COLOMBIA April 2007

After a million checkpoints we finally arrived into Santa Marta, a town on the coast. We stayed there for a couple of days as we prepared ourselves to go to Parque Tayrona. The national park was amazing and we had to trek for 2 hours with all our supplies to Cabo beach, with our new mates Dave and Louise.

We camped at this paradise for a week, eating coconuts that had dropped by our tent for breakfast and fresh snapper for dinner. It doesn't get any better than this, oh actually adding Ron (rum) to the coconut juice is better!!

After leaving this paradise kicking and screaming we headed to Cartagena which is known as being the most beautiful city in South America and it was. We headed there with Louise and Dave and had a great week.

We spent 2 nights at Playa Blanca which was the most crystal clear beach we had ever seen. We slept in hammocks and ate fresh crayfish and octopus.

Eventually it was that awful time when we had to leave South America. However we were off to Europe to see our parents so we couldn't get too upset.

VENEZULA March 2007

Once arriving in Caracass, we headed out to the west to a place called Puerta Colombia, which had a beautiful beach, the first carribean beach we had seen.

We didn't spend too much time in Venezula as we were excited to get to Colombia, our strongest memories here are of the music and the bad driving. We thought Bolivia would have had the worst drivers, but when we got into a bus for a two hour drive through a national park we were proven wrong. The narrow road ascended a huge mountain which had multiple blind corners so you can imagine how happy we were when the driver progressed at a constant speed of 90km.

In terms of the music it's called reggaetone, and they like it LOUD!! It's definitely an acquired taste.

PERU March 2007

We crossed from Bolivia into Peru at Lake Titicaca, stopping in the beautiful town Puno to visit the Floating Islands people, and to get some tips on their trout farming techniques!

After a day or so there we took a beautiful train journey through the mountains to Cusco, one of the best cities in south America. Cusco is also the starting point for all the tours to the Secret Valley of the Inca's and Machu Picchu.

We were booked on to an intensive 4 day hike to see this amazing site, and the tour was everything we had imagined and more. Fortunately we had a great group of people from all over the world and the food that the hard working porters cooked and carried for the whole trip was fantastic.

Once back in Cusco, the various groups that trekked for the four days got together for one almighty session. We couldn't believe that after all that walking we could all still stay out and dance till dawn.

We had a blast in Peru however it was time to move on.

BOLIVIA February 2007

We crossed into Bolivia and were immediately excited with the complete contrast to anywhere else we had been.

Bolivia takes time to get use to and the border town, Quiero probably wasn´t the easiest place to start out. Quiero consisted of 2 dirt roads and copious amounts of chicken feet soup. We were stuck there for a couple of days waiting for a train to Santa Cruz that never arrived (You get use to the punctuality of their transport).

So we settled for our first Bolivian bus experience, 25 hours, 3 drivers/fully qualified mechanics who continuously chewed coco leaves and only dirt roads ahead of us.The air conditioning was in the form of open/broken windows and we arrived in Santa Cruz looking like we had travelled through the Sahara, carrying 30 extra people and their chickens.

After Santa Cruz we headed off for our volunteering stint. We bought our bus ticket to Villa Tunari and were assured that we would arrive at 6am, so you can imagine our delight when the bus driver wakes us at 2am and dumps us on a dark highway. The upside was that we were at the right place, the downside was that no one woke up until 7am and we had to fend off the mozzies and kamikaze dragonflies until then.

The next two weeks were awesome living with the monkeys and we made some good friends, there was also some half decent people there too.

After leaving the jungle it was off to the clouds as we made our way to Salar de Uyuni -the Salt Flats.We did a great 3 day tour down to the Chilean/Argentine border and back to see amazing scenery (at times it seemed like we were on a different planet); mountains; lots of Alpaca´s; hot springs and the salt flats themselves. On the third day we drove up to 5000m so La Paz at 4100M was going to be no problem.

La Paz is an amazing city surrounded by snow covered peaks. Part of the beauty is that you can forget you are in a capital city. One Saturday morning we woke to find a massive food market outside our hotel that stretched as far as we could see, we laughed how only yesterday this area was bustling with cars and buses.

All in all Bolivia was the business, we absolutely loved every minute of it.

BRASIL January 2007

We arrived into Brasil and headed straight to Rio, which was buzzing in the lead up to Carnival. We stayed in Ipanema and enjoyed the beach and the nightlife. The local pub had an open air BBQ´s everynight and the beer was freeflowing which is the way the Brasilians like it.

We ticked off the usual sites - Christ the Redeemer (it was a bit foggy this day); Favella Tour; and the Maracana Stadium and then headed south to Ilha Grande.

Ilha Grande is a beautiful island with amazing beaches and fabulous fresh seafood. One of the evenings after a hard day at the beach we joined some locals that had just made some amazing crap soup. This was washed down with a couple of cervezas and a Portuguese sing-song.

Heading further south we visted the awesome Iguazu Falls.

Next stop was the Pantanal. We had been befriended by Gill the ¨Pantanal Tour Legend¨ as we stepped sleepily off the bus in Campo Grande, who convinced us his company was the best. A little dubious at first, we were in luck as the tour was great, we spent 3 days there doing jungle safaris; boat trips; piranah fishing; swimming with Piranahs and Caimen (smaller crocs) and horse riding. Although Gill was nowhere to be seen we still got a lot out of the trip.

After the Pantanal we head to the Bolivian border with two new mates, Niek and Adriaan to start our adventures there.