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.