flat terrain and we got some great views of the Inca Fortress (‘Huillca Raccay'), the vast and incredible Inca site ‘Llactapata' (officially called ‘Patallacta').

After a pretty easy walk we arrived at our first campsite at around 3000m:

The night was damned cold, my sleeping bad is only rated for a -5 freezing point.

The next day the cook made us pancakes and porridge for breakfast. Fantastic. On this day we would climb to 4200m to cross "Dead Womans Pass" descend back down to 3550m for lunch and then climb again upto 4000m to cross another mountain pass!

Luckily there are some ruins on the insane day of walking to keep you entertained.

We made it to the next camp and pretty much collapsed into bed. This night was also very very cold.

The third day was very easy, not very much walking to do at all - only a climb up to 3680n meters. And some more ruins - Sayacmarca and Phuyuptamaca. Campsite for this night for called ‘Wiñay Wayna’ (‘Forever Young’) at a comfortable 2680m/8792ft.

Near this campsite is another nice Incan ruin.

That night it was too hot.

The fourth day we had all agreed (well, kind of) to get up at 3:40 to be first at the entrance to the path to the sun gate - not entirely sure why this was necessary, but apparently it's good to beat the crowds. So, we got up crazily early and sat in the darkness by the gate waiting for the park wardens to open up. We were the second group to arrive there - not bad really. It frightens me to think what time the first group must have got up...

We had a very brisk walk up to the sun gate, sadly the sun was not cooperating, but we did get some nice photos of the site. Our guide gave us a 2 hour guided tour, and then it was time for a coffee break and a rest while some of the more keen members of the group climbed another mountain (nutters).

It was then time to jump on the train home and get back to the hostel for a bit of well deserved sleep.

I'm now in Buenos Aires, various people from the travels seem to be converging on the town in the next couple of days.

You can find all the Machu Pichu photos here. - there's a lot of them.

Cusco seems to encourage laziness in people, not much gets done here. Will be booking a flight to Buenas Aries in the next couple of days and getting out of here!

Sadly from the sounds of things Huachachina, the oasis just outside of Ica - place of sandboarding and dune buggying, has suffered some quite heavy damage and quite a bit of Ica has been flattened.

Anyway, back to Cusco - I'd forgotten what the altitude was like. I feel terrible, hopefully it will only take a couple of days to get acclimatised.

Back in Peru tonight and then in Cusco again to get ready for trekking Macu Pichu.

Hopefully there is not too much earthquake damage. Though sadly it sounds like a few places like Pisco and Ica have been hit quite badly.

Brazil has been a very nice place, the people have been fantastically friendly and I'm looking forward to coming back and spending a bit of time here. May have to learn some Portuguese though.

Will post photos of the past few days and blog entries another time.

Picked up my invite to see the rocket being launched and aparrently missed the oportunity to have lunch. Now everything is closed until 4pm. Oh, and it's a Monday, apparently everything is shut on a monday. What a crazy place.

Will be here for a couple of days. On the 11th I fly to Miami and then on to French Guiana.

We set off at around 11ish and got the collectivo back into Santa Marta to pick up the bus into the park. Didn´t realise quite how far the bus stop was from where the collectivo drops you off so we ended up walking half way across town...

Once we reached the park we payed our entrance fee and got picked up by a landrover and taken into the park proper. It was then a 45 minute walk to the first place where you can stay. At this point we foolishly decided to walk another hour or so to a place called Cabal which is the popular place to stay - only to find that it was fully booked so we had to come all the way back!

By this point the sky was starting to turn a slightly ominous colour and the thunder and lightning was definitely getting a bit too close for comfort.

So it was into the hammocks nice and early to avoid the rain and bugs.

The next we walked to Cabal again in the hope that there would be room at the inn, but were once again denied. We had already planned to walk to a place called Pueblocito (which is a smaller cousin of Ciudad Perdida) so we set off along the trail - this trail turned out to be a solid hour of walking uphill, but we eventually reached the ruins which were quite impressive.

Thankfully it was downhill all the way back to the beach for a nice swim and then a quick walk back to the original campsite for some sleep! Lots of bugs in the night. Feels like I have been eaten alive.

We met the people who were on their way back and were greeted by a variety of cries along the lines of "turn back", "you´re doomed", "run away!"... All good cheerful encouragement.

We then set off down a dirt track and came to the first river crossing, only a shallow river so no one got wet. We then got our first taste of real walking as we climbed a small hill.

This is us after only 20 minutes. We are half dead.

However, as always the views make it worthwhile:

We finally reached the first camp and got to go for a nice swim and have a rest.

Our guide set up the hammocks and we got a nice meal inside us courtesy of the camp cook. Everyone was in bed by about 9pm - an early night theme that would continue for the rest of the trip.

The following day we were offered a chance to visit a cocaine "factory". Obviously, a chance like this doesn´t come up very often so we all readily handed over our cash and wondered off into the bush.

It was slightly disappointing to find that we weren´t being taken to some underground factory in the jungle but to a trestle table set up with a bunch of buckets in quite a nice location

Our guess is that there probably is a factory somewhere, but a bunch of gringos aren´t going to get an invite. There followed a demonstration of the process of extracting the cocaine paste from coca leaves.

The process as demonstrated goes as follows:

Over a period of three months collect leaves from the trees (so you can get 4 crops a year).

When you have a sufficient quantity chop them up in a big chopping machine to produce a leaf pulp.

This pulp is then mixed with a combination of salt and quicklime and the resulting mixture is kneaded using people wearing wellington boots for about 30 minutes.

You now need a big bucket and lots of gasoline, sulphuric acid and water. Put all this together with the leaf pulp and leave it to stew for a while.

Once you´re happy with the brew filter out the leaves and syphon off from the bottom of the bucket the mixture of sulphuric acid (which should now have the alkaloids dissolved in it), the water and about a quarter of the gasoline.

You now add potassium permanganate which we think is to remove the gasoline, but we´re not entirely sure.

This is then passed through a fairly crude filter.

The final step is to neutralise the acid using bicarbonate of soda. As well all know from our GCSE chemistry, the stuff that is dissolved in the acid will now precipitate out.

Now it´s just a case of filtering out the cocaine base and drying it in the sun.

You can smoke this cocaine base in cigarettes (apparently this is called a bazooka on the street).

The paste is sold onto to more important mafia types who refine is further and then cut it to increase the quantity.

Having seen the amount of horrible stuff that goes into the process it´s hard to understand why anyone would want to stick the result up their nose...

Around 11ish we set off for the second day of walking. Already peoples feet had started to suffer, so it was a bizarre looking troupe of people that left camp.

On the way we passed through a local village, didn´t really feel that I could take their photographs, but I took some of their huts.

After several hours of hard walking we reached the next camp and met some more weary people returning from the lost city.

The third day of the hike involved crossing a fairly deep river 9 times. The first crossing was only 20 minutes into the walk and everyone was well prepared wearing trunks and sandals.

There then followed about 2 hours of walking up and down hills (why not go around?) and lots more getting wet before we finally came to the steps leading up to the city.

At this point the regular rain storm that normally started at about 2 or 3 decided to come early and the heavens opened. I guess it´s lucky that we were already soaked from the river crossings...

There´s only 1200 steps to climb to get up into the city! But eventually we were all settled and our chef got to work

Nice views of the cloud forest from here:

The evenings entertainment consisted of our guide singing using a bucket as accompaniment. After 3 days in the jungle, anything is fun...

The following morning we were up bright and early to see the city.

Definitely worth the walk. Not sure about the insects though...

Pretty soon it was time to start walking back. Crossing the river all those times again. Half way back it started to rain again turning the paths into mud slides so by the time we reached the camp we were all pretty disgustingly dirty. Once again though our chef came through and cooked us up a nice meal and it was early into bed again (after more singing and bucket playing from the guide...). The next two days are just blurs of walking up and down hills before finally making it back to the road and jeep home.

Photos here.

More info here.

Absolutely knackered and very dirty. Will post photos when I get to a decent internet connection.

Off on a jungle trek tomorrow to Ciudad Perdido (The Lost City). Six days in the jungle!

Will post some photos when I get back to civilisation...

Good fun. Especially the fireworks at the end.

The whole thing was sponsered by WONG supermarkets so the parade had a slightly oriental feel to it.

And a very strange military feel.

This guy is from a float that represented soldiers from cavemen all the way through to the soldier of the future:

The navy also put on a bit of show, they chose to play the song "In the navy..." weird.

We also got to see a few beauty queens.

There were also a bunch of topless dancers representing the peoples of the jungle, sadly no photos, we were all too shocked to do anything.

It was all pretty spectactular and went on for quite a while, once it got dark all the people and floats were lit up with lights. Here´s another sponser of the parade:

Some nice young ladies:

And a fish.

There wer huge crowds and we got a bit stuck in the hostel.

But luckily we were right next to the firework display so it was all good.

The following day we went down to mall built into the cliff face.

Nice place. We got to see the Transformers film. Fantastic!

Booked ourselves onto a dune bugger/sandboarding adventure yesterday afternoon.

The dune buggy driver was insane. And the sandboarding was down some completely nuts dunes.

Still alive!

First thing you notice in the taxi ride are the huge sanddunes.

First step of the afternoon was to get a hostel, sadly the recommended was fully booked, but we managed to find an equally nice one:

Haven´t been in the pool yet, but we´ve got plenty of time here. Huachachina is very nice place, about a kilometer out of town and based around an oasis in the desert.

First night in the hostal was a big bbq with all you can drink Pisco Sours. Weirdly we were surrounded by French speaking people again (for the past couple of months it seems that the only people I have been meeting have been from places that speak French).

The following morning (feeling slightly rougher than usual) we signed up for a wine and pico tour (gluttons for punishment I think). For some reason the first stop was at a chocolate shop...

Second stop was at a local vineyard/winery. Here are the vats that the wine is fermented in:

Here´s the pisco making distilling machines:

I´ve never seen so much drink in one place!

After a quick sampling of the produce we jumped back in the car (thankfully the hostal had provided a driver!) and went to another more rustic winery place where we got down to some serious sampling:

For some reason on the way back we decided to jump out of the car 10 minutes early and climb a sanddune back to the hostel. Very nice views of the desert.

First attempt at getting up over the lines was at about 7am.

Sadly it was far too misty and we came back into land after about 5 minutes.

There then followed an interminable wait as a bunch of people who had prebooked their flights or been unable to fly arrived.

Around 11 we finally got to go up.

The pilots really throw the planes around to give everyone a good look at the lines. Makes for quite an exciting stomach churning flight. The lines themselves are pretty hard to spot, and are actually quite small (from up in the air anyway). But I got a couple of good shots.

Nice views over the desert as well.

There´s a whole lot of photos here. If you spot anything in them let me know...

Huachachina is an oasis a couple of k´s from Ica and is fantastic. Will post photos when I find a machine that reads my memory card.

We knew that there had been protests going on (which was why we had had to get up stupid o´clock for our Canyon trek), and our guide had been a bit worried in the morning about whether or not the buses would be running. But we´d managed to find a bus and all had been going well, until the bus stopped and we all had to get out.

We joined a string of people looking very much like the refugees you always see on television and started the long walk back into town.

Initially it was hoped that we would just have to get past the roadblock and then pick up a bus on the other side.

Unfortunately it turns out that they block roads properly in this country. About 10km of the road was covered in rocks, burning tires and roadblocks.

There were a couple of hairy moments at the start, with big mobs of people marching down the road towards police lines, but we managed to walk around any trouble and crossed the police lines to relative tranquility, still lots of roadblocks and burning tires, but less angry protesters.

The people are currently quite upset with the current president and want to force an election (their spelling is worse then mine...).

Most people seemed to be just trying to get home, only methods of transport that the protesters allow through the roadblocks are bicycles and pedestrians. Attempting to go through by car is not a good idea...

We did get one life along the way, but only between two roadblocks - a couple of hundred meters or so.

Finally after about 2 hours walking, luckily almost all downhill, we made to the end of the roadblocks. This got a cheer from the locals who all seemed to be quite impressed that a bunch of gringos had made it all the way through.

Unfortunately when we got to the hostel we were supposed to be staying in, we found that there was no room and that our reservation had been cancelled as no one had been able to leave. Pretty disappointing, especially as they have free pancakes for breakfast...

It now looks like we´ll be in Arequipa until Tuesday when the protests are scheduled to be finished - no idea how long it´s going to take to clear the roads, hopefully they´ll tidy up after themselves.

Monday will apparently be the worst day, the protesters will be coming into the town so apparently we´ll be holed up in the hostel and unable to leave. Today will be spent purchasing supplies.

Just as I´m writing this, the owner of the Internet cafe has pulled down the shutters... The protesters are marching down this street...

So, as mentioned in the previous post, we had quite an early start to this trip. Got a couple of hours sleep before getting out of bed at 12:30am to be picked up by our guide (who looked more tired than we did...). We then spend 30 minutes or so picking up the rest of the gang before heading to the bus station for our 6 hour journey out to Cabanaconde where we stopped for a bit of breakfast and for our guide to pick up supplies for lunch and dinner.

Hooray, a condor, let´s go home...

It´s very traditional and very isolated up here.

After a quick breakfast we were off and walking to the edge of the canyon.

We passed quite a few locals going about there daily business.

and eventually reached the edge of the canyon:

This gives you an idea of the kind of path we were about to walk down.. Only 1000 meters to descend...

We stopped for plenty of breaks on the way down. Here you can see our guide almost falling asleep. Poor guy has only just returned to Arequipa after taking another group on a tour.

After about 3-4 hours of walking we reached the bottom of the canyon, crossed over the river,

and a brief climb took us to our lodgings for the night.

A late lunch and the afternoon was ours to collapse on the floor and try to recover. Good views of the path we had just walked down made the afternoon complete.

Nice flowers in the garden.

After a bit of negotiation with the guide we agreed to get up the following day at 8 am to walk to a place called La Oasis (the tourist name, not the real name). Everyone went to bed pretty early as it had been a bit of hard day so we were all up bright an early.

Today was a fairly easy walk along the side of the valley to what we were promised would be "thermal" baths.

Along the way we passed the communal irrigation channels which are used to provide water for the terraces.

And after a couple of hours walk

We stopped off at a small village to take a look at a museum of indigenous life which was run by a sweet lady called Victoria.

Here she is showing us some candles made out of llama fat. Life must have been a bit stinky back in the olden days...

After a quick rest it was time to continue walking and to La Oasis, which we go site of pretty quickly:

and a quick descent took us to our pool (room temperature - better than cold!)

and our lodgings for the night.

A nice relaxing afternoon. The next day we were up at 1am to climb back out of the canyon and see the condors. We stirred up the fire and warmed up, had a quick cup of coca tea and bit of bread and were off!

We were all equipped with fantastic headlamps (mine seems to be particularly bright). Our guide carried... a candle. I think he was showing off.

After a 3 or 4 hour climb, the sun was starting to come up over the mountains and we were at the top.

Some lovely colours from the sunrise.

and some well deserved breakfast!

After breakfast, we all jumped on a bus to finally see the condors. They are big birds!

Lots of photos of condors here.

Then it was time to head down to the real hot baths at Chivay. Absolutely awesome, like taking a bath. I got a massage as well. What a great day.

The journey back to Arequipa gets it´s own blog post. It was quite an adventure...

Beautiful combinations of colours in here, will have to break out the paintbox when I get home...

And some views over the city.

As mentioned in the previous post, we´ll be leaving at 1am tomorrow morning to go trekking. Not entirely looking forward to it...

More photos here.

It´s gridlock!

More photos here

The past few days has mostly been spent on buses heading up the coast of northern Chile and back into Peru again.

First stop in Chile was a seaside town called Iquique. Some slightly worrying signs all around town remind you that Chile is subject to regular earthquakes (we felt two slight tremors in Arica - quite unnerving).

Chile is a strange place. There seems to be very little space for anything. Iquique is sandwiched between the mountains and the coast.

All the photos of Iquique include a very nice beach. Didn´t find it... Saw it from the bus as we left town on the way to Arica. Nice sunsets on the way.

Arica´s beach was fairly easy to find:

My travel buddy for Bolivia and Chile knows a family here in Arica so we went to visit for a Sunday lunch barbecue. Huge amounts of food and drink and excellent company. If you´re ever in Arica ask around for "Gringo Philip" a thoroughly top bloke.

To get back into Peru from Arica you take a collective taxi to a place called Tacna which is just over the border.

And then catch the bus to wherever you want to go in Peru. In our case, Arequipa where we are planning to do a few days tour into a nearby canyon where you can see condors.

Arequipa is a nice town with usual plazas and colonial buildings. Very nice food as well. Excellent.

For fans of my amazing photography, you can have a look at all the photos from this adventure here.

The day started off in Uyuni with the now classic act of being taken by the tour operator that we had booked with to a completely different tour operator. However, this turned out to be completely fine with a fun driver, a land cruiser that wasn´t on it´s last legs, and a fun group of fellow backpackers - quite an international group; French - Richard, Australian - Jeremy, German - Cristina, Swiss - Leli (sp?), and UK - me (taking the photo...).

First stop was the train graveyard just outside of Uyuni, not entirely sure what these trains were used for, but it was probably something to do with minerals and salt.

After a quick stop to pick up the guide´s son (to help with the cooking and general odd jobs) we set off. Stopping at a local village that is heavily involved in the salt processing industry. Here we were able to buy various things made from salt, including a set of dice - enabling us to play a French game called "Yams". Salt is not the best material for dice, but it´s good enough for a couple of games.

Driving a bit further we came to the salt flat. A truly strange place. It really feels like snow underfoot, and the cold gives the impression that it must be a snow field.

A quick taste confirms that it is salt. And very salty it is too.

The piles of salt are drying in the sun and will be collected when they are ready for further processing. All the salt from here is used within Bolivia, none of it is exported. Apparently there is a lot of international interest in exploiting this area because of all the minerals.

After some more driving we are away from the exploited area and on the real salt flats. The weird hexagonal shapes are all natural, probably to do with the way salt crystallizes.

After a few hours driving we stopped off at an "island" in the desert.

This was used as a stopping off point by the Incas when the crossed the flats and they planted many cactus plants to help them find the place.

Some of these cacti date from the 1200s

After some more driving we reached our lodgings for the night, a hotel made entirely from salt!

After a quick explore of the village it was time to head back indoors. Sunset comes pretty quickly here and it´s damned cold at night!

After a reasonably enjoyable meal (my stomach has been giving me hassle for the past few days) we were treating to some local children demanding money with menacing music and dancing.

Into bed early under a pile of blankets and a sleeping bad. The next day we were up a 5am to grab some quick breakfast and head out again. First stop, an active volcano!

Following this was a sequence of five lakes, all different colours depending on the minerals and algae growing in them.

Living out in this desolate wilderness are lots of llama like creatures called pequeñas.

And some great landscapes:

Also, some pink flamingos. Sadly I don´t think any of us are ever going to make it as hunters, the birds took off for the other side of lake as soon as we approached.

so we took some group photos instead.

More lakes, the white stuff is a mixture of minerals and ice. This lake contains borax (I think...)

Next stop, the stone forest. Lots of rocks in funny formations. It was really cold so we made this quite a short stop!

Maybe this is the one with borax in...

Finally some decent shots of flamingos - borrowed someones tripod for this shoot and the pictures are surprisingly good. Investing in a camera with a decent optical zoom was really worth it, just need to buy my own tripod now.

More driving and we are at our evenings accommodations. We are now at about 5000 meters altitude...

Despite the lovely covers, these beds do not have enough blankets for -20 degrees C nighttime temperatures. We managed to rustle up a few more blankets and slept in sleeping bags and thermals this night. It was still cold. The cold actually seemed to seep up through the bed´s mattress!

Another crazily early start (5:30 in the truck!) to visit some geysers. It really was quite remarkably cold here, but interesting nevertheless, very noisy and very steamy - but still fricking freezing!

Finally the high point of the day, after being cold all night and we got to bathe in the hot springs as sun rose. Beautiful.

This is near the border of Chile, Bolivia and Argentina. What a great place.

And here´s the border post. We´d got out exit stamps in Uyuni - for three days we´d been officially nowhere.

A nice warm bus was waiting at the border post and after about 20 minutes on Bolivian tracks we reached the road that joins Argentina and Chile, I think this is the first sealed road that any of us had seen for some weeks!

I´m now in Chile, we spent a day and a bit in San Pedro de Atacama - which is a town in the middle of the worlds driest desert (it still cold!).

Chile has been a real shock to the system in terms of costs. Everything is amazingly expensive compared to the rest of South America.

However, it´s still good fun. Finally got to do some cooking (the cost of eating out is prohibitive for people on a budget) - first meal, the good old student standby of pasta, sweetcorn, tuna and mayonnaise; second meal, my own speciality, chicken in mushroom sauce. Lovely grub!

We also took the opportunity of doing some sand boarding here. Fantastic fun, but my body is still hurting from falling off a bit too much. (Must remember that although I might be travelling with a bunch of 20 year olds, I´ve still got a 35 year old body...)

Got the overnight bus last night to Iquique in search of a bit of warmth and some beach time. Tomorrow we´ll visit the ghost town on Humberstone and then head north to Arica and finally up the coast of Peru.

The following day, bright and early, we were at the miners cooperative getting fitted out with helmets, wellington boots (obligatory for any tour), and protective trousers and jackets.

First stop on the tour was to pick up gifts for the miners. These consisted of bottles of coca cola, dynamite, and coca leaves.

Dynamite is readily available throughout Bolivia and it´s completely legal for anyone to buy and blow up. Typically the miners use a package called a "Completo". This consists of: a stick of dynamite (from my limited knowledge this looks and feels like plastic explosives), a 5 minute fuse (enough to get 30-50 meters away safely), a bag of amonium nitrate (fertilizer -gives you more bang for you buck).

All this is available for the princely sum of 17 Bolivianos (about $2) from your local shop...

Before visiting the mines, we visited one of the ore processing plants, this was a good taster of what to expect in the mines. The miners sell the raw ore taken from the mine to these plants to be seperated out and then sold onto the international markets.

Here´s the mountain "Cerro Rico" that the mine is in. The mountain used to stand at about 5,800 meters, but is now down to 4,800 due to instability caused by the mining.

From the mine you get a good view of the city.

And after taking some photos, it was time to go in...

Nothing that anyone had said or anything that I had read had quite prepared me for the hideous conditions within the mine. The dust, the cramped conditions, the lack of ventilation. I doubt that this mine would be allowed to operate in any other place. What made all this worse is that these conditions are not being imposed by some evil multinational mining corporation. The mine is actually run by a collection of mining cooperatives!

Unfortunately, there are over 60 mining cooperatives all working on this one mine. Rather than working together to improve things, they work in competition with each other, occasionally conflicts over rich seams lead to confrontations in the mine where the weapons of choice are sticks of dynamite.

It was quite depressing really. You would hope that having the mine controlled and run by locals would make conditions much better. Instead it seems to have made things much worse. Most labor is still carried out by hand. An electric winch to hoist rocks from 7 levels below the entrance only costs $3500, but only one cooperative has the money to buy one, so only one cooperative has one. A few cooperatives have electric carts. Everything else is done by hand.

As you would expect, life expectancy of a miner is pretty short.

A few hundred meters inside the mine is a small museum, this also houses the mine devils that the miners pray to for good finds, safety etc...

Having climbed through some pretty tight tunnels filled with dust and finding it almost impossible to breath I decided to cut my tour short at the end of the first level of the mine. The thought of going down through level 2 to level 3 really wasn´t that appealing.

Once outside it was time for a bit of light relief, we got to play with some of the dynamite that we´d purchased.

Our guide had kindly brought along a stuffed monkey, the stuffing was quickly removed and replaced with the dynamite.

And here´s me holding a monkey stuffed with dynamite, and yes, the fuse coming out of its mouth is lit!

Here´s the video of the explosions:

From the town square we caught the dino-bus..

Which took us to the local cement factory (where the tracks were discovered...).

Guess what the dinosaurs are made from...

The tracks are pretty interesting, but sadly you´re not allowed to get as close as you used to be able to as they are trying to preserve them.

More dinosaur models:

Back in town we attempted to visit another major attraction, the cemetry (I kid you not).

Sadly it was closed and having exausted the options in Sucre we headed to the travel agency (aptly names "BS Tours") and booked a bus ticket to Potosi.

Sadly the busses were all full, so we´re now down the road in Sucre, so far it´s a bit uninspiring, nice town, but not a lot to do really.

Tomorrow I should be in Potosi.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yungas_Road

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/programmes/from_our_own_correspondent/6136268.stm

And today, we are still alive!

Here are the photos:

We got up around 7:30 and left La Paz for a short drive to the start of the death road. On arrival we got all our gear on and tried out the bikes:

This was probably the first time I´ve ever ridden a bike with breaks that really work properly!

The first part of our ride was on properly surfaced roads to get us used to riding the bikes again (a couple of us had not ridden since we were 12 years old...).ç

The road was pretty steep with some funs turns that you could pretty much take without slowing down.

And a few uphill sections that required a bit of rest afterwards.

After some more riding we reached the death road proper and tried out the first section.

Having successfully completed this without falling off the edge our guide offered us the choice of splitting up into two groups, one fast and one a bit slower, or all of us going a bit faster.

So we all chose to go faster and carried on down the death road.

After about 3 hours of riding (with frequent breaks for water and rest) we reached the bottom.

And had a very welcome beer!

Booked our flights the day before with Amazonas Airlines and the following day set off at 11 am to the airport to catch our plane. Almost immediately it became pretty obvious that not all was well, with all of the people who were supposed to get flights that morning still hanging around the airport...

But eventually things sorted themselves out and our little plane arrived at 3pm to finally take us down into the lowlands.

And when I say little plane, I mean little plane (though it was a bit bigger than the one I got in the Galapagos Islands):

Take off at 4000m is quite an exciting affair, you don´t really climb very much higher!

So we came fairly close to the mountains that surround La Paz

Before finally coming into land at the dirt strip in the middle of the jungle (don´t know how the pilots actually saw anything through the windscreen...).

This is the airport:

They turn the planes around pretty quickly and head straight back to La Paz with a load of tired and dirty tourists fresh from the jungle.

After a quick bus ride into town we found our hostel (they still seem to be constructing the road to it...) which was very nice with some very comfy hammocks.

A quick wash and brush up followed by a trip to the travel agent to book a tour to the Pampas with our new found friends and it was time for some happy hour and many many cocktails with the fellow survivors of the plane ride.

Next morning bright and early we had the usual confusion of the start of a tour. First step of this process is usually being taken from the agency that you booked through to a completely different agency...

After a bit of milling around and general confusion seven of us were packed aboard a 4x4 and sent on our way (on a 3 hour incredibly dusty road)

to find the boat that would be our main means of transportation for the next 3 days. This brought back many memories of my trip to Mosquitia in Honduras - fortunately there´s only a river to navigate this time!

All aboard and we´re off down the river to find some wildlife and accommodation.

First thing we see is a pretty big caiman!

An hour or so later, and quite a few caiman later,

Some monkeys lazing around in the trees.

Followed by some more little monkeys that were kind enough to pose (in exchange for crackers).

Also seen, pink dolphins! Sadly almost impossible to photograph as they only surface for a quick breath and then dive down again.

That evening we went upstream a little bit to visit the Sunset Bar for a couple of beers followed by a nice evening meal - possibly the best food I´ve had so far in South America.

The following day was anaconda hunting day! First order of business, finding some wellington boots. I must say, the girls look rather fetching in their new apparal.

About 30 minutes upstream, with the usual abundance of caiman and dolphins, we stopped to head into the pampas to find our anacondas.

Our earlier grumblings about the new rubber boots dissapeared quite quickly as we discovered just how deep the mud was round here and spirits were generally good.

Perseverance rewarded, we found an anaconda! Don´t know why this photo has fallen over, I´m sure I fixed it.

Following this, our two crocodile hunter australians found another, sadly in a slightly deeper area, so our wellingtons filled up with water and creepy crawlys.

We also managed to buy 3 bottles of vino tinto, this seemed to please the French girls immensely!

Back at camp everyone was quite keen for a quick swim to wash the mud away. However, our usual swimming spot was occupied:

No more swimming!

The following day was spent attempting to swim with the pink dolphins. We managed to swim with them only in the sense that they were in the same river as us. But it was still fun splashing around with the caiman and the pirahnas (health and safety, what´s that?).

The following morning we went fishing for pirahnas, our guide caught five, between the rest of us, we managed one. They tasted pretty nice, but there´s not a lot of meat on them.

Then it was time to head home back down the river to pick up our ride back to Rurrenabaque. Stopping off to torment some pigs.

We decided to book ourselves onto the jungle tour for the following day, so once again, it was time for a quick shower, cocktails, and another early start the next day. Sadly at this point my camera´s battery finnally went flat, so there´s not photos of our adventures.

This time we went down a different river and left directly from Rurrenabaque. The night before we left it had rained very heavily and it was still ominously overcast when we left. Almost immediately it started to rain and our newly purchased plastic ponchos were put to good use.

Luckily it cleared up once we passed the mountains and the climate turned more humid and jungle like.

Not much to report from the jungle, very different from the pampas, much harder to see any wildlife. We did manage to catch a good look at some howler monkeys, and saw a whole heard of wild pigs (100+) stampeding accross the trail.

Best bit of the trip, cutting up a notepad to make playing cards... Not much to do at night in the jungle!

In keeping with the current theme of the trip this town is about 3,800 meters above sea level...

This is us standing on top of the burried pyramid.

There´s not a great deal to see of the pyramid, but some of the other temples have been uncovered and reconstructed.

Also from the pyramid you get quite a nice view of the modern town with it´s church and main square.

The underground temple contains some interesting walls with a large collection of heads:

The above ground temple seems to be all to do with the solstices - various statues, doors and walls line up with the sun at different times of the year.

Translation of the sign: "Come back soon!"

Back in La Paz again, wondering what to do next...

As this is quite a touristic town we had no problem finding ourselves a nice italian place, and after a bottle of wine, a bar serving cocktails with live music.

Next morning with heads slightly hurting we got up to catch the bus to La Paz.

Half way through the journey we had to disembark and watch our bus (with all our luggage) float off over the lake.

Luckily there were boats to take us as well and we were quickly reunited with the bus and carried on the journey. Finally arrived in La Paz around lunch time and spent the rest of the time searching for banks and money changers.

who took us on a hour long hike over some mountains to the ruins on the south of the island.

These seem to be run by some local women who collected the usual gringo tax to view the buildings.

Lots of crazy little kids around, all of whom assume that you have chocolate in you backpack.

You have to keep feeding them though, otherwise they get quite grumpy.

Finally, the boat turned up to take those people who were returning to Copacabana off the island.

Luckily we´re staying the night and after a long hike back to the town we settled into our hostel to catch the sunset on the mountains near La Paz.

The next day was a bright and early start, we hiked to the northen end of the island to take a look at some more ruins. On the way we bumped into a particularly unfriendly Llama - this one took great exception to me and decided to spit in my face...

Our route took us along most of the peaks of the island stopping off at the odd ruin here and there.

And another obligatory gringo tax - quite fortunate that we actually found this place as we had lost the train slightly and were going cross country.

After a long walk - about 3 hours or so

we came to the sight of the ruins. This rock apparently looks like a puma from the right angle - one can´t help thinking that perhaps the ancients were chewing one too many coca leaves.

Caught sight of a few eagles (?) near the ruins and managed to capture a couple of shots:

Then it was a quick walk to one of the southern villages, only to find that we´d missed the boat - we´d been told that it left at a variety of times, unfortunately it left at a completely different time.

Luckily we were able to get passage with a local guy on his boat and caught up with the boat back to Copacabana and made it safely back to the mainland.

Here´s a handy map of Copacabana if you ever go there.

We´re only staying for a spot of lunch and quick game of pool (nice setting, shame about the pool table´s quality).

Will post some pictures in a couple of days time. Off early tomorrow to visit some ruins.

Quite and early start, 7 am we set off for the port to find a boat to take us out to the islands.

After a bit of negotiation we got passage on a boat to take us to Uros and then onto another island for the night then back to Puno.

Quite a nice leisurely journey through some reed beds

And we found ourselves on one of the floating island of Uros.

These float in about 15-20 meters of water which was kindly demonstrated by one of the locals who dropped a weight on the end of rope through a hole in ground.

After a quick demonstration on how the islands are constructed we caught a reed boat to another floating island.

Here you can stay the night in some rather fancy huts. They have a bar and restaurant, what more could you ask for?

However, we have to head onto to Amantaní where we are going to stay with a local family. So, after another 3 hours one the boat (which allowed us all to catch up on some sleep and to get immensely bored) we arrived at Amantaní to be met by a bunch of local ladies representing the families of the island who will be putting us up.

We followed our lady for about 15 minutes getting completely lost.

Before reaching our little homestead.

Our house is set just up from the sea and has it's own set of fields and a cow!

After a nice lunch our lady took us on a very long walk to some ruins at the top of the island. The road was pretty good and had all sorts of pictures of local life embedded in it.

After quite a hard walk (we are 3,812 m (12,507 feet) above see level!). We reached the top of the hill and took in the views.

The island has the obligatory football field:

And we were in time for a very nice sunset.

A quick walk down in what was now becoming the dark of night (how our lady finds her way around I have no idea) we were presented with dinner and some costumes to wear for the nights festivities.

I'm not sure how much fun the locals are really having - they do this pretty much every night, so I guess it gets a bit dull. But after a while they warmed up a bit and the dancing got a bit crazy.

I think the band were happy to call it a night.

The following day we were up bright and early again to take the boat to Taquile to climb 450 steps for some.... you guessed it, ruins!

Very keen on arches here.

And they seem to make use of most things that would normally get thrown away:

After a nice lunch of kingfish, it was time to head back to the boat. Not sure how much use this signpost it.

Down to the boat, through some more arches.

And back to Puno past the floating islands. Today seems to be town meeting day, anyone who's anyone is out on his boat.

Tomorrow we'll be heading over to Bolivia to Copacabana for more of the islands on the lake.

First stop was some terraced ruins that were apparently used by the Incas to experiment on crop growth. Each terrace has a different microclime so the Incas were able to test crops to see which ones could be grown in the various regions of there territory. Pretty damned clever those Incans...

After lunch (which seemed to attract an equal number of stray dogs and children) in a local village we took an hour walk down to Riobamba along a dirt track. Fantastic views to be had down into the valleys.

And some more ruins off in the distance.

The salt factory was constructed by the Incans after they noticed that the stream running through this vlley was exremely rich in salt - in fact you can see salt crystals on the edge of the stream. They build these terraces to evaporate off the water and they are still in use today. You may be able to find this salt exported under the brand name of Peruvian Pink Salt.

Here's some dried out salt.

And here's a chap scraping it up. Apparently there's 200+ people working here. The water is distributed to each terrace and contained by a network of channels which are blocked and unblocked to regulate the flow.

A pretty amazing day really. Lovely countryside.

Off to Lake Titikaka tomorrow.

First step was to cross the river, slightly unstable boat, but we made it over ok.

Lots and lots of ants... didn´t see much else, but heard some monkeys.

Then we rafted down the river back to where we started. All in all a pretty full on day.

Got the bus back at about 9ish, thank God it was dark, don´t think I could have taken another terrifying journey.

Back in Cusco now, it´s pretty chilly.

First day in the jungle and we head off to a locla hacienda to go horse trekking,

Before getting onto the horses we took some time to explore the farm and the wildlife, all of which is remarkably tame:

The monkey took some coaxing before he´d climb on me, apparently people with hair are much nicer to cuddle.

Here´s a field of pineapple plants:

Along with an abandoned plane - it wasn´t clear if the plane had crashed here or if it had just been left... You have to wonder what it would have been used for, we think smuggling.

After looking at a few more animals, including some edible snails we took the horses up to a local village to visit the people and take photos of the kids.

Then it was back to the hacienda for a nice warm fire.

Getting up to the village had been a nice leasurely walk, coming back we acutally got up to a gallop! I have ot say, despite the complete lack of control and the high likeliehood of falling off, the gallop is a lot more comfortable than anything else the horse does. It´s also pretty exciting, might have to take up horse riding when I get back...

Then it was back on the road for some an even more frightening bus journey we finally reached our destination, a small town in the cultural region of Manu national park. Luckily they´d built a nice new bridge so we didn´t have to cross this one!

I guess not much new stuff makes it out here, lots of pretty old trucks lying around.

Lovely views of the mountains that we´d just come over:

And here´s our intrepid group:

Lots of fresh produce to buy. Pineapples going for just 10 centimes - that´s about 6 pence!

And the appalling football was more than made up for by the fans.

Cusco is 3380m above sea level! It´s going to take a bit of time to get acclimatised.

This afternoon jumping on the bus to Cuzco to meet Jeremy, another Mexico amigo.

Went out exploring the town today. First stop Plaza San Martin.

Then onto Plaza Armas, was hoping to catch the changing of the guard. The guide book says 12pm sharp, the hostel says 11:45am, the local policeman says; "It's running late, maybe 12:30". In Latin America, nothing is on time...

Usual obligatory big church - there's a fair few of them here.

But this one was actually quite interesting, big crypts. Sadly no photographs allowed so you'll have to imagine the 4 meter deep containers of thigh bones and skulls.... I think that I have definitely played too many computer games where skeletons suddenly come to life to really enjoy this kind of place.

Not sure why, but the incredible hulk goes fishing here.

A long walk into the wilderness we find a slightly more serious statues of the man himself, Charlse Darwin!

And over dinner we´re serenating by the sounds of sealions...

Ended up spending almost a week on San Cristobal. It´s quite nice at the moment as the airport is closed to big planes. The only people here were volunteers, locals and a few people from yachts. All good things come to an end though and it was time to jump on a plane and fly to Isobella.

There´s a very nice beach here, but it is a long 45 minute - 1 hour walk!

Definitely worth it, if you get out here early enough then you have the place pretty much to yourself.

And after a walk along the mile of beach and after bypassing the guards

you come to a beautiful lagoon where you can snorkel and rent kayaks.

So far Peru has been a misty desert type place:

Off to Guayaquil this afternoon and will head to Lima, Peru in the next couple of days (probably tomorrow if I get my act together). Still have lots of photos from the Galapagos to post.

Have lots of photos to post, but will wait until I have a decent internet connection.

Lots and lots of sealions here. Went for a run this morning (a very short run I have to admit) and then had a swim with the sealions. Someone smells of fish. And I think it might be me, time for a shower...

First day of the boat trip was actually a tour of the island that I´m currently on. Main highpoint was the giant tortoses at the Darwin center.

Once on the boat we went to a variety of islands and saw sealions (lots), some penguins, some blue footed boobies (I have a video of the boobie mating dance), some kind of red balloon bird and various other bits of wildlife.

Today I´m planning to head to another island to catch up with a friend - or I might just end up on the beach again. It´s a hard life...

Currently I´m on the island of Santa Cruz and already I´ve seen some wildlife!

And lots of churches. Quite a nice town, pretty relaxed. You could probably stay here for a while and feel quite comfortable, but I´m off tomorrow!

Our trip down the devil´s nostril ended up quite difficult. All the tickets from Riobamba has sold out so we had to catch a bus to Alausu (sp?) and then hang around until around 1ish to actually get the train.

Alausu is a pleasant place, bit quiet and a bit weird:

The train turned out to be a bus like contraption on tracks. But the views were spectacular.

Halfway through the trip they let us all sit on the roof (apparently this isn´t really allowed anymore as a tourist was decapititated a few months back!).

Here we´re hoping to take a train ride down the "devil´s nostril".

Got pretty far up the mountain, no views of the volcano as it was a little cloudy, but good views of the town.

There´s been a few recent erruptions and we came accross a pretty wild mud flow. The noise was incredible.

Hopefully he´s now off to the local zoo, but it´s been an entertaining morning for everyone.

Escaped from Quito and I´m now in a place called Baños. On the way here, we passed a volcano that started errupting. Very exciting!

Here there are hot springs and baths (hence the name...).

Flights to the Galapagos booked. It´s all coming together.

The sun has also finally come out! We´re still quite high up in the mountains so it´s not crazy hot. But it is nice to finally get back into the shorts!

And here´s the residence of El Presidente:

Hopefully a few of us will be heading to a place called Baños this afternoon. This morning I´m trying to book my flight to the Galapagos islands, but it´s a Sunday, so I´m not sure how much success I´m going to have...

Haven´t quite found my feet yet. Think it´s going to take a few days to get into the swing of things.

Now in Washington DC for a few days. Will be heading back down South on the 18th to carry on the adventure.

Last night in Mexico was spent in a rather nice hotel. Now in New York. It's a bit cold here!

Not much sign of the spring breakers here. I´m a bit dissapointed, no girls going wild, no-one throwing up in the corridors. It´s all a bit tame.

Next stop New York!

Not a bad nights sleep, and waking up on the beach was pretty cool!

Yesterday we went swimming in a cenote close to the town which was spectacular. Sadly no photos from that as the camera (which has been making strange noises for the past week) completely refused to take any photos. I´ve managed to coax it into action again but it´s definitely time for a new one.

Today the plan is to head back to Tulum for some beach time. Only a few days before it´s time for the crazy April of flying.

Quite a late start to the day, we caught the 10am bus and arrived in Celeston in time to meet up for lunch with the advance party who had gone the previous day.

This was possibly the best seafood I have had all trip!

After lunch we jumped in a boat to have a look at the flamingos that live in the lagoon. The lonely planet tells us that this time of year there are thousands of them. Apparently they have the season completely the wrong way round so at the moment there are only a few hundred of them - still pretty impressive!

Sadly my camera cannot really do justice to it as I've only got a digital zoom. But I think I got some fairly nice pictures.

After the flamigos we went through some mangrove tunnels and eventually ended up at a swimming hole. Here we met a few locals who were kind enough to feed us crab ceviche and various drinks.

Came back from the trip and celebrated french Chris's birthday on the beach with a beer and cake!

Then we wathced the sun go down before heading back to Merida for some well deserved rest.

Today we're off to Chichin Itza. It's equinox today/tomorrow so there should be quite a few people there.

After that we went for an afternoon stroll around the town. There are pigeons here - I think this is the first time I have seen pigeons on my trip, weird.

Lots of nice architectural bits and pieces to see here.

Tomorrow I´m off to Campeche, maybe via Celeston, not sure yet, will see where the Gods of the busses decide to take me.

According to our guide the Mayans lived in Uxmal 3 times, each time they ran out of water here they would move onto another city and work their way around 5 different cities. It took them about a generation of people to do this so by the time they came back to Uxmal all the buildings were out of date. So they rebuilt them all. This gives the place the name Uxmal which might mean "built three times" in Mayan.

We started our tour at the back of the main temple and then moved around to the front to see some nice carvings.

Much of the place has been reconstructed from rubble - though I have my suspicions that this might be some ancient Mayan code.

Some fine examples of the rain god here - there weren´t any natural sources of water around so they had to rely on capturing rain water and storing it in huge cisterns.

There is a very nice square in the ruins with some good carvings so we wandered around here for a while. No one is really sure what the purpose of this place is, but it might have been used for some kind of public meetings as it has excellent accoustics.

After dinner night was starting to fall and it was time for the sound and light show. It wasn´t anywhere near as cheesy as I was hoping for, but it wasn´t bad.

Went on a quick tour of the town this morning starting off at the main plaza with a nice view of the Cathedral. Apparently this is the first cathedral in all of Mexico (though not the first to be built, only the first to recieve official recognition=.

Stopped off in a very nice building that is now owned by a bank. Sadly much of the building is closed off, but you can get into the garden. The building was build using stones from the Mayan town that Merida was built on and you can see some of them in the arches still.

Last stop was the main municipal palace which has a number of murials.

This one symbolises the struggle in Mexican life between good (represented by the eagle) and evil (represented by the snake). This image is also on the back of the 10 peso piece and also on the Mexican flag.

Tomorrow I´m going to visit... some more ruins! But this time I´m going for a sound and light show. I´m hoping for some serious cheesiness.

We got rained on there as well.

However, we did get to see a fine example of a ballcourt and this one still had the stone rings that serve as the goal.

And of course we got to climb another temple!

Since Tulum was a little bit damp I've now come up the coast stopping off at Playa Del Carmen where we saw a very entertaining Mexican band.

And I'm now on an island off the coast called Isla Mujeres (Island of women).

I´m now in Tulum, weather has takena turn for the worse today and it´s abit overcast and keeps trying to rain.

So a few of us have given up on the beach and we´re going to head to the ruins at Coba which is just a short bus ride away.

There´s also, unsurprisingly, some ruins here which we did a quick tour of this morning:

At the entrance to the ruins is the Templo De Las Incriptiones group of buildings. First off is the Templo de La Calavera, named after the sculture of a rabbit or deer skull.

Also in this complex is the Templo de las Inscripciones, you need to get permission to go inside this temple, but that involved going to the museum first which is on the other side of the ruins.

Opposite the Temple is El Palacio with a large observation tower.

Rund the corner down a jungle path is the Templo Del Rollo Relieve. I got to the ruins quite early so there weren´t many people around and this temple is definitely out of the way. Quite spooky going down dark stairways into chambers underground. Not good for the nervous system!

Following the main path we come to the Grupo De La Cruz. This consists of Templo del Sol. Which is stupidly steep.

And Tempo De La Cruz which gives the group it´s name.

Down a small path is copy of a carved panel showing a captive kneeling before one of the rulers.

To the north of this area is the ball court.

And just to the west is a temple that has yet to be escavated:

Heading on we come to Grupo Norte which has some interesting history.

Also we seem to have some kind of Mayan picnic area:

Heading east we come to Grupo C.

Back on the main path we come to Baño de la Reina

which is traversed by a suspension bridge

and followed by another set of waterfalls. You used to be able to swim around here, but not anymore.

Past this are some more buildings including groups I and II which are mainly residential:

And that concludes Palanque. A quick stop at the cafe for a beer and a look round the museum and then back into town.

I now need to kill a few hours until 9pm when the bus for Tulum leaves. Tomorrow I´ll be back on the beach!

So, we took a boat from Orange walk. Quite an exciting ride twisting through the bends of the river.

With the occasional stops for crocodiles!

and the odd Jesus lizard.

The ruins were pretty typical Mayan structures

With some pretty impressive carvings:

And the obligatory temple to climb. This one was actually quite steep!

But had some fantastic views from the top.

Then it was back to Orange Walk spend the night there and then catch the bus over to mexico and then overnight it to San Cristobal which is a very nice town, but quite high up in the mountains so a bit chilly.

Spent a day in the area round San Cristobal visiting a local Mayan town, and the zoo:

Today was another bus ride to Palenque. Quite spectacular. It´s a shame I slept through this on the way to San Cristobal.

This morning we went out to local Mayan village in the hills. I´d forgotten how cold it gets here at altitude. Have to buy a new jumper. Almost got a poncho but thought better of it.

This afternoon we took a trip to the zoo. Saw lots of wildlife that I´d already seen in the wild and a few animals (mostly the big cats) that have so far prooved elusive.

Tomorrow I think I´ll head to Palanque to check out the ruins and the museum there and then start heading up the Atlantic coast to Cancun.

Anyway, I´m now killing time until my overnight 14 hour bus journey to San Cristobal. I´ve been through the museum of Mayan culture, which is actually pretty good and there is a zoo somewhere. Only another 5 or so hours to go...

Yesterday I took a trip to Lamani from Orange Walk, best bit of the trip was the boat journey, we saw several crocodiles, some jesus lizards, bats and lots of birds. Probably the most wildlife I´ve seen so far in my trip. We also got to speed down the river at a slightly stupid speed - which was fun. Oh, there were some ruins at the end of the ride, pretty standard pyramid type things.

Will post some photos tomorrow if I survive the bus journey.

29th March - Cancun to New York to meet Alison who claims she is on a business trip.
2nd April - New York to London for the stag weekend on the 5/6/7
11th April - Washington DC to catch up with the boys and girls there and visit the god children.
18th April - DC to Cancun
19th April - Cancun to Ecuador to carry on travelling!

Today I'm off to Corazon - don't know what's there, but I think it's more beaches with jungles and ruins close by.

Spent a couple of days in Placencia recovering from the sailing trip and chilling out on the beach. Plan was to head up the coast and then head inland to Orange Walk for some jungle and ruins.

However, the gods of the busses decided to intervene and we only made it as far as Hopkins before being diverted from Dangriga (and a tour of Mary Sharps hot sauce factory - KO, I'll bring you back some of this. It will blow your mind) to Belize City, so it made sense to come back here for a couple of days do the dive and then head on.

The boat is a gaff (sp?) rigged 34 footer built in the 70s and made almost entirely of wood.

After a bit of breakfast we cast off and the crew pulled up the sails and we started off sailing to our first stop with favourable winds.

First stop was rendevous caye, a deserted island probably about 50 meters by 20 meters - just enough room for the tents.

Waiting for supper, watching the sun go down and drinking quite a few rum punches.

Followed by a nice campfire (started with liberal doses of petrol).

The following day we were all in quite a sorry state, including the poor boat:

But we were soon off sailing again having been revived by coffee and a bit of breakfast.

Anbd after a few hours of sailing with occasional stops for fishing and snorkelling we reached tobaco caye, this place actually had some civilisation - a bar!

Some nice wildlife:

And of course a very nice beach:

Once again, we watched the sun go down.

Followed by a dinner consisting of the one of the fish that had been caught with the spear gun.

The next day we set of for Southwest Caye, our last stop on our adventure before heading onto Placencia.

No photos of Placencia, you must all be sick of palm trees and beaches by now. Next stop will be Dangria and then maybe Hopkins. But I think we'll stay here for another day. It's a bit too hot to be moving around too much.

Will post photos tomorrow.

Very similar to Utila in many ways, only one real main street that goes along the beach.

But all sorts of weird throwbacks to British rule and influence.

And here's the backyard of our hostel - I'm thinking that the hammock might be a good place to spend this afternoon...

So we got some sunshine! Walking through the ruins you get a real feel for how old the place is. Trees have grown up through the ruins cracking alters and tipping over structures.

Lots of wildlife as well, I really need to get a cemera with an optical zoom for these pictures.

Once again we climbed the tallest temple in the complex, and here is the view from the top:

Also this time we were able to climb a few of the other temples and get some good pictures

The steps are damn steep!

But defnitely worth the climb.

Lots of oportunities for good photos - if only there was a good photographer around...

And more temples to climb!

More good views:

And onto the main plaza

I'm now in Belize! I'm currently on an island off the coast called Caye Caulker. It's beautiful. Hopefully I'll have some photos to post tomorrow. I also have some more photos of Tikal, this time with sunshine!

Tuesday I'll be heading off on a sailing boat for a 3 days cruise camping at various islands and ending up in a nice beach town. Will probably head to the northern part of Belize for some ruins and wildlife after that.

Now I´m back in Antigua. I think I´ll still head up to Belize, but will take it a bit more leasurely and will stop off at some of the places I didn´t get to see before. But as always, these plans might change.

Last night our quiet meal out was interrupted by the Gallo girls!

Just makes you want to have a beer.

Here´s some photos of the ball court. According to the guide, the captain of the losing team would be sacrificed to the gods!

And heres one of the sacrificial alters. The channel is for the blood to run down so that it can easily be collected...

These steps record the history of Copan.

More ruins...

Much more detailed carving here compared to Tikal.

And lots of colourful birds.

So tomorrow I´ll be starting to travel towards Belize so that I can leave the region that the visa is valid for and then come back again. So I think I´ll spend the next few days on the road and then explore Belize for a couple of weeks. The question is, do I then explore Mexico and do my Cuba trip with the possibility that I don´t make it any further down Central America, or do I travel Belize and then head back down south.

Will post photos of Copan Ruins tomorrow.

The ruins here are very tranquil. Perfect place for hangover. Will post some photos tomorrow.

So, it's off to bed for me soon. I am knackered.

It was beatifully clear and we had the stars and the moon for the boat ride. The pick up truck was its usual chaos with far too many people crammed on board, but eventually we all got comfortable. On the trip to come here I remember thinking that although the truck seemed to be tilting over quite far on the beach that it probably wasn't as bad as all that (it always feels like you are tipped over much further than you actually are). This time there was a truck following us so I got to see it from the outside. It is quite terrifying.

We got stuck in the sand a few times and had to tow someone out of an inlet that was a little bit too deep for them, but all in all, it was pretty uneventful = apart from the two kids sat next to me who through up almost constantly (poor things).

Interesting moment - a girl stopped the truck to sell an Iguana to the driver. 100 Limperas gets you a tasty iguana for dinner!

Back in La Ceiba and tomorrow is another early start to catch the bus to Copan.

Another early start, up at 6:30 to get the boat back down the river and head back to Raista. We only bottomed the boat out a couple of times, so the trip was pretty uneventful.

In the evening we were treated to a Mosquitia cultural evening of dancing from the local women.

Which of course, we had to join in with!

But the views from the hill that we climbed were pretty nice!

The afternoon was free so we spent some time relaxing before heading off in search of some fabled chocolate cake that one of the guides had told us that his wife makes. Sadly she was recuperating from an illness so was unable to cook for us, but we did get to sample some raw cocoa beans. They look quite disgusting, but the white membrainy like stuff is very tasty.

Apparently the process is to dry the beans in the sun for 3 days, roast them in the over and then grind them. Voilla, cocoa powder!

We negotiated several rapids including some that required us to get out of the boats and walk so that there was enough water under them to get over the rocks.

Half way up the river we stopped off for a quick jungle hike with some spectacular views.

The bridge above leads to a platform that the locals have build to give a good lookout point. I haven't a photo of this construction, but it's pretty impressive, even more so when you consider that it was all built with just manpower - some of the bigger collumns required 70 people to drag them through the jungle.

After our walk it was back in the boats to negotiate more rapids until we reached the stone carvings that were the destination of our river cruise.

Then it was head back downstream. This is a lot easier than going up! We shot all of the rapids - including the ones that we had previously had to walk around. Came quie close to tipping the boat over but we made it in one (albeit damp) piece.

Cute picture walking back from the boats.

Six hours on the boat leads to people trying a variety of positions to get comfortable. Not many of them work.

After a long day we reached our lodgings for the next few nights. No showers here, but washing in the river is a perfectly acceptable alternative.

Quite a few things to see round here, mostly rural life going on and a few interesting plants, insects and local Mosquitia going about there business.

They also have some rather nice beaches to enjoy.

After a quick rest it was time to jump into another boat to head to our next lodgings.

This involved heading through some mangrove swamps and then over Brus Lagoona.

This can be quite a rough crossing as the wind can pick up and creat quite big waves. Luckily our boat driver had a tarp that we could hide under.

Once over the Lagoon we drove through some fairly narrow rivers on the lookout for crocodiles and other critters. We were now in savanna country and there's actually quite a lot of smallholdings here where cattle are grazed. We passed through a few areas where the dead grass was being burnt off to promote new growth for the cattle which made quite an interesting trip.

We reached our lodgings, had some lunch and spent the afternoon chilling out, swimming and kayaking on the nearby river. The water is crystal clear and you can see the bottom almost everywhere apart from places that are very deep.

In the evening we went out looking for crocodiles. Unfortunately I left my camera back in the room so no photos, but we saw quite a few of the little beasties. Our kind was kind enough to fish one of the smaller ones out for us. They feel just like a handbag...

The paved road dissappeared after about 30 minutes and from then on it was dirt roads and I began to understand just why the trucks had such big tires and jacked up suspension. Here's a picture of the truck that we almost got into before the guys in our truck kidnapped us.

The trip was long hot and dusty, but there were quite a few interesting sites to keep us amused. Lots of wildlife and rural scenes.

The last hour or so of the journey took place along the beach. The road dissappeared and we drove along the shore where the sand was firm from the water.

There were a few places where this meant that the truck seemed to be on the verge of tipping over. It's hard to capture this in a photo, but believe me, it was quite a nerve wracking experience. Especially when the welding holding the rails in place started to give way. Everyone on board seemed to take this in good spirits though so there was not panicking (maybe a few cries of "mummy...").

After some time we reached a place called Batalla and picked up our next form of transport, a boat to take us to Raista.

We took a brief stop at Palasais to use the facilities. Apparently this can be quite a dangerous place at night, there is currently a ban on consumption of alcohol and a curfew on all minors.

The sun was setting on us as we motored over the lagoons and through rivers until we eventually reached our lodgings for the night and a welcome cold shower and food.

I thought I'd leave you with a picture of the kind of luxury that I had in Tela, hot showers! And possible the safest shower I've been in so far.

Friday evening I took a stroll along the beach and had a quick beer. On my way I stopped off for a walk down the pier searching for some nice photos for you all.

Not a great photo. But I did risk life and limb for it as you can see from the two photos below it!

About sixteen of us set off across the bay on a quick 45 minute boat ride over to the park where we dropped off at the beach.

After a stroll through the jungle we came to a place where Captain Morgan the famous pirate used to hide his ships when he wasn't out raiding - apparently every so often people come here with metal detectors looking for lost gold, no one has had any luck yet...

Just around the corner on the beach we were able to see some panther (or is it jaguar? I forget now) tracks!

Another walk through the jungle past various spiders and very small biting ants that seemed to take a fancy to everyones ankles we came to another beach where the boat was waiting to pick us up to take us to another beach for lunch.

Whilst we waited for the boat our guide found us some howler monkeys. Hopefully I'll get some better pictures on my tour of mosquitia. Apparently the monkeys are very territorial and if they don't like you they'll throw poo at you. If you really unlucky they'll wee on your head.

On the way to lunch we passed some rocks. These rocks used to be just one rock but during the war with El Salvador (known as the "Football War") the rock was used for bombing practice and now there are several rocks.

After a bit of hair raising ride past/in between more rocks we stopped at a small Garifuna settlement for lunch and relaxation.

It was then time to come home as the water gets quite choppy towards the afternoon. On the way back we passed through a bunch of jellyfish. Out captain kindly fished a couple out for us:

Tomorrow I´m booked on a tour of one of the local wildlife park. I was going to go on a kayaking tour with crocodiles! But only two other people had signed up for it (can´t think why...).

I'm heading off to Tela for a couple of days before coming back again on Saturday to start a tour of the Mosquitia region.

Luckily I've managed to kill a day or so by going white water rafting up in the jungle. Not entirely sure how I ended up on the trip, I was just getting out of bed and hunting for some breakfast when someone came up to me and said "Aren't you supposed to be coming rafting? We're waiting for you..."

So it was pack some stuff real quick and jump on a bus for the jungle lodge.

The river is pretty fast with grades of rapids from 1 up to 4.

Not a great deal to report on the rafting. We went up to a class 4. The boat only capsized once - which we somehow managed to do on a class 2 rapid.

The jungle lodge was fairly quiet but there were a couple of parrakeets to keep us entertained along with a baby anteater (sorry no photos) that one of the barmen was trying raise.

Nice views over dinner and breakfast the next morning.

I left an island that looked like it was about to disappear under a deluge of rain.

But the last weekend on the island was pretty good. We went off for a "Sunday Fun Day" at the dive shop which consisted of a couple of dives in the morning followed by copious quantities of beer and general partying.

Followed by large amounts of relaxing and chilling out:

Sitting around on the beach (being bitten by sandflies)...

And then back home for some well deserved sleep.

I'm now in La Ceiba, not sure if I'm going to stay here for that many days, it all depends on if I can get any trips arranged from here. If I can't then I'll be jumping on a bus to Copan to see the ruins there.

New departure date is Monday.

Lined up for the rest of my time here is:

Spanish festival tonight
Dentist tomorrow morning
Maybe climb pumpkin hill in the afternoon.
Burns night
maybe a bit of canoing
and more diving on Sunday

Happily the sun is out again and it looks like the weekend is going to be fantastic!

We all took a trip up the local water tower. From the top you can just about see the entire island!

I´ll probably only be on Utila for another few days. Starting to get itchy feet and I´m not going to do a huge amount more of diving so it´s time to move on somewhere else.

And another shot of a beach.

Went for a pony trek yesterday. Above is my horse "Blue Thunder" - AKA Binky. Possibly the slowest horse on the island due to the fact that in human years hes carrying about 70 years.

Suited me fine. All the other horses were a little bit excitable.

Lovely walk around the countryside to the beach and then onto some cave pools for a quick swim.

Apparently these are some pictures from over 300 years ago - not entirely convinced by that.

Lovely place, great for snorkelling and swimming around.

It also seemed to be the nursery for a huge number of little fish.

We had a small little fire and cooked up some hotdogs and got nicely toasted on a crate of beer.

Part of the course was underwater photography. Here´s a selection of some of the better pictures (most of the good ones were taken by the instructer, but the ones of the fishes are by me.

Apparently I´m now qualified to hire diving equipment and go down to 30 meters!

I´ll post some underwater photos later, we´ve had no Internet for over a week and it´s all via satellite now.

Last night we all went out for a night dive on a shipwreck!

New year´s eve was your usual crazy partying.

and I´ll leave you with some pictures of where I´ve been hanging out for the past few days:

This is the nice ferry to Roatan.

and here is our slightly smaller version for Utila.

However, we eventually reached Rio Dulce and after a bit of wandering around found smoewhere to stay. Not much to say about the place, we were only there for one night. But here is a nice photo.

Next day, jumped straight on a launch to take us to a place called Livingstone. Quite a nice boat cruise along the river and lakes passing a few interesting sights including some hot springs and some nice lilies.

Livingstone was not all that of an interesting place. Not much of a beach and the nightlife was not great.

But we did get to see some local people doing some drumming and dancing.

Next day, it was goodbye livingston, hello to a day travelling on buses to reach Le Ceiba.

I won´t try and describe it, but it was certainly an experience. Following on from that it was back to the bar to find our friends and carry on the party...

The following day we all met up again for Christmas dinner. No party hats or crackers with rubbish jokes, so it wasn´t entirely traditional, but it was pretty good.

Will add more information when I find a better internet place. Hope everyone has a good new year.

Happy Christmas everyone.

Tonight seems to be the big party night, so we are all meeting up for some food followed by many drinks.

Tomorrow Christmas dinner somewhere and recover ready for travelling on Boxing Day.

Hope everyone has a good Christmas and gets lots of presents.

Current plan is to catch a but on the 26th to Rio Dulce and then from there try and find a boat to Utila, which is one of the Bay Islands off Honduros. I'll spend a few weeks there learning to dive and think about what to do next.

Will post a map wheb I have a better connection.

According to people who know about these things (in the photo below) the above pictures contains some of the original members of Buena Vista Social Club. The music sounds familiar, so I guess it must be true.

Someone at our school arranged a collection a while back to by some presents for the children of a small impoverished village up in the mountains. Today we had a school trip out to the village to distribute presents and be generally nice to people.

There were so many children. God only knows where they all came from. They all lined up outside the village hall and then came in small groups to play some party games and get a present. It was all quite moving. Brought a tear to my eye.

Of course as always, it´s not the present, but the box that is the most fun thing.

All in all, a fun time was had by all.

On Sunday I took a trip into the big city to see some friends perform in a band. Rather than take the tourist shuttle bus I decided to venture into the unknown and jump on a chicken bus into town. The bus was pretty full when I got on and I spotted an empty seat and jumped on it without fully realising why people were avoiding it.

I ended up sat next to a rather rotund lady who took up most of the seat, but there was still plenty of room for me. At least there was until everyone else got on the bus and it was 3+ to a seat. Most unpleasant...

However, the trip was pretty uneventful, no robberies, no chickens escaping. Pretty dull all in all.

Once in the city I jumped in a cab and went to a place in the city called 4 grados norte (4 degrees north). Had a few coffees and met up with my friends. I had no idea they were quite so talented.

Coming home was quite an adventure. Foolishly I forgot to take any notice of where the bus dropped me and tried to rely on the map in the lonely planet book. After about an hour of driving round town trying to find the bus depot. We decided to give up on buses and I jumped in a cab home (thank goodness I'm not on a budget and can spend my way out of trouble).

Got back to Antigua and the locals were up to their usual crazy shenanigans. This seemed to be some procession involving Mary, Joseph and a Donkey.

As a special treat this morning at 5am we were treated to possibly the loudest fireworks I have ever heard. Every 5 minutes for an hour they would send one up above our house.

6am the mad monks who live in the church at the end of my road started off their usual bell ringing frenzy that goes on until 7am. It's no wonder I'm feeling a bit tired!

More crazy fun and games. Someone decided that it would be a good idea to climb one of the local volcanoes, Volcan Agua (3776 meters!).

Unfortunately the photographs are all stuck inside my phone and it doesn´t want to give them up at the moment. So you´ll have to use your imaginations and my excellent prose.

We left Anitgua at about 6:30am and jumped into the back of a pick up truck which took us up to base of the volcano. The streets round here aren´t exactly flat so it was a bit of an exciting trip.

We were dropped off in a small town and started out walk up. After about an hour we reached the base of the clouds and took a bit of a breather. We then started to climb up through the clouds. Occasional the mist was so thick that you could barely make out the path and at one point we lost the path and started some fairly hardcore bouldering up the mountain side until we regained the path.

After about 2 hours of climbing we broke through the clouds into brilliant sunshine the air got pretty thin at this point and it was a real struggle for us to keep going (definitely not as fit as I used to be). Another hour of climbing and we reached to crater of the volcano. Some mad maniac has actually built a shack there and lives in the volcano crater!

We spent about an hour or so having lunch and walking around the crater. There are a huge number of radio antennas on the rim and a few maintenance staff live up there. It´s actually quite a mess. But the views are amazing. I have photos of the clouds from above with volcanos poking up through them. The clouds also started to break up a bit so we could look down onto Guatemala city and Antigua which was pretty amazing.

Coming back down the mountain seemed to take forever so I´ll skip over it as it was a bit boring.

To get back to Antigua we took a chicken bus. I´ll write more about these another time. But it was certainly an interesting experience...

Tomorrow a bunch of people I´ve been hanging out with are heading off home or onto other destinations. And it´s my birthday on Saturday. Woe is me.

Another early start - 4am to catch the bus to Guatemala city and catch the plane to Tikal to visit the mayan ruins. Unfortunately as you can see from the above picture (which is a view from the top of the highest temple of another temple) it was a bit cloudy and damp.

The actual ruins are huge. But, according to our guide they have only uncovered 15% of total area. It's quite an impressive place but the mayans definitely seem to have been outdoor types. The temples are huge, but don't seem to have many (if any at all) rooms.

Our guide only spoke Spanish, so even with our immense grasp of the language, much of the ruins are still a mystery. However, the above picture is of some big cheese's palace.

As you can see from the above picture, we came well prepared for the damp weather with... The pink ponchos cost us Q70 at the airport. The rather stylish green number came in at only Q20 at the actual site. I can't help thinking that we got a bit ripped off at the airport.

Here's a picture of the temple you can see in the first photo close up and below is a picture of two people who seem to be stalking me. Everywhere I go they pop up from behind some ruin or market stall. Hopefully we'll catch up some time over Christmas as well.

The flight back was quite exciting. I don't think I've been in such a small plane since my days of flying to and from Holland.

It wasn't scary at all, honest...

I think I'll have to take another trip to the ruins at some point to get some decent photos.

Stange happennings in Antigua. Tonight is some festival for the day of the devil. Big bonfire with a statue of the devil on it.

Friday afternoon we decided to head off to Montericho beach for a day or so. We´d booked a place on the shuttle bus the day before but apparently that had broken down so the guy turned up in what I think was his own car. Everything started off ok, 3 passengers in a car is pretty much fine for a long trip.

Then he picked up another person, 4 passengers, bit cramped, but still ok. Then he tried to convince another person that a ride in the trunk would be a good plan...

Finally reached Avalluda and jumped on the ferry through the mangrove swamps to Montericho. Unbelievably hot. And black sand when the sun has been shining on it all day is a little bit toastie on the feet. Had a few swims in the sea, but the waves are incredibly violent here so after about 10 minutes you have to crawl out and go for a rest. On Saturday we got up at 4:30am for what was billed as a nature tour of the mangrove swamps - but turned out to be pretty much what we´d experienced the previous day on the ferry. More fun in the sun and swimming and then it was time to head back to Antigua ready for our early start on Sunday. Met an interesting fellow on the ferry back who filled us in on all the various gangs in Guatemala and what was currently happening in the city. Fascinating stuff...

Wednesday night we all went into Guatemala city to watch Municipal play Qetzal (sp). The home team Municipal) completely stomped on the opposition and this weekend they got through the finals.

Was nice to see a football match with almost no police presence.

Was also interesting to take a trip into one of the worlds most dangerous cities between 15-30 murders a day!

Apparently there are two main gangs. One based in El Salvador that has 50,000 members and another based in Honduras that has 30,000 member! They are currently having a small war. Didn´t feel too dangerous though...

I´ve gone halves with a girl from school who´s a guitar teacher back in the states, she gets to have fun playing the guitar and I get to learn a few tunes.

So far she has tried to get me to play Knocking on Heavens Door, a riff from Daytripper by the Beatles and I´ve also had a go at the start of Smoke on The Water - I´m surprisingly good! There´s been no complaints from the neighbours yet...

Spanish is also progressing. Actually managed a conversation with my teacher that lasted more than five minutes. We are now studying the two past tenses. Very confusing. Have also discovered that there are 15 tenses in Spanish. Don´t think I´m going to need them all...

Here´s me looking pretty cool at Chichicastenanga. Not a great deal to report on last time. But I now have a rather fetching bag for my school books. I have also received my first friendship bracelet of the trip! I´m expecting to collect a lot more along the way.

Coming back to Antigua on the bus we pulled over for a quick break as there was an EARTHQUAKE!!! That´s right folks. Whilst we were away Antigua was hit by a 5.4 earthquake.

No damage done and the locals all refuse to call it an earthquake, preferring to say that it was a tremor....

Back home in the central plaza, the Christmas lights are all switched on and despite the fact that we are probably all doomed to be cooked by lava or shaken to bits everyone is having a jolly time.

Items gained in this quest:

• +1 armband of friendship

Small hangover this morning... Got up pretty early and scouted out some breakfast and spent some time watching the day to day life in Santiago Atilán.

After a bit of recuperation time we made tracks and jumped on a boat tour round a few of the local villages on the lake. First stop San Pedro La Laguna. The local kids do quite a hard sell here for the local attractions which include another Maximón shrine. Nowhere near as grand as the one we saw on Friday, but interesting nevertheless.

Apart from the local kids who spotted the weaker one of our group and managed to separate her from the herd the day was pretty relaxed. We returned to Panajachel for sunset and checked into the cheapest place we could find.

We all felt quite jealous of this little fellow. It´s been a long couple of days. Though of course, we´re on holiday, so it would be rude not to go out. Things got quite a bit lively. I hope it wasn´t really our behaviour that emptied the restaurant. Personally I think it was the dodgy band.

Into bed pretty early ready for our early start to visit Chicicastenanga (I know, again!).

Above is a picture of the lake. It's big. And very pretty.

We decided not to stay in Panajachel ("Gringotenango" - Place of the Foreigners) and took a boat over to San Pedro. This is where an awful lot of travellers end up getting stuck. The number of times we spoke to people who had just come for a couple of days and ended up staying a couple of years was quite frightening.

On my next trip here I will make sure I have an onward ticket.

Here's our hotel. 5 dollars each per night!

With a hammock thrown in. This is me about to fall out of the hammock.

Gringo food. This place is still quite touristy.

It is however a very nice place. Here's us having dinner.

Leslie and Aaron were pretty wiped out after a long week of school, so it was left to myself and Jeremy to explore town. Almost immediately we bumped into someone I'd met on the bus a few days before so went with her and her incredibly stoned friend to the Buddha bar. There we were joined by a couple more girls and spent a pleasant couple of hours discussing meditation retreats in the Mexican jungles and how hard it was to get a shaman at full moon.

Couple of drinks later and it was time to catch the end of the film in another bar and down another couple of Cuba Libres. After the film we stopped off at the freedom bar to catch the fire dancers.

Very amusing. Especially the guy who had just started - he kept dropping his flaming balls and then running away like a girl.

By this point it was pretty much time to head home and catch some zzs. But fate intervened and we bumped into an ex project manager from Barclay bank who insisted that we came and visited his bar. A few more Cuba Libres and we finally made it home to sleep! What a day.

Friday morning we had a school outing to visit the church of local deity! I think the guys above are saying something along the lines of "We've got the bbq going, but forgot the sausages..."

Here's a very blurred picture of the man himself. People feed him rum and cigarettes. It's all a bit complicated.

The local church debunks the whole thing with an FAQ on why he is not a god.

Here's some more pictures of people sacrificing things.

And here's a picture of the local market.

Marvellous. A splendid time was had by all.

Adventuras de Chris el Crocodilo - Chris tiene hambre

Una dia Chris el crocodilo pienso:
-tengo hambre. Quiero comer alog-
Chris el crocodilo vivó en un zoologica por eso el estuvo en un jaula con altos muros.
-tengo muy hambre. Voy a comer este tarde-
En este momento, un chico apareció.
-Hola senor crocodilo- dijo -¿Como estas hoy?-
-tengo muy hambre. ¿Puedes me traer unas comida por favor?-
-si tengo un gran jamón aqui! ¿te gusta jamón?-
-si much gusta!-
El chico intendó dar jamón a Chris pero no lo cupo entre las rejas.
-subes a muro y as me lo- djo Chris
Entonces el chico subió el muro y bajó en el jaulo.
Chris comió el jamón y tambien el chico!
-ahora no tengo hambre- dijo Chris -voy a comer un otro chico mañana-
Ahora Chris estas gordo!

FIN

I have a sore throat and feel like crap. I have explained to my teacher the concept of "man flu". So far not much sympathy....

This weekend I think we are all going to go to the beach. Hopefully sun sand and see will fix me up!

Spanish is progressing well, I think in a few weeks time I might actually be able to hold a conversation that lasts more than 30 seconds.

Oh, and yesterday, just after finishing a conversation with Rob telling him how fantastic the weather was, it chucked it down.

Today is bright and sunny again though, so the world is good!

New accommodation is good, but the bed is a little bit uncomfortable and the springs make a rather alarming noise if you move around too much.

6am is my wake up call when the bells of the local church start their half hourly routine.

Tonight I think I'll probably catch a film and a couple of beers.

Spent the morning in school and the afternoon took a leasurely stroll up to a local landmark (who´s name I now forget, I´ll add it tomorrow).

Great view back across town to the volcano. Keep forgetting that Antigua has been destroyed several times by earthquakes. It´s only a matter of time before one of these "inactive" volcanos gets a bit excitable and takes the town out again.

Couple of beers in the afternoon watching the sun go down and then home for dinner with the family. Got some Spanish homework to do, more verbs to learn and more grammer. Early night tonight, need a bit of rest.

Early start today. Up at 6am to catch the bus to Chichacastananga (almost impossible to pronounce unless you sing it to the sound of the cucharacha song).

There is a famous market on Sundays that apparently is a must see. I´m not great fan of shopping, but what can you do....

The mmarket was not too bad, bumped into a couple of friends from earlier in the week which was nice and we stopped for a beer at lunch time, so all in all it was a pretty good day. Managed to buy myself a new hat - lost the previous one somewhere, possible up on the volcano. So my old hat probably suffered a horrible burning death. New hat is very good.

There were a few interesting sights in the town, the graveyard was pretty colourful, though I´m not sure I´d want to burried under something that looks like a portable toilet.

Strange going ons at the local church, not sure what the smoke was about.

Here is an example of someone playing atypical Guatemalan music. Patrick More would be in heaven here!

Excellent weekend! Saturday afternoon we took a trip to the active volcano Payaca. We got collected in a minibus and then drove around various bits of town picking up other intrepid explorers before heading off on a couple of hours drive to the other side of Guatemala city.

On arrival we followed the excellent directions up the mountain side on quite a long slog - maybe an hour and a half. Which took us up through the treeline and up to the lava flows.

Some spectacular view were to be had on the way back from the way we had come. There were also some very friendly chaps following us all the way up on horses. Whenever one of the party fell towards the back of the group and started to lag behind they would be chivied up by these laughing fellows offering them a "taxi" ride to the top of the trail.

Once through the treeline we had to cross over the previous lava flows. The rocks are actually quite hot and every so often there is chasm that belches a strong smell of sulfer and you can feel a strong draft of heat coming up. There are stories of people's shoes melting as they cross this area!

Finally as the sun was setting we caught sight of the lava flow! It was actually flowing very fast with flaming rocks tumbling down and small fires popping up on it's surface.

Then as the sun was finally setting we started back down the volcano. Recrossing the lava field was fun in the dark. The rocks are very unstable and sound like they are hollow as you walk on them - doesn't inspire a great deal of confidence! Luckily the old head torch came in handy, so thankfully there was no horse poo on the shoes when we finally made it back to the minibus. Then it was back to Antigua for some food and collapse into bed.

Got talking with the owner of the bar, a Welsh guy who has married a Guatemalan and moved here. Says the only thing he misses about Wales is the rugby, but they are getting satellite TV soon anyway so it doesn't matter.

Went to an afterparty when the bar closed and stayed up until 4am chatting with some people from Guatemala city. Crazy fellows.

This afternoon we're walking up an active volcano. Think I had better get some rest.

Thankfully it turns out that it just round the corner from where I am staying. It's an Aladin's cave crossed with the tardis. So many things piled so high. Marvelous!

Second class of Spanish this morning. Atually managed a short onversation with the cleaning lady this afternoon. Maybe this Spanish stuff is not so hard after all...

Tomorrow I'm going on a walk up an ative volcano! Hopefully get some pictures of some lava and not get cooked alive.

Sorry about the spelling on this entry. The website is stuck in espanol and there's not spell checker.

Turns out that in the space of a couple of hours you can get lost quite a few times. It doesn't help that there are no street signs anywhere.

Luckily this is easily solved by finding a local and saying "donde estamos?" - I'm hoping this means "where are we?". But in all honesty it could mean anything...

Despite this I managed to find myself a nice breakfast, checked out several language schools and have signed up for some lessons tomorrow with a view to signing up for 4 weeks staying with a local family. The lady who signed me up seemed to be very proud of the fact that lessons start at 8am - seemed to think that this was some kind of good thing. What a weirdo.

Now it's time to find some lunch and maybe a bookshop. This afternoon looks like it could be spent chilling out in the garden. Tonight I must find a beer.

Weather is great, though it does get very cold at night. I'm glad I've got my coat from London. It's very hot today though and nice and sunny.

I have to start slowing down a bit as well I'm suffering from a similar problem to Mark, have not yet got my holiday pace, still stuck on London rushing around. http://markonsafari.blogspot.com/2006/10/athens.html

Will get some photos up soon. Just need to find where I packed my camera, it's cable, the charger etc...

This morning's top tip:

• "una via" is not the name of the street. The locals will laugh at you if you think it is.

Up bright and early this morning. Successfully avoided getting electrified on the shower this morning which was good.

Now I need to find some breakfast and check in to a slightly more lively hostel. This place is nice for the first night's sleep but it's not got much of an atmosphere.

Today I will start to explore the town and look for a good spanish school. Apparently there might be one just down the road, this could be quite an easy day!

Packed everything up in the flat and moved it all to my parents loft (not fun). Moved the last bits and pieces out yesterday.

Left the flat in a bit of a mess, but the management agency is going to get some cleaners in to today the place up - hopefully they'll also get some tenants in!

Packed the backpack last night, think I'll lose some stuff when I get there, it's far too heavy.

Up this morning at 4:45am. Nice cup of coffee from mother, quick shower and a shave then jumped in a taxi to the airport. Spent the last hour surrounded by lots of people wearing suits talking about the important meetings they are attending today. Thank goodness I'm done with all that nonsense.

Next stop is Madrid for an hour or so, then the long haul flight over the Guatemala City. From there I'm heading straight to Antigua. I've emailed a hostel there, no reply yet, who knows if I've got any accommodation booked. I guess this is all part of the adventure...

[edit] Sadly I didn't count on the fact that T-Mobile seems to have rubbish partners when it comes to roaming. No data services and no SMS messages coming through to me. It's a miracle that people can actually call me at all!

• Sort out the house insurance - current insurers don't like rented out flats
• Travel insurance
• Finish the kitchen
• Get the place rented out!
• Start packing
• etc...

Tomorrow I get the last set of injections!

Been swimming both mornings and have almost finished stripping the bathroom of wallpaper. If all goes well this evening will be spent putting paper back up - I can't help feeling that this is all somewhat pointless.

More injections this afternoon and a long discussion about Malaria with the nurse. Looks like I'll be popping pills for most of the trip.

Also had the usual talking to about binge drinking. Hopefully no work means no more Friday nights and missing Saturdays.

At some point visit Gallapagos (sp?)

Work on the house continues, the garden is now finished and it is time to move onto the bathroom and kitchen.