Graham Williams & Louise Jones Travel Blog

The Last Post

willlou — Sun, 25 Mar 2007 06:36:00 GMT

After our trek we arrived back in Pokhara and then traveled on to the Chitwan National Park. We had an eventful journey there as there was a road block on one of the main roads. This had been set up by some villagers because some children had been hit by a bus and their parents wanted compensation. So this led to a long negotiation between the police and the locals before the traffic was allowed to move again.

Chitwan is a National Park known for it’s Wild Elephants, Tigers and Rhinoceros, and it’s possible to go on foot into the park to find the animals. You have to take two guides, one to tell you what you’re looking at and one with a big stick to fend off animals that might want you for lunch. We didn’t see any of the large creatures, but we did see lots of birds, some of them very beautiful. Also at Chitwan is an Elephant Breeding Center, where you can meet and touch some of the small ones (see pic), and can also go on Elephant rides, which we know from experience is not a comfortable experience, but very worth while as we did see rare Asian Rhinos out in the forest. For some reason they don’t mind being surrounded by Elephants as they’re used to them, even though they have contraptions full of tourists on their backs.

From Chitwan we headed to Katmandu, a very nice city but very like India it’s become very hectic with lots of motorbikes charging through the streets. We were there on the weekend of Holi, a Hindu festival. During this festival people throw water and paint at each other (we’re not sure why) and this is a license for youths to go around and cause mayhem. All day you have to avoid paint and water (some of it thrown off the tops of buildings in plastic bags) and it all gets very wearing. As most things are shut, most tourists’ shelter in their rooms until it’s all over, although a few enter into the spirit of things and get completely covered in paint.

To read more on Nepal, click here. Click here to see our pictures.

From Katmandu, we flew to Calcutta, one of our favourite Indian cities, where we spent a few days. This hasn’t changed that much, rickshaw men still pull people through the streets and there are still families living in makeshift tents on the pavements.

For the last few weeks of our trip we decided to go back to Goa for some sea and sun. We flew there on one of India’s new start up airlines, Kingfisher, which is owned by a brewing company. This has to be one of the best flights we’d been on for years, real luxury when you compare it to what you get in Europe these days, a very pleasant experience.

In Goa we have been relaxing on Anyuna beach, watching the sun go down and planning our return to the UK. We shall be heading back to Delhi for a few days before flying back to London on March 30^th. Two years to the day from when we first set off on our journey. See you all soon.

To read more on India click here.

Northern India and into Nepal

willlou — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 09:29:00 GMT

From Jaipur we went to the bird reserve at Bharatpur and had a pleasant day cycling and bird watching. But the fabled spoonbills, Siberian cranes and other migrant water birds have deserted the reserve due to a lack of water. This is a big issue in India where farmers, households and small industry all compete for water supplies.

We then visited Emperor Akbar's model 16th century city of Fatehpur Sikri, designed to mix Hindu and Mughal architecture, and built in striking red stone. Then on to the beautiful Taj Mahal, in nearby Agra. A marvellous contrast to the grubby streets outside and just as impressive on our third visit.

A train took us up to Delhi where the major change from ten years ago is the superb metro. Here we arranged flights, stocked up on books and visited the grand Lutyens buildings of governmental New Delhi. The house where Indira Gandhi lived most of her life, and where she was shot in the garden, is now an interesting museum with photographs and personal items on display. Some of the rooms - including a comfy library - have been preserved as they were before her assassination.

We had three long days of train and bus travel to get to Pokhara, in Nepal, with its lovely setting by Fewa Lake with the Annapurna mountain range behind. Nepal is quieter, cleaner and more relaxing than much of India and, after some years of violence in rural areas associated with the Maoist insurgency, it is now relatively problem free for travellers.

We spent a week trekking in the mountains, walking between villages and staying in tea houses. An unusual amount of snow made the higher sections of the trek slow going but very pretty. When we were here ten years ago tourists were predominantly European; now the majority are Asian, mainly Chinese and Korean. As European tourism fell, the Nepalese cleverly relaxed visa requirements for the Chinese. On our trek we met many Chinese, some on their first foreign holiday; they had good jobs, spoke English and were keen to visit other countries. This is probably one of the future trends for world tourism.

Temples and Palaces

willlou — Fri, 2 Feb 2007 12:31:00 GMT

Lou and I met up in Mumbai on January 12^th and after a couple of days set off to the Deccan Plateau to explore the Ajanta and Ellora caves. The Ajanta caves were cut by Buddhists into the side of a river canyon, and contain complete temples and prayer rooms, many decorated with paintings. The caves were ‘lost’ for hundreds of years before being rediscovered by a British hunting party. At Ellora there are even more caves cut out of a cliff face, created not only by Buddhists but also Hindus and Jains. They also have the Kailash temple, an amazing creation, a huge building with statues, friezes and statues cut straight out of the cliff face.

From the center of India we took a train (which don’t seem to have changed since we first came here eighteen years ago) to Rajastan. Our first stop was the wonderful city of Udaipur, which is centered around a lake in which sits a palace, now a flashy hotel. There is another massive palace on the lake side which you can look around, with part of it being another up-market hotel. While we were here we had some Indian cookery classes, to learn the basics and to sort out which spice is which. The base of most dishes is quite straightforward, and we also learnt to make snack food like veg cutlets and samosas. At the end we got to eat the results for lunch. Udaipur’s big claim to fame is that ‘Octopussy’ a James Bond film from the mid 70’s was partly set here. Most restaurants show it every night and you can’t leave town without seeing it. Its one of Roger Moores more forgettable outings as 007, the baddies are the Soviets which dates it immediately.

More unusually, we saw a performance of ‘Twelfth Night’ in the grounds of the Palace, preformed by a group of English actors. The players had to cope with the Indian setting; dogs and children wandered across the ‘stage’, and they had to compete with the sound of blaring Bollywood music from the town. It was also an auspicious day for weddings, over 300 couples had tied the knot that day, so at the end the play was almost drowned out by the sound of fireworks going off.

From Udaipur we took a bus to the town of Jodhpur, which gave their name to the riding trousers and is known as the ‘Blue City’ as the walls of houses in the city are painted blue, for religious reasons and to keep the place cool. The main attraction here is the magnificent fort that dominates the town, which has yet another palace inside it, and which made for an interesting day out. The Rajastanis seemed to spend a lot of their time engaged in intertribal feuds so there are lots of forts in the state. It seems the most peaceful time in history was when the British ran the place and put an end to the internecine warfare.

From Jodhpur we traveled onto Jaipur, which we first visited in 1989. A few new buildings have gone up but little else seems to have changed. This is the case for the whole country, lots of people have mobile phones and there are newer cars on the road but that’s about it. There may be lots of news stories about how India is taking over the world, but it’s going to take a very long time before the majority of Indians or tourists notice it.

From Jaipur we are heading to Agra, for another look at the Taj Mahal and then onto Delhi to finalize our journey back to the UK.

The Pampas, the beach and Patagonia

willlou — Mon, 8 Jan 2007 16:11:00 GMT

In mid December my sister Anita flew out to join me (Louise) here in Argentina for a two week holiday. We spent a few days in Buenos Aires and then went to an estancia for three days of horse riding and country living. The ranch was enormous with a lake, 90 horses and also cows, sheep and llamas, all presided over by an eccentric lady owner.

We watched the three year old horses being put through their paces as part of their training to become show jumpers; others are trained for polo. The ranch hands all still wore baggy pants and knitted caps - reminiscent of their gaucho ancestors who opened up the vast area of the Pampas, although they all use mobiles now to communicate between different parts of the ranch.

Anita and I then headed to the laid back beach resort of Villa Gesell and had a week of good weather sunbathing, walking along the miles of beach, swimming and eating liberal quantities of beef, salmon and ice cream. For Argentines, it was the start of their long summer holidays and the town had a very happy atmosphere. On Christmas Eve we went to a candle lit church service and then had a big Chistmas dinner. Argentines celebrate on the evening of the 24th; nurse their hangovers on the morning of the 25th; and by the afternoon everything is back to normal and the shops are open.

My sister then flew back to England and I took an internal flight 3000km south to Tierra Del Fuego and the southernmost city in the world, Ushuaia. It has a beautiful setting with snow capped mountains above and the Beagle Channel below. I walked up to the Cerro Martial glacier on a chilly day and took a boat trip through the Beagle Channel with its rocky islands that are home to birds, sea lions and penguins. The busy port has big container ships making their way from the Atlantic to the Pacific and vice versa; and also cruise ships heading out to Antarctica.

I stayed in a small B and B run by a local couple. The husband was in part a descendant of one of the four original tribes of Tierra del Fuego. They were all devastated by the arrival of European colonists and missionaries who brought disease and took their land for cattle farming. Three of the tribes have no descendants atall.

I celebrated New Year in Ushuaia, which is so far south that at this time of the year it does not get dark until 11.30pm and it is light again by 4.30am.

To get to the Chilean national park of Torres del Paine I flew and then caught a bus - distances in Patagonia are vast. This park has world renowned hiking and I spent a great four days in good weather walking up to the granite towers, along lakeside paths and up glacial river valleys. The park has lots of guanaco (wild llamas) and I also saw ibis, southern parakeets, Chilean hares and condors.

Tomorrow I fly back to Buenos Aires and then catch a long flight to India to meet up again with Will in Bombay.

Louise

Christmas in Goa

willlou — Tue, 2 Jan 2007 11:47:00 GMT

A Happy New Year to all our readers!

I (Will) arrived in Goa about three weeks ago after flying from Dar es Salaam in Tanzania via Dubai Airport (a shock return to the first world) and then onto Hyderabad in Central India. Since I was last in India a number of budget airlines have been created one of which was flying directly to Goa that afternoon, saving me a two day journey by bus.

I traveled up the coast to the village of Anyuna, which is well known for its Wednesday market and for being a Hippy hangout, although the guidebook says that ‘its days as a place to see and be seen are virtually over’. Still it’s a very pleasant place and I have a nice, quiet room surrounded by palm trees and gardens. Close by is a small Portuguese church which was newly whitewashed for Christmas. My room also has cable TV, which is good for catching up on old movies and watching the Premiership, though some of the matches are played at one o’clock in the morning.

Goa attracts a mix of people, from the package holiday crowd to the backpackers. Most of them are British or German, with a strong contingent of Japanese. For some reason at Christmas time, it is particularly popular destination for young Israelis who live together in rented houses where they can cram in as many people as possible. This year the Israeli government issued a terrorist warning, apparently there was a threat that one of the many raves or parties might be attacked at Christmas or New Year, mainly because of all the Israelis here. Security was apparently tightened although I haven’t seen a policeman since I got here, and to date nothing has happened. Perhaps the terrorists went to Bangkok instead? As a wag on one travel bulletin board put it, ‘A Jewish state issues a Muslim terror warning about an attack in a Hindu country during a Christian festival, it’s a wonder the Buddhists don’t feel left out’. It has meant that business before Christmas was very slack with the locals complaining bitterly about this ‘terrorist hoax’. The place has filled up since, but it’s been a poor season so far.

Easily the biggest threat to life is not terrorism but motor scooters which are hired by most travelers, who then race them around the narrow lanes and footpaths. Any experience is not necessary nor even a driving license. As no one has a helmet or even much clothing on, any accidents would be messy affairs.

There is a large group of ex pats living here, nearly all Europeans; many are old hippies who came here years ago and then came back, and many of them do look like Jerry Garcia. Goa is the new Littlehampton for the sixties generation. One thing that makes me stand out from the other travelers here is that I am one of the very few who doesn’t have some kind of tattoo. Everyone male or female and of whatever age seems to have at least one.

The beach at Anyuna is small and lined by bars and eating places. Cows wander along the beach and hawkers offer massages and fruit. The sunsets here are wonderful, the sun drops like a large orange into the sea. Girls pester tourists with ‘You want to look in my shop?’ If you say no, they ask ‘Why not?’ As if you are being quite unreasonable. If you do walk in they will pursue the deal with the tenacity of terriers with their teeth in your ankle, which is quite unnerving when you consider that some of them are only ten years old! The market at Anyuna is large but it consists of a selection of ten different types of stalls, selling clothes (usually big brand knockoffs), spices or CD’s; which are then repeated about twenty times. It’s difficult to see how they all make a living.

Christmas itself was very quiet, the family who run the guest house put up some lights and made a nativity scene. On Christmas Day they all put on their best clothes and went to church and when they came out, everyone shook hands and wished each other a Merry Christmas. New Year was a lively affair with fireworks going off most of the night all along the beach, lots of music and people having a good time.

I will be in Goa for one more week before traveling up to Bombay (Mumbai) where I will meet Lou (who will be flying in from Buenos Aires via Rome) at the Airport and we will continue our travels through India together.

On to East Africa

willlou — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 07:35:00 GMT

After a short stay in Livingstone I took the bus to Lusaka, the capital of Zambia. I should have stayed in Livingstone longer as the day I traveled was one of the very few I’ve been ill on this trip, with very bad guts. A most unpleasant journey which somewhat put me off anymore long bus trips.

Lusaka itself was fairly pleasant. The center had a few concrete tower blocks that were beginning to crumble away but the rest of it was green and well laid out. It also had a lot of Aid people so every other car seemed to be their preferred mode of transport, the white land cruiser. It also meant that you could buy almost anything you wanted in the shopping malls, from South African wine to the latest books from the UK. It must be a tough life, saving the worlds poor.

As I wanted to get up to Dar es Salaam quite quickly I flew there as it was very cheap to do so and I didn’t fancy days on buses or trains. What a contrast Dar es Salaam was, hot, humid and wet, probably the most unpleasant climate you can imagine. It is also congested and everything takes place very slowly. I came here to get an Indian visa and a flight there. In contrast to African countries that let you in on the spot, getting an Indian visa takes a week and several visits to the embassy. The airline offices are also about as far away from internet one click ticket buying as you can get. Everyone queues for hours even to get to talk to someone and the people behind the desk are usually do three things at once, including organizing their social lives on their mobile phones. Some airlines will only accept payment in dollars cash. I did manage to sort everything out which meant I could go over to Zanzibar for a few days.

On the afternoon I arrived in Dar I was waiting to cross the road when I saw a familiar green truck. It was in fact the truck I’d come up from Cape Town on. I jumped aboard and had a reunion with my friends who had continued the journey. I also met up with them on Zanzibar at the beach resort of Nungwi a few days later, where we went to a Full Moon party together. This was along the coast and we went there by boat. Coming back in the early hours of the morning with the moon lighting up the sea was magical.

I have written an article on traveling through Africa by Truck (view it here ) which has been well received, with a couple of African travel websites asking to reproduce it. I’ve also written a follow up article (view here)after meeting with my fellow travelers again, as they had a very different experience.

Zanzibar is a wonderful island. Walking around Stone Town is like arriving in a complete Arab city, a maze of narrow streets, with small shops and mosques tucked into the corners. The beaches are also wonderful, the sea is turquoise and the sky blue and even though Dar may have had unpleasant weather, the sun always seems to shine in Zanzibar.

Today I am leaving Africa and flying to India via Dubai to spend Christmas in Goa.

Zimbabwe

willlou — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 08:01:00 GMT

The final destination of my overland truck was Victoria Falls, which is on the borders of three countries, Zambia, Zimbabwe and Botswana, and our truck spent the weekend on the Zimbabwe side.

Zimbabwe has a reputation as being one of the basket cases of Africa, run into the ground after twenty-five years of mismanagement. Certainly the exchange rate for the US Dollar shows how the black economy of the country has almost taken over from the real one. The ‘official’ rate for one US dollar is 250 Zimbabwe dollars; the black market rate is 1500! There are lots of young men hanging around on street corners wanting to change money, the penalties for which are in theory quite server. In reality you ask at the hostel you are staying at and they always know a ‘man’ who will do the deal. If you were dumb enough to change the money at the official rate, staying here would be incredibly expensive.

The Falls themselves are one of the world’s great wonders, though it’s not the best time of year to see them as it’s the start of the rainy season and there is little flow on the Zambian side of the falls. They are at their best in March at the end of the rains; but even now, at one point you are bathed in spray from the falling water and the spray can be seen clearly from the centre of the town. A constant feature of Victoria Falls is the constant whine of sightseeing Helicopters which starts early in the morning and continues all day, often with three in the air at the same time. As you walk down to the falls young men try to sell you woodcarvings at ridiculous prices, some of the ‘sculptures’ being so ugly their only value is as firewood.

From Victoria Falls I went on a safari to Hwange National Park which was an add on to my overland tour. This park is the size of Belgium and little visited due to the situation in the country. On the way there our group stopped at the coal-mining town of Hwange to get petrol. The petrol stations in Zimbabwe don’t have prices; they just have signs that say NO! On the outskirts of Hwange the queues stretched out along the road and they looked like they’d been there for some time. Our guides went off to buy petrol on the black market and they managed after a couple of hours to fuel the vehicles and get a couple of spare jerry cans. Driving along the cars have that distinctive smell of very low grade petrol.

The National Park itself was outstanding. We went on four game drives in the early mornings and late evenings and saw lots of animals around the waterholes. On the first evening we saw a group of Giraffes drinking, which is quite a sight as they have to ‘do the splits’ with their front legs in order to get their necks down to water level. They are very vulnerable to attack by Lions when they do this and are very nervous. The Park is also home to lots of birds and I saw some spectacular ones like the Southern Ground Hornbill, a large Turkey type bird as well as the rare Chanting Dark Goshawk.

The camp we were staying presented me with a unique problem, bats in the room. The roof was very high and made of thatch, a good place for bats to ‘hang out’; I saw one crawling under the door to get in! They were quite small, about 15 cm and for some reason used to fall off the wall with a ‘plop’ onto the floor. I got a broom and managed to shoo the ones I could see out of the room. Lying in bed later I felt the whoosh of wings going past my ear, so I had to get up and evict another one.

From Hwange I went back to Victoria Falls and from there crossed over to Livingstone on the Zambian side. Zambia seemed like the land of plenty after Zimbabwe.

Northern Namibia and Botswana

willlou — Sun, 19 Nov 2006 09:02:00 GMT

Since my last update I have traveled across Northern Namibia and Botswana to Victoria Falls. Along the way our overland truck visited a couple of National Parks, which were full of the most spectacular wildlife.

After leaving the Skeleton Coast our overland truck headed through the desert to the Etosha National Park in the north of Namibia. This Park which surrounds a Salt Flat was one of the first National Parks created in Africa and it is full of wildlife. Almost as soon as we entered the Park we saw Elephants and Giraffes close to the road. At the side of our camp site was a waterhole which was floodlit at night, and on the evening we were there a group of rare Black Rhinos came to drink but despite their size they moved away when a pride of lions turned up. Jackals roamed through the campsite going through bins and one of our party was bitten by a ground squirrel, for which he had to have a Rabies jab!

Our journey continued into Botswana where we visited the Okavango Delta. This is a huge swamp with islands within it on which the animals live. To get there we were poled out on canoes, rather like punts, through the reed-covered delta to a wild camp on one of the islands, where we stayed for two nights spending the time swimming in the delta and going on game walks looking for wildlife.

In the North East of Botswana is a small Park called Chobe. This Park is home to thousands of Elephants and we saw large numbers of them when we visited. We also came across the carcass of an Impala which had probably been killed by a leopard but which was now being devoured by a large group of Vultures. While we were in Chobe, we had the first downpour of the rainy season, the kind of rain you only get in the tropics, with streets turned to rivers. Some of our tents were washed away by a river of water that poured through the campsite and one of our group dislocated his shoulder when he fell over trying to save them!

Covering all this ground has involved lots of early starts, up at 0430 some days, packing up the tent and the camp in the dawn light. We have also covered thousands of kilometers, a lot of it on dirt roads with often five or six hours of driving a day. The landscape is now very African, endless areas of trees and scrub forest, conical huts made of thatch and goats and cattle wandering across the roads. I was lucky to be traveling with a great group of people, mainly British and Germans, who made the whole trip a really fun experience. It was with real regret I said goodbye to them all this weekend.

We have ended our tour in Zimbabwe, in Victoria Falls. Next week I will be visiting another game park to the south of the Falls and will then probably travel on into Zambia.

I cannot add any pictures at this time due to the very slow connection speeds. This is also my second attempt to write this article, as my first attempt was lost when there was a power cut, which are quite frequent here

Staying in Buenos Aires

willlou — Sat, 18 Nov 2006 16:34:00 GMT

I have been in Buenos Aires for the last seven weeks working on my Spanish. I am staying with a delightful local couple, Geno and Eduardo, in their large house in the north of the city.

On weekday mornings I take a Spanish class and then spend the afternoons trying to practice what I have learnt, chatting with my conversation friends, visiting museums and drinking lots of coffee in the multitude of cafes that this stylish city boasts.

Living here is quite different from passing through as a traveller and has allowed me to get to know people as individuals, discover hidden corners of the city and understand a little of life here.

Quite a few "porteños" (inhabitants of Buenos Aires) learn some English and want to practice it, so three afternoons a week I meet people for a conversation exchange: we speak in English for half an hour so they can improve their English and then in Spanish for half an hour so I can practice my Spanish. A pleasant way to practice and get to know people.

I´m getting used to the loud kiss on the cheek with which porteños greet anyone they know. As a traveller, I had not taken part in this ritual so was not used to it. At first when people´s heads moved towards me I almost involuntarily took a step back, which was rather embarrasing. Now I am on kissing terms with my teacher, my conversation friends, the couple I live with and all their friends, the man who runs the laundry, the waiters in my favourite cafes etc. etc.

Buenos Aires is one of the greenest of South American cities with a string of parks running the length of the riverside. I have taken up running again and within 5 minutes of the house I am in a park. At weekends the parks are full of people enjoying the sunshine - it´s late spring turning into summer here and the weather is warm and sunny.

The city is very big but it´s distinct barrios or neighbourhoods give it a manageable feel. I´m living in Nuñez which still has lots of small local shops and cafes, family houses in tree lined streets and a very European small town air. The southern areas are poorer and more cramped but overall the standard of living here is noticeably higher than most of the rest of Latin America (apart from certain parts of Brasil and apart from Chile where instead they have a big gap between rich and poor.)The financial crisis of 2001 seems a long time ago and most people here seem to feel positive about the growing economic prosperity of their city and country.

One big topic of conversation here, however, is personal security. To me, Buenos Aires seems one of the more safer cities in this continent but many people here worry about safety. As in England, it is hard to distinguish between the objective risk of crime and the subjective perception and media portrayal of it. There is a tradition here of demonstrating in the streets when one feels aggrieved and there are frequent marches and rallies, both organised and ad hoc, which have a tendency to get out of hand and turn violent. Violence on the streets between opposing fans after football matches is also common and is taken by the media here to indicate both a passion for the game itself and an undercurrent of violence in the working classes. People have been very keen to tell me what they believe the reasons are for this and their suggested remedies. I´m happy to listen and talk to anyone here (as long as it´s in Spanish) so I feel I have heard a good range of opinions.

My diet has become fully Argentine now: meat and salad, fish, fruit, ice cream, wine and coffee! Geno cooks lovely dinners and we always have a bottle of wine (well this is Argentina!). In the house we also have two American students for the next two weeks who are also learning Spanish. Over dinner we talk a mixture of English and Spanish as both Geno and Eduardo speak good English.

At the weekends I have been visiting old towns out in the countryside, with their 19th century buildings, rural tranquility and gaucho (cowboy) museums, and taking boat trips in the nearby delta region.

All in all, I cannot think of a more pleasant place to "work" on improving my Spanish.

Louise

Into Namibia

willlou — Sun, 5 Nov 2006 10:20:00 GMT

Last Saturday I started my three week overland tour that will take me through Namibia, Botswana to Victoria Falls. I am travelling with twenty five others on a converted lorry which has a comfortable bus like interior with large storage areas underneath for all the camping kit. We have a Kenyan driver and cook while our tour leader is an Austrailan woman who seems to spend her entire life on the road. We first travelled up through South Africa camping the first night amongst orange groves. As we headed north, the towns became smaller and the countryside wilder, bare flat topped mountains and scrub like vegetation. Our second night was spent on the banks of the Orange river and the border of South Africa and Namibia.

Namibia is a wild, empty place. In the last few days we have only passed through a few tiny towns which are surrounded by vast expances of nothing. The few people you see look distinctivily different, wide faces and narrow eyes to cope with the bright landscape; they also speak the distinctive 'click' language. In the first few days seeing Sprinkbok and Ostriches from the bus was quite a thrill, by the end of the week they were so common hardly anyone bothers to look anymore.

Towards the end of the week we arrived at Sesriem, a village on the edge of the Namib Naukluft National Park. This park is famous for it's large sand dunes which strech 55 km inland and which we explored with a local guide. He showed us where the animals lived (under the sand) and told us how the orginal San people survived in the desert. We climbed to the top of one large dune to watch the sunset, the sand is a beautiful orange colour due to it's high iron content.

We have now reached the coast and are in the resort town of Swakopmund. This is a German town, in fact the Germans in our group think it is more German than the real thing. All the shop signs are in English and German and German is heard everywhere. It's quite a pleasant place to recharge the batteries and to have luxuries like sleeping in a bed and eating food off a table, before we head off into the wilderness again.

In the next week we will head up to the north of Namibia and the Etosha National Park.

Cape Town

willlou — Sat, 28 Oct 2006 11:29:00 GMT

“The fairest cape in all the world” said Sir Francis Drake.

With the backdrop of Table Mountain Cape Town must have one of the most distinctive profiles in the world. I have spent most of the last two weeks here, partly because there is so much to see and do and because it will be my last taste of civilization for some time. I am staying in the district of Gardens, which has Table Mountain backing onto it. It’s like a South African version of Islington, lots of nice places to eat, bookshops and Art house cinemas but with sunshine, less traffic and young men with big sticks sitting on every corner guarding the flashy cars. It joins onto Long Street, the rather sleazier backpacker area.

Some of the places I’ve visited,

Table Mountain. I climbed the mountain rather than taking the cable car up, it’s surprising how although you are very close to a large city it’s quite wild at the top, with sunbirds and lizards darting about and the wonderful and distinctive Cape Flora (click here to see examples). The views are also outstanding as you can look down on each side of the city.

Robben Island. One of South Africa’s newer attractions which is managed very well. You take a boat out to the island and are then driven around the island to see the nature reserve, the limestone quarry where the prisoners worked and the township where the guards lived. The prison itself was much smaller than I imagined; a former prisoner describes life inside and the tour includes seeing Nelson Mandela’s cell, which is left as it was. One of the surprises is just by the jetty is a colony of Penguins! What is also interesting is that most of the visitors were my age or older. I suppose that Apartheid for most young people is ancient history and Nelson Mandela even more so.

Kirsenbosch Botanical Gardens. One of the finest gardens in the world which conserves the unique flora of the Cape region, much of which is endangered. Some of the plants there are extinct in the wild and only live on in the gardens. Hugging the sides of Table mountain the setting is very dramatic, a very beautiful place.

I have also been down to False Bay and the villages of Simonstown and Muizenburg, lots of birds to be seen but no whales. I also went to Cecil Rhodes seaside cottage which is now a museum and is where he died.

Overall, Cape Town has been a wonderful place to enjoy ‘normal life’, a place to spend time in bookshops and cafes before I head north into Africa proper.

This week I will start my overland trip up through Namibia and Botswana to Victoria Falls. As internet connections will be rare and expensive, these updates will be shorter and less frequent in the months ahead.

Click here to see Cape Town pictures.

Written by Will

To the Mountains and the Sea

willlou — Sat, 21 Oct 2006 14:59:00 GMT

From Kimberley I went to Bloemfontein, the capital of the Free State, formally the Orange Free State and the capital of Afrikaanadom, It has some impressive public buildings and a great museum but there’s not much there to hold a traveler for long. Interestingly it is the birthplace of J.R.R Tolkein, but the locals seem to want to keep that a secret. I had intended to go from there to Lesotho but as ever transport is a problem if you want to go anywhere off the beaten track so I decided to head for the coast at East London.

East London is regarded as a seaside resort but due to the Indian Ocean breakers that crash onto the beach it’s hardly the sort of place you would go for a swim. There were quite a few surf dudes riding the waves but there is only a very narrow strip where it’s safe to go in the sea. Instead I headed up into the Amatola mountains about 120km from East London to a lovely little village called Hogsback where I stayed a few days. The village has some great walks in rain forest which had a number of waterfalls running through it. The forest is inhabited by some exotic birds, including the rare Cape Parrot which I saw, there are only 500 left in the world, so see them now before it’s too late. I stayed in a great hostel called ‘Away with the Fairies’, which is run by a young English couple. The hostel had a couple of dogs that used to come with me on my walks, some strays used to come too so after I stopped somewhere I had to count them all to see I had everyone before going on. The hostel had a brilliant Scottish chef who used to serve up meals like Kudu (an antelope, see my last entry) and Warthog. Hogsback is certainly a very special place, to read more about it click here.

One of the great pleasures of South Africa is that they play very good Rugby and every Saturday since I’ve been here I’ve made a point of watching. The last few weeks has seen the semi finals and final of the Currie Cup, the SA domestic league. The final was played in Bloemfontein and I saw the fans queuing for tickets outside the stadium there, as it was played between the Cheetahs, the local team and the Blue Bulls from Pretoria. It was a good game and one minute from the end the score was 25 points each. It was then that Hogsback had one of it’s epic thunderstorms for which these mountains are famous (hence the rain forest) and cut the satellite link. By the time the signal was restored they had played extra time (no score) and were handing over the cup. Instead of going to a plenty shoot out, with the Currie Cup the captains can decide to share the cup, so both teams ‘won’. How satisfying that is depends on your point of view.

From Hogsback I went back to East London and from there on a night bus to Cape Town where I am now.

Click here for pictures of Hogsback.

Written by Will

Kimberley

willlou — Sun, 8 Oct 2006 11:40:00 GMT

This week I left Pretoria and took the bus to Kimberley. The bus headed down the motorway to Jo’berg, passing lots of distribution centres and multinational headquarters before reaching the leafy suburbs of North Johannesburg. Every building is heavily defended by razor wire and electric fences; even electricity substations at the side of the road have electric fences around them, presumably to stop them being stolen or tapped into? The CBD of Jo’berg had a very 60’s feel, there are very few new buildings and it had the air of a place you only go to if you have to. To the south of the city the landscape is of factory units and the gold mines of the Witwatersrand, with their winding gear and spoil heaps. Here also are the townships, which look like thousands of brightly coloured little boxes covering the landscape. Further out the houses are more like shacks made out of pieces of corrugated iron.

The bus took me across the High Veld though small Afrikaans country towns. Only the occasional mine and spoil heap breaks up the flatness of the landscape. There was a fantastic sunset of the kind you only get in Africa, where the yellow orange glow lingers across the horizon long after the sun has departed.

Kimberley has a very pleasant feel, it is not as tense as Pretoria, there are fewer razor wire and electric fences around and some people do venture onto the streets at night. It reminds me of a provincial English town, lots of brick 60’s public buildings, gardens with rose bushes, and a fine Cathedral and War Memorial. This town is very much off the backpacker route and I had been inspired to come here after reading a Wilber Smith historical novel (Men of Men) which describes how diamonds were discovered here, how the town was built up around the diamond diggings or Big Hole and how Cecil Rhodes took it all over. Surprisingly, no one I have so far met in Kimberley has read it.

There are still some fine colonial buildings in the town including the Kimberley Club, which at one time was one of the most exclusive in the world but which is now partly run as a hotel and where anyone can go and have a drink, which I did. Across the road from it is the Africana Library a wonderful building, now a research library, where I was given a guided tour and shown the some of the original documents related to the diamond diggings including the original map showing the patchwork of claims on the big hole, most of them very small indeed.

The Big Hole was a disappointment as the site is closed for redevelopment. All I could see from climbing a small hill and getting as close to the wire as possible was the rim. Still a sense of history and all that, especially as I had a drink at the ‘Star of the West’ the original diggers pub which is right next to the Hole.

On one day I took a trip outside Kimberly, out to the Boer War Battlefield site at Magersfontein. On the way, we went though the local township, which has a mix of houses that have been renovated with electricity and running water and corrugated iron shacks. Even with the renovated houses there is no escaping the fact that these are two room dwellings no larger than the average Western garage and this is what the majority of South Africans live in.

Outside Kimberley you realize that you are on the edge of the Karahari desert. The landscape is semi desert, grassland with a few low growing trees, the sort of bush country that ones imagines most of Africa to be. Along the way I saw some Kudu (a large antelope), a small herd of Spingbok and some Ostriches, which in this area have all escaped from Ostrich Farms that were set up to provide feathers for the hat trade.

The Magersfontein Battlefield is dominated by a small range of hills or Koppies. The Highland Division was advancing on these to relieve the siege of Kimberley and had expected the Boers to be on top of the hills. Instead, the Canny Boers had dug trenches at the bottom of them so when the Scotsmen advanced at dawn, the Boer jumped up and shot them down. From the top of the hills there are great views across the countryside, and the Boer trenches are still visible below. Despite being in the middle of nowhere, there is a fine museum which shows a film about the battle.

After Kimberley I plan to move down to Bloemfontein in the Free State, and may go from there to Lesotho.

Written by Will

Pretoria - South Africa

willlou — Tue, 3 Oct 2006 15:22:00 GMT

After over a year in Latin America, last week I flew to South Africa to continue my trip in Africa. The plane flew via Cape Town and I got a glimpse of Table Mountain as we came into land, before heading onto Johannesburg. I decided not to stay in Jo’berg or Jozzie as its reputation for crime goes before it but to stay in the comparatively safer Pretoria.

I’d been to South Africa before, in 1998 but had only travelled in the area around Durban. The Jo’berg/Pretoria area is the richest part of the country and the first thing to strike me was the amount of conspicuous wealth on display, every other car is BMW or a Mercedes. There is lots of building going on too, especially ‘security villages’, housing estates with very high walls and electric fences around them.

The hostel I’m staying in is in the very pleasant area of the city called Hatfield, which is the University and Embassy District. There are lots of wide roads and nice suburban houses, the quite a few have been converted into Backpacker Hostels and B and B’s. The only problem with it is that although the centre of Hatfield is only ten minutes walk away, it is not recommended that you walk between the two at night. People either drive or you have a lot of quiet nights in. Anything outside the high walls and electric fences are considered fair game at night be they parked cars or people.

The centre of Pretoria has a very 50’s 60’s feel, not many new buildings have been built since then. Although it is the capital of the country and the heart of Afrikanerdom, there are almost no white people about and even fewer walking about, so tourists like me stand out. White people drive everywhere and shop in the suburbs. There aren’t that many sights to see, the Colonial Union Buildings which you can no longer walk around and Church Square, the heart of the Transvaal which is surrounded by grand buildings.

After so long in the Latin world it’s been a real pleasure to be able to speak and ask for everything in English. There are also lots of little things like the plaques and memorials scattered around the city that remind one of home. Another delight is to be able to walk into a bookshop full of English books and have a real choice of things to read. Even doing things like writing this is easier as the software is not in Spanish.

My intention was to make a short visit to Mozambique. Unfortunately, this week the Mozambique government has decided to increase the visa fees for British Nationals to the amount we charge them, which is a lot. No doubt fair but not something that will help their tourist industry. Instead I am heading into the heart of South Africa, to Kimberley.

Forward Plans

willlou — Tue, 26 Sep 2006 20:32:00 GMT

For the next few months our paths will diverge; for the rest of the year we´ll each be pursuing different interests.

Will is flying to South Africa to spend a month before heading up through Southern and East Africa to Tanzania. Lou is going to stay in Buenos Aires, live with a local family and work on her Spanish.

Our site will continue to be updated with our respective impressions of Africa and Buenos Aires life.

We´ll be back together again in January, when we´ll meet up in East Africa and then continue our journey together.

Over the Andes to Chile

willlou — Sat, 16 Sep 2006 16:35:00 GMT

This week we crossed the Andes twice, going from Mendoza in Argentina to Santiago in Chile and back again. The snow covered mountains dominate the views in both cites and the route between them is one of the most spectacular in the world. The road climbs up from the Mendoza plain, up a river valley with a great view of the highest mountain in South America - Aconcagua, until it confronts a rock face through which a 3.2km tunnel, ‘Christ the Redeemer’ has been cut. The road then emerges on the Chilean side and Chilean customs which are very thorough, as the Chileans are very paranoid about any food, particularly fruit being bought into the country. This is all done in a very chilly (sic) shed at 2,800 meters surrounded by snow drifts and ski lifts. The road then drops straight down a hillside, the bus tackling 40 bends with no crash barriers before following a river to the central valley of Chile. A railway line follows the same route, much of it now covered with snow and rock. A few weeks ago the two governments agreed to reopen it to aid trade. When its working it will be one of the worlds great train rides.

We went to Chile with an open mind, this is one of the richest countries in South America with a growing GDP based on copper sales and of course it’s wines and apples. The reality was something of a surprise; it’s certainly one of the most Americanized countries with a large disparity between rich and poor, huge mansions out in the countryside but lots of beggars on the city streets. The quality of life was also lower than we expected considering how expensive it is, the food is particularly dreadful; Santiago is the fast food capital of the world as well as being in the top ten for graffiti. The cold and murky weather didn’t make it look much better. Many people are in a sort of time warp, the Salvador Allende 70’s intellectual look is still very popular for young men, long hair, wispy beards and thick glasses; while Punks and Goths are commonly seen.

We did a day trip to the Pacific coast and the city of Vilparaiso. This is port city where the docks are right in the centre of the town, while the land rises steeply up around them. Many of the houses on the surrounding hills are brightly painted giving the place a cheerful, seaside feel. In the last century several funicular railways were built on the hillsides to transport people up and down and some are still functioning although few people apart from tourists travel on them. They are now very rickety and the cars and buildings are made from wood, Health and Safety haven’t been around recently. The short rides are great fun and the views across the town and port are wonderful.

We chose a bad time to go to Chile as the forthcoming weekend was the National Day holiday, four days off and all the buses to anywhere booked up. Given the topography of the country where you can only go up or down this meant we were stuck in Santiago, an expensive and unpleasing prospect. So we decided to head back to the comforts of Mendoza. On the return trip the weather was bright and clear, a very memorable journey.

We are now back in Mendoza, where we have been followed by hoards of Chileans on holiday who are filling empty suitcases with cheap clothes. As it’s such a lovely town we staying here for a few more days before heading back to Buenos Aires. Spring has arrived and the weather is wonderful, ideal for sitting outside and drinking coffee. Real coffee - not Nescafe which is what they serve up in Chile, say no more!

Written by Will

Cordoba and Mendoza

willlou — Fri, 8 Sep 2006 20:15:00 GMT

Cordoba, in the west of Argentina, is the second city and was settled mainly by Italians. This heritage lives on in the food with one of the local specialities being spinach filled canneloni with cheese and leak sauce; although you are never too far from a steak.

After a few days sight-seeing and relaxing in Cordoba we travelled a couple of hours north to stay on an estancia (a ranch) in the hills of the Sierras de Cordoba. The estancia dates back to the eighteenth century and the mother and son who currently run it keep cows, goats and horses. The area was full of birds with parakeets, woodpeckers, hawks, plovers and flycatchers, especially down by the river.

The area was inhabitated long before the Spanish arrived; there are old rock paintings which the English language version of the estancia´s leaflet describes as "aboriginal leftovers". We went horse riding on a beautiful bright spring afternoon and watched our host rounding up the cows and wrestling a calf to the ground to spray and mark it.

The land around the estancia is quite dry but the grass and aromatic herbs produce good meat. On our second evening we had traditional Argentine asado with home-raised, home-killed meat roasted in an outside stone oven. (To think we used to rarely eat red meat before this trip. But it´s such good quality, hormone-free, delicious and also very much part of the culture ... when in Rome etc.)

To the south of Cordoba are a string of pretty little farming towns and villages set in rolling hills. We visited Villa General Belgrano which was founded by the German seamen from the Graf Spee ship that was scuttled off Uruguay. The town plays on this heritage with an Oktober fest, cafes called Edelweiss and lots of wooden architecture. It just manages to avoid being kitsch and is a popular day trip for Cordoba city dwellers.

A day on a bus heading south took us to the city of Mendoza with the snow-capped Andes as a backdrop - our first view of them since leaving them in June in Bolivia.

The Mendoza region is famous for its wines which take advantage of long hours of sunshine, cool nights and an abundance of melt water from the Andes. We visited several wineries with guided tours and generous samplings. Many of the vineyards have kept their old wooden presses, cowhide baskets and original barrels for display, though in some cases they are still using equipment over a hundred years old.

We then spent several days in the lovely town of San Rafael which was founded in 1883 by a Frenchman who planted the first grapes in the area. Nearby is a spectacular canon and a series of lakes where we had a lovely walk, accompanied by two local dogs, and a picnic by the river.

Written by Louise.

To read more on Argentina and view more pictures visit this link http://journals.worldnomads.com/will/post/1531.aspx

Uruguay

willlou — Mon, 21 Aug 2006 21:26:00 GMT

After spending a few days in Buenos Aires we took the ferry across the River Plate to the colonial town of Colonia, on the Uruguayan side of the estuary. Colonia is a beautiful town which we had visited before on our previous trip to the region. This time it had an out of season feel to it, very few people about and very cold and windy, rather like a Cornwall village in December.

Uruguay is one of those odd countries, created as a buffer state between Brazil and Argentina with the help of the British; it is one of those places which one wonders if it is viable as a country at all. It is very dependant on it’s neighbours and when one of them catches a cold economically, as Argentina did, poor Uruguay suffers badly. Most of the population lives in Montevideo, while the rest of the country is one giant farm.

Montevideo was quite a pleasant city built around its port. It has lots of grand buildings built in the 20’s and 30’s, many of which are now looking a little worse for wear and which give the city a rather grey, dated feel. There is also not much in the way of sights: the anchor of the Graf Spree, the German Battleship scuttled after the Battle of the River Plate in 1940, and the former meat market now converted into an up market dining experience, with the emphasis on meat in every variety.

The people are very pleasant though, and big drinkers of Mate, a herb like drink that is particular to the River Plate countries. To call Mate a drink is an understatement, it’s more like a ritual which almost everyone in society takes part in. The Mate itself looks like dried grass which is put in a Mate pot, a small bowl like cup which can be made from wood, leather, silver or especially in Uruguay, a cows foot. Hot water is then poured in slowly, from a thermos with a special funnel so that it goes in slowly until the Mate is moist, putting the right amount of water in is something of an art. The warm liquid is then sucked up through a metal pipe. The Mate is then refreshed with more water and is often shared by friends; it’s common to see couples walking down the street passing the pot to and fro. It tastes like wet grass. There are shops dedicated to Mate and all the paraphernalia that goes with it where you can buy a pipe for $1 or one made of solid silver for $300!

From Montevideo we took a bus across country to Fray Bentos, the town that gave it’s name to the pie and corned beef brand. We came here to see one of the most unusual sights on the continent, the meat processing factory from where all the pies and cans of meat were made. The factory which was one of the first industrial concerns in South America and was originally set up in the 1860’s by a German to produce a meat extract from Uruguayan cows, whose carcasses had until then been dumped, after their hides were taken for leather. The extract was known to the world as OXO. After being taken over by a British firm and renamed the ‘Anglo’ the factory was expanded (helped along by the jump in demand during the two World Wars) to produce cheap meat for the world, which it did until 1971, when it finally closed. In it’s heyday it employed 4000 people, immigrants from all over the world, with a production line of 2000 cows a day in one end, and tins of corned beef out of the other. The site is next to the Rio Uruguay from which ocean going ships took the products directly to Europe. The factory was more like a small town, with workers houses, a hospital and even a golf course.

We had a look around the excellent museum and had our very own guided tour around the buildings, which are much as they were when production stopped. None of the big machines have been removed and the huge compressors for the refrigeration plant and the meat cookers have just been left as they were. In one room thousands of meat hooks are piled up.

When we left the town we passed a new industrial plant that was going up, a pulp mill which is being built despite huge controversy on the banks of the Rio Uruguay which is shared with Argentina. The Argentineans complain that the mill will destroy the environment and there are huge bill boards everywhere to protest against it. We then took the bus back to the delights of Buenos Aires.

^{This entry written by Will}

Paraguay

willlou — Tue, 8 Aug 2006 22:31:00 GMT

Paraguay is a forgotten little country: sandwiched between larger neighbours, it is known - if at all - for smuggling, unpleasant former dictators, and as a place of exile for Nazis after the war.

We crossed the frontier bridge from Brazil to the Paraguayan town of Ciudad del Este, better known as "The Shopping Centre of South America", where you can reputedly buy anything; its street full of shops and stalls selling electrical goods, fake luxury goods, clothes and all duty-free.

We took a bus west to the small capital of Asuncion with very little to see on the way except farming villages, big fields, estancias (ranches) and forest.

Paraguay suffers from extremes of temperature with baking hot summers and cool winters with periodic cold snaps. We managed to time our visit to coincide with one of these: a surprising sudden drop in temperature that had us delving to the bottom of our rucksacks for our fleece jackets. It was however perfect weather for the Asuncion Half Marathon and we watched and applauded the runners and felt rather nostalgic.

The centre of Asuncion is an odd mixture of decayed grandeur and 60s concrete, with the ancient Mercedes taxis fitting in perfectly. The nineteenth century palace of the Lopez family - former half-crazy dictators - stands out from this, as does the swanky and far too large new parliament building paid for by the Taiwanese government in thanks for Paraguay recognising them.

Like many South American cities, Asuncion has an enormous cemetery for the wealthy and important former citizens, with elaborate tombs that outdo anything in Highgate: many family tombs are the size of small houses, giving the cemetery the feel of a housing estate.

The north of Paraguay, the Chaco, is sparsely populated, largely forested and hard to visit. It has sad associations for Paraguayans as a bitter war was fought here with many lives lost, pursued doggedly by Lopez who was egged on by his Irish mistress Eliza Lynch. There are isolated Mennonite and German immigrant communities and a few surviving indigenous Guarani people still living here. The wildlife is meant to be superb but arranging a visit is difficult.

So, from Asuncion we caught a bus south to Encarnacion; the 300 kilometre journey took a good 7 hours through pleasant countryside with neat little, old-fashioned settlements along the way and wilder country beyond.

Near Encarnacion is the site of one of several missions that the Jesuits founded in Paraguay to convert the local Guarani people and which they ran almost as mini-states, before the Spanish Crown grew jealous of the Jesuits´power and expelled them from all the Spanish colonies.

The remains of the large mission village at Trinidad are in marvelous condition, built by the Jesuits with home-produced red bricks. We had this lovely site to ourselves with its massive church, houses for the indians, workshops, bell-tower and cloistered house for the fathers.

From Encarnacion we crossed the frontier river bridge to Argentina before catching a night bus south to Buenos Aires. And what a bus! We have taken quite a few night buses in the last year but this wins all the prizes. The reclining seats were extra wide with a soft blanket and pillow. Our steward served dinner which was like you used to get on airplanes (before most of them stopped serving hot meals). There was a choice of wine and then coffee after the meal. We joked that all we needed now was an after dinner liquer. Five minutes later the steward came round with whisky and champagne! In a country like Argentina, with big distances between places, buses are competing with airlines and offering lots of extras to win customers. We slept well (possibly partly due to the champagne) and arrived fairly fresh in Buenos Aires the next morning.

We were last in Buenos Aires in November 2001 (on holiday), just before the financial crash. It was a time of uncertainty for Argentines and, because of the dollar/peso parity, rigidly maintained by the government, a time of high prices. Argentina has now recovered from the subsequent debt default and currency crash and there is an air of prosperity and optimism here today. For us the cost of living is pleasantly low as you now get three pesos for a dollar.

Buenos Aires is the most European of the Latin American cities that we have visited - very reminiscent of Paris or Madrid - and full of cafes and restaurants serving strong coffee and good food. A great city for a few days of relaxing, eating and taking in some culture. We went to a concert at the beautiful Teatro Colon opera house last night.

Written by Louise

Rio by the Sea-o and Iguazu Falls

willlou — Mon, 31 Jul 2006 21:45:00 GMT

Rio’s reputation goes before it, the beaches, the setting, the criminal mayhem. All is true except the last, it is a fantastic city and probably the most relaxing one we’ve been in for a very long time. The setting reminded us very much of Hong Kong, high rise buildings lap up against the forest covered mountains that come down to the sea, and the whole place linked together by tunnels. The difference is though while Hong Kong was all work, work, work – where’s the money? In Rio its all fun, fun, fun – where’s the beach? Where else in the world do barefoot girls walk through city streets carrying surfboards?

We stayed in Copacabana just three blocks from the beach, which was packed with people all day, and yes the girls do wear dental floss bikinis. In many ways the place seemed unreal, no one seems to do much in the way of work, the main occupation seems to be shopping or topping up that tan. A perception of Rio is that it is very poor and that there are vast shanty towns run by drug gangs. These no doubt exist but they are not obvious and we never saw them. In Copacabana and even more so in Ipanema what is most startling is the wealth, shops and resturants of the highest quality and lots of people enjoying them. It’s rather like being transported to the South of France twenty years ago. Even the few security guards that you see wear suits.

Apart from strutting our stuff on the beaches we went and did the usual tourist things, going up the Sugar Loaf mountain on a cable car and of course taking the cog railway up to ‘Christ the Redeemer’ who overlooks the city. Some great views, this has to be one of the best settings for a city in the world.

From Rio we moved quickly on, by passing San Paulo to Iguazu Falls at the very end of the country. Apart from having some of the most spectacular waterfalls in the world it is on the borders of three countries and is a big resort destination. Lots of Brazilians and Argentineans come here to go shopping in Paraguay, which is duty free. The Argentineans also come here to escape the cold in Buenos Aires (15 C). Another big attraction is the nearby dam at Itaipu which is the largest man made structure built in the 20^th Century and of which both the Brazilians and Paraguayans are very proud. It’s very impressive in a poured concrete sort of way, although it was not looking it’s best, as there was not enough water in the lake behind, for the slip way to having water pouring down it.

The drought is a much discussed problem not least because the main tourist attraction in the area, the Falls, are not looking their best. In fact large parts of it were dry but it’s so big this doesn’t matter, it’s is still a stunning sight. We saw it from both sides of the river, in Brazil and Argentina. In Brazil there were some old friends of ours, the Coatis, the little raccoon animals we’d last seen in Panama. Here in Iguazu, they were so used to having been fed by visitors they now virtually mug you for food. We went across to Argentina on a day trip, the Argentineans have built walk ways that cross the now ‘dry’ rivers but which take you up to the main falls which you look directly down on. Awesome views.

The whole area was so pleasant we spent most of a week there before crossing the ‘Friendship Bridge’, dodging the returning Brazilians clutching their duty free booty, into Paraguay, where we are now.

Written by Will.

Brasilia and Ouro Preto

willlou — Mon, 17 Jul 2006 17:11:00 GMT

This week we have had an education in Brazilian architecture: from the modernist, centrally-planned capital city to the baroque grandeur of Ouro Preto.

Distances in Brazil are vast so we flew from Manaus down to Brasilia, in the centre of the country. Before 1956 there was nothing here, just scrubland. A new city was built from scratch and it became the capital in 1960. Architect Oscar Niemeyer was given a completely free hand ( an architect´s dream) and built big public buildings with a stress on space, light, curves and the use of water features. Different parts of the city were designated for particular uses with a Soviet-like faith in central planning. The big government buildings do look dated now, but they are still impressive, as are the wide open garden spaces and plazas between them. But the residential and small business sectors have not worn so well: with too much concrete, empty spaces that feel dodgy at night, and people living miles away from where they work and shop.

Brasilia is seen as a capital for the people and in that spirit many of the government buildings can be visited by the public. We took a guided tour around the Foreign Ministry building with its cocktail and dining rooms for entertaining foreign visitors decorated with old paintings and carpets, making an interesting contrast to the modernist building itself.

We also visited the parliament building with its distinctive twin towers and big white concrete concave and convex domes. With a refreshing lack of security, we carried our bags into the chamber and sat in the members seats. Apart from electronic voting machines, the chamber seems to have changed little from the 60s.

We were very lucky to get to visit the President´s official residence as it is not often open to the public. It´s called a palace but in fact it´s a very large 1960s villa set in lovely gardens with a swimming pool and a 5-aside football pitch. (How many Presidential palaces have that?) Our guided tour took us through the large airy rooms, with floor to ceiling windows, including the family sitting room with comfy chairs and lots of books. Unfortunately Lula wasn´t in but it was still quite something to visit his lovely house.

From Brasilia we caught an overnight bus south to the old town of Ouro Preto, built in the 18th century with money from the nearby gold and diamond mines. It reminded us of an Italian hill town or somewhere in the Black Forest - and many of the immigrants came from these areas - with lots of churches, cobbled streets and well-maintained houses with coloured shutters and balconies, all tumbling down the hillsides. It´s a popular weekend away for middle-class Brazilians. The winter arts festival was underway with live music and artists selling their paintings. All very European and far removed from the images we have of Brazil from abroad.

Yesterday evening we arrived in Rio de Janeiro where we plan to stay this week.

Written by Louise

Into Amazonia by boat

willlou — Mon, 10 Jul 2006 15:24:00 GMT

Our first Saturday in Brazil coincided with Brazil playing France in the quarter finals of the World Cup. When the match was on, the streets of Porto Velho were completely deserted with no traffic or people about. To the disgust of the locals, the Brazilian superstars lost, as we left our hotel later they had already pulling down the bunting.

We were in Porto Velho waiting for a boat to take us down the Rio Madeira, one of the main tributaries of the Amazon and at 3200 km in length the third longest river in Latin America. Our destination was Manaus, a major city on the Amazon and our journey there would take three days.

We booked a cabin on the river boat “Alfredo Zanys”, a three decked vessel which carried cargo and passengers. The lower deck carried the cargo, on this trip, tomatoes, potatoes and Argentinean onions all neatly boxed up and loaded by hand. The crew also lived down here amongst the veg. The middle deck housed the passengers, most of them in hammock class. In the center of the deck was an empty space, 10m by 4m in which people hung their hammocks and piled their processions. This really was communal living as there were so many hammocks they were touching each other and some had two tiers, one below another. As more tickets had been sold, the hammocks had spread along the passages and to move about people had to duck and weave their way though the ropes and sleeping people. The space had filled from the front of the boat to be as far away from the noisy engine as possible. At the front of the middle deck were the cabins, where we were, the quietest and least populated part of the boat. Each cabin had two bunks and a tiny bathroom (all the water came from the river so it came out of the taps brown) and an air con unit which had power only at certain times of day. On the top deck there was very little, a few cabins, and a snack bar with TV. On the top of the snack bar was a satellite dish which was connected to a handle. As the boat moved the dish had to be realigned by hand, someone moving the handle until the picture was restored. As this took quite a lot of effort it was only done for important events like World Cup matches, when all the space under the meager shade was filled up to watch the game. When the TV was off, music blared out from a massive speaker.

A few hours after setting off everyone settled down, the luggage was sorted out, children ran around and explored the ship and people started to get to know each other. There were even some Brazilian tourists on board, people from San Paulo discovering their own country. Meal times were a communal affair; at the back of the boat were the galley and a dinning room. You queued up for a sitting and the cooks put plates of rice, pasta and stew with great knuckles of meat and bone in it. This was served up for almost every meal, except breakfast which was coffee and crackers. We passed the time reading and talking with the other travelers on board.

The ship ploughed on day and night up the brown river, only stopping briefly over the three days. At first the Rio Madeira was less than a kilometer in width, with few tributaries or habitation. The boat often traveled close to the tree lined banks; this was the famous Amazon rain forest; flat land was far as you could see, covered in trees. In rained in the late afternoons and clouds stretched away across the landscape, a wonderful view in such a natural landscape. Most of the settlements only consisted of a few houses, with a few banana trees growing around them. Where the larger trees had been cut down you could see the smaller plants and shrubs which were very diverse, as if you were looking at a botanical garden. Further up river, the settlements became sizeable towns and there was more river traffic. More rivers flowed in and we often passed sizeable tree covered islands, the far shore now being almost two kilometers away.

Early on the morning of the third day we woke up on the Amazon itself and now the river was six kilometers wide and we were passing ocean going ships. Instead of wooden huts the shore now housed an oil refinery and a naval base. In Manaus, the port is at the center of the city so you get off the boat and immediately enter the world of traffic, people and noise. After the quiet and isolation of most of the

trip, this was startling reentry to the real world.

One of the reasons for going to Manaus was to visit the world famous opera house. Built in the 1890’s almost the whole thing was imported from Europe from the cast iron pillars which were made in Glasgow, to the tiles on the roof made in France. It looks like a giant mosque dropped in the middle of the city. On Saturday night we went to the Opera to see a performance of modern dance which was outstanding.

As we are now in the middle of nowhere we will be flying the next stage of our trip, to the futuristic city of Brasilia, and from there to the south of Brazil.

Northern Bolivia

willlou — Sat, 1 Jul 2006 15:48:00 GMT

After two and a half months of high mountains and bright cold weather, we have spent the last two weeks in the steamy green jungle and flatlands of Northern Bolivia. From La Paz we took a minibus down the Death Road, descending 3500m from the Andes on a narrow unmade road, with crosses on the bends marking buses and trucks that had gone over the edge, down to the beautiful sub-tropical town of Coroico with flower filled gardens.

This area produces coffee, oranges, tropical fruit and some of the best coca leaves in South America. In Bolivia the growing of coca leaves is legal, as is its widespread use for chewing, making tea, other traditional medicines and for religious offerings. We had a go at chewing but did not have the patience to carry on for the necessary two hours, after which you get a high; the effect also masks hunger and discomfort. On long bus journeys in the mountains at least half the passengers are chewing away. The manufacture of the coca leaves into cocaine is illegal and we passed check points on the Death Road where the police search for any of the eleven chemicals used.

Travel is slow in this part of Bolivia. Our next bus ride was 15 hours overnight to Rurrenabaque. On the banks of the Beni river, this jolly town has access to jungle and pampas for animal watching. We took a three day pampas and river trip with two American nurses, a local guide and his helper. We certainly saw lots of wildlife with alligators and caimans lying out on the muddy banks of the river; yellow tinged squirrel monkeys in the trees; and square-headed giant guinea-pigs called capybaras. Along the river banks the trees are full of birds: big Jabiru storks, herons, snake birds, parrots, cormorants and sererres with flamboyant head feathers. In the slower flowing water of big pools we saw pink river dolphins who sound like human swimmers as they surface for breath.

Away from the river where the soil is poor, there are vast stretches of water-logged grassland: this is the pampas. Our three hour walk in the pampas is an experience I hope not to repeat too soon. Wearing `special shoes` supplied by the guide (which turned out to be school plimsolls) we walked through the muddy water, which varied from ankle to knee deep, trying very hard not to fall over. Guides here seem to think that tourists only want to take a picture of an animal and touch it, as opposed to being interested in learning about the landscape and wildlife, much of which is protected. Our guide and his helper ran off across the pampas to `capture' an anaconda snake for us, since that is what he expected all tourists to want. We had tried to explain that this wasn`t necessary but the guide took it as some kind of personal failure if he could not get a snake for us. So we stood in the smelly sludge (it stains your feet wonderfully) for thirty minutes feeling rather silly. The guide succeeded in grabbing a three metre anaconda and dragging it over to us, he drapped it around his neck and looked proud. A greater stress on protecting the poor wildlife might be needed for the future, though the anaconda did manage to bite our guide on the leg.

The river has lots of fish including piranas so we went pirana fishing from a wooden boat with a metal hook, a plastic line and a bag of chopped up meat as bait. The piranas are about 8cm long with a pretty pink tinge to the fins. They have quicker reactions than us and managed to grab the bait in their sharp teeth far faster than we could pull in the line. It took me 40 minutes to catch one pirana. The guides were much better at it and we ate our catch, fried, for lunch. You get a lot of bones and a tiny amount of sweet white flesh from each pirana.

Back in Rurrenabaque we caught up on washing and eating good food before heading to the remote back-country of northeast Bolivia. Rain had washed away a road to the east so our bus was 31 hours late. We then had a scenic but slow 23 hour ride up to the border. A hundred years ago this area was briefly rich from the rubber boom but now it is very sleepy. We took a ferry across the river Mamore and entered Brazil.

Our impressions of our first few days in Brazil include the much talked of ethnic mix; greater prosperity; and a more European feel. The change of language to Portuguese is the most noticeable difference for us. After so many months of being able to understand pretty much what people say in Spanish and be understood ourselves, it is rather disconcerting not to be able to understand people here. The nasal vowels and the `j` and `z`sounds will take quite a bit of practice.

Brazilians also seem very outgoing and vocal. On the bus yesterday to Porto Velho half the passengers took part in a loud and heated discussion of the reasons for the current violence in Sao Paolo (or that is what it sounded like); at times it seemed it might end in punches but then everyone dissolved into laughter.

Central Bolivia and the Salar de Uyuni

willlou — Sun, 18 Jun 2006 16:12:00 GMT

We have had a busy couple of weeks traveling around the central area of Bolivia. From La Paz we went to the city of Potosi, at 4000 meters the highest city of its size in the world, bright and cool most of the time. A couple of hundred years it was the richest town in the world, its wealth based on the fabulously rich silver mines in the mountain that overlooks the town. It is now full of wonderful old churches and for some reason, lawyers. The main reason travelers come here is to do a mine tour, as the mountain is still worked, a very unique experience. A fuller description of what its like can be found at,

http://grahamwilliams-traveller.blogspot.com

From Potosi we went to Sucre, for historical reasons the capital of Bolivia even though it is a small town. This is a beautiful place, lower, so much warmer and filled with grand white buildings and palm trees - like arriving in the South of France. As the Supreme Court is here, it s another place packed with lawyers. On the outskirts of the town is a quarry with the largest collection of Dinosaur tracks in the world, about 3000 dinos walked across the bed of lake and their footprints are now preserved on the quarry face and many of them had very big feet.

From Sucre we went back to Potosi and then on through some very wild country to Uyuni, a town founded at a railway junction and on the edge of one the most spectacular landscapes on earth.

Uyuni is a cold, bleak place but filled with tourists who come here to visit the Salar de Uyuni, at 10,500 kmsq, the largest salt flats in the world, an expanse of white. The trip takes three days and is done in a Land Cruiser. From the salt flats the tour takes you to a wilderness of Volcanoes, lakes, geysers and boiling mud. We were lucky to have a great guide and driver, Javier and his wife Liset, who was the cook. She managed to put together some imaginative meals in very basic conditions and they always had the kettle on, even serving up tea at 5 o clock in the morning. We also had some nice traveling companions including a Bulgarian film maker, a lovely young Irish couple and a girl taking time out from her job in the Diplomatic Service. The trip is a tough one as the facilities and roads are very primitive and environment harsh. In daytime the sun is bright and warm but at night the temperatures drop to well below freezing and on the second night we were sleeping at almost 5000 meters high. At night, the stars were unbelievable, we never see the Milky Way like this in the Northern Hemisphere.

Despite the discomforts the trip was fantastic, wonderful views of lakes covered in Flamingos, a smoking volcano and the great white expanse of the Salt Flats. Only a few animals live here but we saw herds of Vicunas (a primitive form of llama), Vizcachas (a giant rabbit) and an Andean Fox. We even had a chance to have a dip in a thermal pool which we did very early in the morning when it was still well below freezing. You had to be brave to get into your swimming kit but once in it was a lovely 30 C, Liset had the tea ready for when we got out. Overall it was a sensational trip.

We are now back in La Paz and preparing to leave the mountains to head to the North East of Bolivia and the Amazon Jungle, and from there into Brazil.

Lake Titicaca

willlou — Thu, 1 Jun 2006 20:06:00 GMT

After another trek in the Cusco area (look at the pictures under the Photo Gallery "Cusco to Lamy Trek", a fill description of this trek can be found at http://journals.worldnomads.com/will/) we got a bus south to Lake Titicaca, the world´s highest nevigable lake at 3810m, which straddles the Peruvian-Bolivian border. On the Peruvian side, we stayed in Puno and spent a very bright sunny day out on the water visiting the floating islands and the large island of Taquile.

The Uros people still live on their floating reed islands as they have done for over 3000 years. They used to survive from fishing and hunting duck, but now tourism is their mainstay as they show visitors around the little islands and take them out for a ride on a traditional reed boat. The islands are made of piles of thick reeds which are then anchored to the lake bed by long poles; they need monthly maintainenance but a good island can last 15 years! Walking on one is like treading on a piece of foam. The Uros people still live in huts made of reeds with some wood, but many now have solar panels to power light bulbs and, of course, a TV.

Our boat then took us to the (non-floating) island of Taquile. People here keep animals and grow a few crops but again, tourism - both Peruvian and foreign - now brings in most money. It has helped to revive old weaving skills. Whilst the women weave, the men are known for their particularly good knitting with fine red woolen hats being their speciality.

Around Puno bay the lake is contaminated as all the waste ad sewage flows staight into it. But further out into the deep clear blue water the lake retains its varied species, including a giant endemic frog, big tasty kingfish and abundant trout.

In Puno town we saw a big political rally addressed by Alan Garcia, one of the two presidential hopefuls in the run off election on 4 June. Having seen so many posters of Mr Garcia in the last two months plastered on trees, walls and windows, it was interesting to see him in the flesh. He has been likened to Tony Blair and his party to New Labour: he is now centre-left but older Peruvians remeber him as the socialist president of the 1980s. We sat on the balcony of a cafe overlooking the plaza and listened to his speech - slow, deliberate and somewhat repetitive and therefore fairly easy to understand. After the speech we saw a few punch-ups with rival supporters.

At the beginning of this week we crossed into Bolivia and stayed in the small town of Copacabana, on the lakeshore. Copacabana is like a 1960s seaside resort with small restaurants along the beach and a flotilla of pedalos. (The world´s highest pedalos?) It fills up at weekends and for religious festivals but is quiet mid-week.

In the evenings and at night it is very cold around the lake, in contrast to the radiation-bright sunny days. When you have exerienced a cold night here (none of the hotels have heating) and then the wonderful warmth of the sun in the morning, you realise why the Incas worshipped the sun and believed that the ruling Inca family were descended from it.

An hour´s boat ride from Copacabana is what is now called the Island of the Sun. According to Inca legend, the sun was born here! We caught an early boat to the island and walked along ancient paths over the hills, past Inca ruins and through small cultivated fields with great views over the lake.

Lake Titicaca is also home to the Bolivian navy. In the nineteenth century, Bolivia fought a series of disastrous wars with each of its neighbours loosing slices of territory to them all, including its entire coastline to Chile. In denial as to its land-locked reality, Bolivia still keeps a small navy with a little base at Copacabana.

Today we took the bus to Bolivia´s caital, La Paz, and experienced our first rain in a month. So far Bolivia seems noticebly poorer than Peru with less cars on the roads and fewer people around. Bolivia has a reputation as the home of the political demonstration and street protests have toppled two presidents in recent years. They now have a socialist president, Evo Morales, of whom Bolivians have enormously high expectations. We saw our first demonstration within an hour of entering the country and today, in La Paz, we´ve seen police with riot shields and C.S gas canisters hanging fro their waists.

The Lares Valley Trek.

willlou — Tue, 16 May 2006 18:47:00 GMT

We have just returned from a three day trek that starts in the Sacred Valley, and which is known as the Lares valley trek as it ends in the small town of Lares. As we don’t like doing tours we organized things ourselves and carried our own kit and food for the trip. We started at the small town of Urabamba and our route took us north up a valley called Quebrada Pachaschiuc. The weather at the moment is beautiful, sunny and warm although when the sun goes down, it’s very cold. For the first few hours we walked through cultivated areas before the landscape turned rocky and more mountain like.

On the first day we made camp early and got our dinner together around 5pm (1700) as sunset is around 6pm. As we are still very much in the tropics, night lasts a standard twelve hours, so once the light has gone there is nothing to do apart from get into your bag and try to sleep.

The next day we continued climbing up the valley, passing the very primitive village of Pacchaspata, the last habitation in the valley. The next few hours were hard climbing up through small forests and rough trails. By the afternoon we had reached the ‘bowl’ at the head of the valley. Ahead of us was the pass of Abra Pumannancajasa, 4800 meters high. Two hours of very hard climbing bought us to the top, very cold and windy but with spectacular views. As we now only had one hour of daylight we descended quickly and looked for a campsite, quite a job in such a rocky mountain landscape. We then passed an uncomfortable night as the clear skies make the nights very cold. As it was a full moon and there were no other lights, we were able to see a phenomenon few people do these days, bright moonlight. It is in fact so bright you could read a book by it, and it really is silvery.

Early in the morning we saw they only other trekkers on the trail, two older tourists with their guide. Our descent passed by a series of rocky lakes and we had wonderful views of the snow capped mountain of Nevado Sirihuani. It was obvious from the landscape and the Peruvian map we had that the glacier at the top of the mountain had once covered a much bigger area. This glacier retreat has been a feature of our trip in the Americas, as we have seen how far they have shrunk on mountains from Washington State in the US to the Andes. It really is happening.

The last few hours of our walk were through the lovely Cuncan valley. This is inhabited by Andean people who still wear their traditional dress and who live very basic lives, weaving cloth from their sheep and llamas and growing staples like beans. We arrived in the small town of Lares around mid afternoon and stayed there the night as there is only one minibus a day out. Very much small town Peru, in the one restaurant what they are cooking is what you are having, and everyone is very friendly. The next day took it took two hours driving to get back to the Sacred Valley, through yet more fantastic scenery.

Later this week we will do a two day trek close to Cucso.

Cusco and the Sacred Valley

willlou — Sun, 7 May 2006 23:27:00 GMT

We´re in Cusco, which for the Incas was the “navel of the world”, the centre of their massive empire which ran from southern Colombia to northern Chile. When the Spanish conquered Cusco in the 16^th century they symbolically demolished the Inca palaces and temples and built their colonial houses and churches on top of the fine Inca stonework, still in evidence at the base of many buildings.

Despite lots of tourists, Cusco has atmosphere and character with cobbled backstreets, Quechua street names, highland women selling woven cloth and coca leaves to ward off altitude sickness, and a great setting with mountains all around. Tourism has helped to revive traditional textile skills and increase pride in highland culture. Though the number of panpiping buskers playing rearrangements of Simon and Garfunkle and Beatles classics can be a touch trying.

After a few days in Cusco we have spent the last week in the Sacred Valley which runs from Machu Picchu down to Cusco. It is harvest time in the countryside with piles of yellow maize cobs drying in the sun and cattle grazing on the stubble left in the fields which cover the flat land by the river and the narrow terraced slopes above. We´ve seen several small harvest celebrations, a synthesis of Catholic festival and ancient pagan rite.

The Sacred Valley has a series of Inca forts, the most impressive being at Ollantaytambo, built into the side of the mountain and towering above the town. The Spanish conquistadors fought their way up the valley but turned back when they saw this daunting fort.

From Ollantaytambo we took the train up to the small town below the famous site of Machu Picchu. The next day we caught the pre-dawn bus up to the site, a beautifully preserved Inca city, surrounded by peaks, which was lost for centuries before being rediscovered in 1911. We watched the mist and cloud clear and the sun come shining through for another bright clear Andean day and then explored the palaces, temples and terraces with their perfect interlocking masonry and trademark trapezoid windows. Machu Picchu certainly lived up to the hype and in the early morning, before the tour buses arrive, it felt very special.

We arrived back in Cusco today, just in time for a big parade in the main plaza with a march past by various smartly dressed army regiments and dancing by local groups.

Lima and Southern Peru

willlou — Wed, 26 Apr 2006 02:21:00 GMT

It’s been quite a while since our last post and we have covered a lot of ground. We celebrated one year on the road in Huaraz in the spectacular Cordillera Blanca, a famous trekking area. We spent about a week there and did a few day treks from Huaraz. Unfortunatly, the weather wasn’t that good as it was the tail end of the rainy season; so every afternoon around four o’clock it poured with rain making the place very cold and damp, not the sort of conditions to go camping in. So we moved on to Lima.

Lima has a reputation for being an unpleasant, dangerous slum but we very much enjoyed our time there. The areas next to the Pacific were particularly nice and the weather very good. While we were there Peru held it’s general election, not only for the post of President but also for seats in Congress. Voting is complusory in Peru, so as the day went by we saw more and more people with blue fingers, as voters have to put a finger in blue dye so that they can’t vote twice. Sales of alcohol are also banned over the election weekend. Two and half weeks later there still isn’t a result, as the votes were so close, the candidates want every vote counted and checked, including those from overseas.

We then had a long bus ride to the south of the country to visit Nasca, a small town in the desert but well known for the famous ‘Nasca Lines’. These are outline representations of animals cut into the desert surface; the interesting thing about them is that they can only be seen from above; in fact they were only discovered in the 1920’s when pilots flying overhead saw the ‘pictures’ below them. We saw them by climbing an observation tower and a hill. As well as the pictures, there are aslo hundreds of straight lines which radiate for kilometers across the desert. No one really knows why the local people made them as they couldn’t see the pictures or lines from above. One of the worlds great mysteries.

After Nasca we continued travelling south through a barren but spectacular landscape, as the desert runs alongside the Pacific Ocean. Very much a rock and hard place where very few people live. Our destination was the delightful Colonial City of Arequipa. This has a wonderful aspect as it is surrounded on one side by snow capped Volcanos. As well as lovely architechture it also has a continual Spring like cilmate, warm and dry in the day and cool at night.

We used Arequipa as a base to visit Colca Canyon, the second deepest canyon in the world. We spent three days trekking in the Canyon, which is hot,dry and spectacular with bright,clear days and fantastic views of snowcapped mountains. We were also very lucky to see Condors close up. The Canyon is surrounded by small villages with very friendly Andean people, who keep herds of Llamas on the Altiplano, the high plains of the Andes.

Tomorrow we start our journey to Cusco and the Sacred Valley.

Escape from Ecuador and into Peru

willlou — Fri, 31 Mar 2006 14:59:00 GMT

The roadblocks by the highland people, protesting about the free trade agreement with the US, cut off Riobamba for 4 days from the main north-south highway. We went walking on the old Inca royal trail up in the nearby mountains to find it being used by trucks, trying to bypass the roadblocks. Progress? At the end of our walk getting back to Riobamba we hit the roadblocks too, but being on foot we just stepped over the logs and rocks and walked through. A jeep with western tourists in, however, had one of its tyres slashed and hurriedly did a U-turn. The people manning the blocks seemed to be thoroughly enjoying themselves and told us that the blocks would continue for quite a while, though they might take a few days off to go and till their fields.

We had wanted to head south from Riobamba but when we heard that the road northward was opening up, we decided to head back to Quito rather than wait for the road south to clear, especially as the newspapers were forecasting food shortages.

Back in Quito we caught up with films at the cinema: the best being Munich. Then we got a bus southwest to Guayaquil on the coast. We hit more road blocks getting out of Quito but our plucky bus driver took us down village back roads, country tracks and past burning tyres in a big detour down to the lowlands and then south.
From the hot, steamy, prosperous city of Guayaquil we headed south last week and over the border into Peru for a few days relaxing and swimming at the beach.

Northwest Peru is known as the Egypt of South America, because of its landscape of desert with irrigated green river valleys and because of its archeological sites which we spent the last few days visiting.
Hundreds of years before the Incas the Moche people built large cities with high walls and pyramids out of mudbricks, irrigated the land and developed a religiuos and artistic culture. Excavations of the royal tombs in the last 20 years have revealed large amounts of beautiful gold jewellery and colourful ceramic vases, now displayed in a modern museum.

Peru suffers from a national shortage of change aswell as the circulation of counterfeit currency. So buying anything involves the shopkeeper throwing his hands up in horror when we have no change, sending one of the family off down the street to borrow change off someone else and then us carefully examining the notes we finally get in change. Our hotel yesterday gave us a signed IOU ( se le debe in Spanish) as they could find no change.

Yesterday evening we got the 10 hour night bus up to Huaraz, in the mountains, where we arrived early this morning.

Central Ecuador and Trekking

willlou — Tue, 14 Mar 2006 13:59:00 GMT

Having got back to Quito from the Galapagos we spent a few days there, seeing films and catching up on admin. We were also waiting for our sleeping bags which were in the post, these had been sent onto us by our friends in Seattle and were taking a very long time to turn up. When we were finally giving up hope - they arrived. After a morning at the Post Office haggling about how much duty needed to be paid on them, we finally got them. We then went out and bought a small two man tent and a cooking kit and we were ready to head to the hills. We traveled down to the resort town of Baos in the centre of the country which is a small town which sits at the feet of the very active Tungurahua Volcano and has lots of hot springs and baths. The Baths have tubs which range from very cold and straight from the waterfall, to lobster cooking hot. Lots of travelers and locals come here and its been in the news recently as a nurse from Manchester, Jennifer Pope, has gone missing here. The British Embassy has done a good job in trying to find her and her face stares out at you from every window and lamp post. We went for some training walks, including along the main river valley which has several waterfalls along it. We have since moved on to the town of Riobamba and used it as a base for a couple of longer treks were we camped out. The first was a short easy walk in a rural area which was a good introduction to trekking. The second was more ambitious as we climbed onto Volcan Chimborazo, the dominate (but dormant) Volcano in the area. This involved two days hard trekking, mainly in good weather and our highest ever camp at 4300 meters. The views at dawn, before the clouds rolled in were sensational. We had planned to move on to the south of the country and the colonial town of Cuenca. This has been prevented by protests by indigenous people who have blocked the main roads in the country, as a protest against the North America Free Trade Agreement, which they claim will only help the wealthy. So for the last two days we have been stuck in Riobamba and so plan to go for another trek tomorrow, in the hope that the situation is resolved soon.

The Galapagos Islands

willlou — Wed, 22 Feb 2006 13:59:00 GMT

For the last three weeks we have been wildlife watching and enjoying the Galapagos Islands.
Rather than take a week long boat cruise, we decided to travel around the islands more slowly on our own, organising day trips as we went.
The Galapagos have a unique selection of birds and animals, due to their isolated location 600 miles from the nearest land. All the wildlife originally had to fly, swim or drift over on vegetation to arrive and hence there are many reptiles and birds but few mammals. Once they arrived, they had to adapt to the warm land climate and cool seas plus the limited range of vegetation to eat and the volcanic landscape. The wildlife evolved new characteristics, in some cases different for each of the islands. All of the islands have Darwin finches but they differ in terms of colour and the shape and size of beak according to the food available.
The tortoises grew into giants, with the shape and pattern of their shells differing between islands. All food for thought for Mr Darwin when he visited in 1835.
As there were no people until very recently and few predators, the birds and animals have never learnt fear. So as a visitor you can get very close to them. We have been swimming with sealions, who are curious rather than fearful. And on the rocky shores where marine iguanas abound you have to be careful not to tread on them.
Apart from the three per cent of the islands where people live and farm, the rest of the islands and the surrounding sea is all national park and marine reserve. There are some problems with introduced species that have escaped and gone wild (goats,dogs and cats)in some parts, creating problems for the giant tortioses, but overall the islands are in an amazing pristine condition.
On Isabella Island we visited the small penguin population and went around the giant tortoise breeding centre where the tortoises are then released into the wild when they are 5 years old, they go on to live to 150. Isabella has 6 active volcanoes and we went on horseback up to the giant crater of Sierra Negra and saw Galapagos hawks and vermillion flycatchers. There are also miles of sandy beaches where iguanas sunbathe and sealions swim: great for humans too.
Santa Cruz Island has the main tourist facilities but within five minutes walk you are on quiet rocky headlands with scurrying lava lizards, watching blue footed boobies dive bomb into the sea to catch fish, great blue herons slowly stalking and sanderlings hopping about. Above, frigate birds soar: nesting season has just started and the males have an extendable bright red pouch that they puff out to show off to the females.
We took several day boat trips out to smaller islets from where we went snorkelling to look at the abundant underwater life, colourful fish and corals and graceful marine turtles. We also snorkelled looking down on Galapagos sharks and white tipped sharks below. From the boat we also saw dolphins and minke whales.
Overall we saw nearly all of the endemic species, learnt alot about the islands and their wildlife and did lots of walking and swimming in the sunshine.

To see more details on how we arranged our Galapagos trip go to:

http://journals.worldnomads.com/will/

Southern Colombia, Quito and Andean Trekking

willlou — Mon, 30 Jan 2006 13:59:00 GMT

Since the last update we have explored the southern part of Colombia and are now in Ecuador. From Popayan, a beautiful old university town in Colombia we took a five hour bus journey over the mountains to the small town of San Augustin. This town should be on every travelers list but due to its isolation and guerrilla problems in the past (FARC blew up the bridge there) hardly anyone goes there. The reason to make to trip is because in the beautiful surrounding countryside there are mysterious statues, many the same size and similar to those on Easter Island, but erected by an people who have been lost to history. Their only legacy are a collection of tombs and the statues which surround them.
We returned to Popayan and continued our journey to the south traveling through wonderful Andean mountain scenery to the border of Ecuador.

In Ecuador our first stop was at Otavalo, a pleasant town which has a famous Saturday market where the local indigenous people come to town to sell their handicrafts to tourists. There is a large market most days but on Saturday the stalls are spilling down all the side streets leading to the main plaza. There is also an animal market on the edge of the town where the locals parade their cows, sheep and pigs in front of buyers. Small black pigs are dragged off on ropes to be fattened up and the pig market certainly seemed to where most of the action was.

From Otavalo it was a short run to Quito the sprawling capital. To our surprise its a nice place and very much geared up for tourists. In fact seeing tourists is a big surprise as we hadnt seen many in Colombia, now we hear British and American accents all the time. Its a good place to get things done.

We have made one trip out of Quito so far, to go trekking in the Quilatoa region, two hours to the south. After another epic bus ride, hanging on to corners above sheer drops, we arrived in a small village where we began a two day trek across a series of river valleys to the crater of Quilatoa. We walked through lovely countryside, most of it cultivated and stayed a eco friendly hostels which have been set up here by foreigners. Eco friendly means earth closet toilets and recycling bins in the bedrooms, plus a premium on the prices for the privilege. The local people still live pretty much as they always have, cultivating their plots of land and although the men now have western dress the women and girls still wear their traditional dress which is brightly coloured woolens and trilby hat. Unfortunately they dont like having their pictures taken.

On the second day of our trek we climbed up to the lip of the Quilatoa crater which is at 4000 meters. This huge crater is in fact an empty magma chamber into the volcano collapsed 10,000 years ago. 300 meters below the lip is a lake of bright blue water, a spectacular sight.

Now we are back in Quito, preparing for our trip to the Galapagos, where we will spend most of February.

Colombia

willlou — Mon, 9 Jan 2006 13:59:00 GMT

We celebrated Christmas on a beach on a lovely islamd off Panama City and had Christmas dinner, Panamanian style, in the evening at a good hotel. A few days later my sister flew back to England and we flew across the Darien Gap to Medellin in Columbia.
Columbia suffers from a bad reputation, being synonymous in Western minds with drugs cartels, guerillas and civil war. From what we have seen so far, Columbia is a beautiful unspoilt country and, with the exception of a few known hotspots, no more dangerous for tourists than neighbouring countries.
There are very few Western tourists here but plenty of Columbian tourists as this is their big holiday season. People seem genuinely interested in foreign visitors.
In the modern cities of Medellin and Manizales we stayed in pleasant middle class suburbs which were very reminiscent of Spain about ten years ago. We then spent a week in and around the small nountain town of Salento, 2000 metres up in the Andes, on the edge of the National Park Los Nevados. This friendly town still has locals riding their horses through the plaza. The local speciality is trout, which appear on every menu. On the bus up to Salento we passed through the coffee area with row upon row of shiny coffee bushes surrounding colourful wooden houses. Coffee is one of Columbias two big exports - cocaine being the other.
From Salento we did a three day trek up into the National Park. The walk started in the Valley of Corcora with its tall stately wax palms. These trees originally grew, millions of years ago, by the Pacific. As the Andes rose they adapted to life inland high up in the mountains. They tower above the other trees to create a forest above the forest. We walked up into the cloud forest and stayed in a wooden cabin belonging to a research station. The next day we climbed higher to the terrain known as paramo, with its low level unique shrubs, cacti and flowers. We stayed in a remote and simple farmhouse at over 3000 metres with the family and a half a dozen Columbian walkers. We watched the farmers wife making cheese and then she cooked dinner for everyone which we ate squashed into the tiny kitchen, the only room with any heat or light. The FARC guerillas apparently hide up in these hills but we saw no sign of them, only army soldiers lower down out on patrol.
The next day we had a long 8 hour walk back down to Corcora. Rain had turned the track to mud and we had to wade across two swirling swollen rivers.
We then spent a weekend in Columbias second city of Cali with its modern shopping malls, cinemas and cosmopolitan restaurants. This morning we got the bus south to Popayan, a small city full of old colonial buildings all painted in white.

Panama

willlou — Fri, 16 Dec 2005 13:29:00 GMT

For the past few weeks we have been travelling around Panama. We first went to the mountain town of Boquete, which is famous for its coffee and good climate, so good its being colonized by American retirees. Close by is Panamas only volcano, now extinct, which is covered with a cloud forest. We went trekking here, its a wonderful place with rushing streams and lots of exotic birds. After Boquete we have spent most of our time around the capital Panama City. It reminds us very much of Hong Kong, skyscrapers, lots of banks and wild country just a short distance away. Of course there is also the Canal, which really is an exceptional sight. Imagine a lock on a canal in the UK, increase the size a hundred fold, stick two container ships in it, and you sort of get the picture. Around the canal is more wild jungle including Pipeline Road, one of the best places on earth to watch birds, which is only a twenty minute bus ride from the center of the city. At the moment we are in Bocas del Torro, an island on the countrys northern coast. This is typical Caribbean island stuff, golden beaches, blue skies and palm trees. We are now traveling with Louises sister Anita, who has flow out to join us for Christmas.

Costa Rica

willlou — Wed, 30 Nov 2005 13:59:00 GMT

Last week we were at the quiet beach of Samara on the north west coast of Costa Rica, swimming in the sea in the mornings and watching the surfers in the afternoons when the bigger waves had built up.
A long day of buses and a wait in a tiny agricultural town took us up to Monteverde in the mountains. This cloud forest area is one of Costa Ricas prime tourist attractions with an array of tours and activities on offer. Tourism here is very organised and geared to the two week holiday maker who wants to fit in as much as possible. We visited a reserve and walked the trails through dripping green primary forest with ancient trees, giant ferns, orchids, wild pigs, monkeys and birds. Lower down the slopes of these mountains is rich agricultural land that was opened up in the 1940s by Quakers fleeing from Alabama and the draft.
We then travelled by bus and an exhilarating boat ride across a lake to La Fortuna to see the very active Arenal Volcano. Skipping the tour, we walked to the volcano on our own and saw lots of furry coatimundis (of the racoon family). We sat at the viewpoint for over an hour and watched enormous boulders being thrown out of the volcano and bouncing down the scarred slopes accompanied by a constant deep rumbling.
The last two days we have spent in the capital, San Jose, catching up on some admin. and seeing the latest films at the cinema. Today we head south ready to cross over into Panama.

Granada, Lake Nicaragua and Pacific Coast

willlou — Wed, 16 Nov 2005 13:31:00 GMT

Over the last couple of weeks we have traveled through Nicaragua and have now arrived in Costa Rica. Nicaragua was a great country to travel in, some really outstanding and accessible sights and lovely towns. It was also very relaxed, hardly a pump action shotgun in sight, quite a contrast to El Salvador and Guatemala. After Leon we traveled up into the coffee growing hills and visited a plantation, where the coffee harvest was under way. Most of these farms were set up by German immigrants in the 19th Century, and are still owned by the same families. The one we went to had created a German village which you could stay in, called the The Black Forest. We then passed quickly through Managua to Granada, a lovely colonial town where we spent a week. It is on the shore of Lake Nicaragua, the tenth largest lake in the world and is surrounded by volcanoes, a couple of which we went to top of. Volcan Mombacho which is permanently covered in cloud, has evolved a dripping tropical cloud forest around its crater. At Volcan Masaya which is active you could look directly into the crater through clouds of sulfurous steam. The Spanish thought it was the entrance to hell, so they erected a cross on its lip. We also swam in lake formed by a caldera, the water warmed by the hot springs that feed into it. From Granada went to the Pacific coast for a couple of days at the beach at San Juan del Sur. This area has been discovered by Americans who are buying up land and building sea view holiday homes as fast as they can find the people to put them up. A few years ago their government was spending billons feeding a civil war here; now theyre falling over themselves to invest their money, but Americans never understand irony. We crossed over to the island of Ometepe which is in Lake Nicaragua for a few days. The weather was bad while we were there so we moved south, across the border to Liberia in Costa Rica. Our next move will be back to the Pacific coast for some more beach.

El Salvador and Northern Nicaragua

willlou — Tue, 1 Nov 2005 13:32:00 GMT

Last week we saw some of tiny El Salvador. It is beautifully green and mountainous but, like some other countries in Central America, it has a violent past and not many tourists come here.
We visited the old colonial city of Santa Ana and then got a bus up into the mountains to walk in the Cerro Verde National Park and climb the slopes of Volcano Ilamatepeque. This volcano erupted unexpectedly on 1 October this year so we knew that we would not be able to climb right up to the crater. Walking up we had marvellous views of the surrounding countryside. We were unaware that there was a 5 kilometre prohibited area around the crater, until we met two policemen who gave us a long lecture in Spanish about the dangers of a further eruption and the fact that we had broken the law by climbing up so high. Having pointed out to the policemen that there were no signs to indicate a restricted area, we were then escorted down to the next village and put on a bus back to the city.
We then travelled east to the small town of Suchitoto on the banks of Lake Suchitlan. This pretty town is seen as a future tourist attraction for the country. At present it attracts middle class El Salvadoreans who come here for the weekend.
El Salvador has a good network of big old buses (that in a former life ferried Americans kids to school)that take the potholed roads at speed. Always packed with people, luggage, women selling home made snacks and sometimes animals going to market, these are the so called chicken buses.
We are now in Nicaragua, in the city of Leon which was a Sandanista stronghold during the revolution and civil war years. There is colourful revolutionary art on the walls and cutting grafitti denouncing American imperialism.

Honduras and Lago de Atitlan

willlou — Mon, 24 Oct 2005 14:34:00 GMT

Last week we left Antigua to spend a week or so in Honduras. We visited the Mayan ruins at Copan and had planned to head to the coast to stay on the Bay Islands. We had to cancel this trip as Hurricane Wilma brewed up and the coast was put on Hurricane alert, so we fled back to the mountains of Guatamala. It has been almost three weeks since Hurricane Stan hit the country and communications have been slowly restored. We managed to get a bus to Panajachel on the shore of Lago de Alitlan. At one point everyone had to get off the bus to walk around a section where the road had collapsed. On each side of the break small communities had grown up with people selling food and drink, and porters carrying bags. The Lake itself is very beautiful and well worth the effort of getting there. We stayed in great hotel (The Iguana Perdida) on the lakeside near the village of Santa Cruz, where they have a party every Saturday night. This was outstanding fun, everyone had to be in fancy dress (they keep a supply of clothes for guests) and the local community of aging hippies turned up. They have discovered a few new tunes. We also walked along the lake side through some of the villages where the local Mayan women still wear traditional dress, with a different design for each village. Its easy to see evidence of the damage the storm has caused. Houses still a meter deep in mud and some just washed away into the river bed. The Guatamalans have worked flat out to restore communications but its going to take them years to get over this. We are off to El Salvador tomorrow where we hope to see the erupting volcano of Santa Anne, near the town of the same name.

Effects of Tropical Storm Stan

willlou — Mon, 10 Oct 2005 14:35:00 GMT

We have spent the last week in beautiful Antigua which has been little affected by the destruction wrought by Tropical Storm Stan in large parts of Guatemala. The death toll for the country is now over 600, with tens of thousands of homes washed away and extensive crop loss.
The stories and pictures in the local paper are harrowing. Villages up in the hills above Antigua have been badly damaged by mud slides caused by the heavy rains. Graham and other tourists helped over the weekend at the nearby village of Jocotenango with digging out mud from houses and building a dam.
The main road to the north of Antigua, which runs up to the Mexican border, has been washed away in several places and many bridges have collapsed. This has made it difficult for medical teams and digging equipment to reach devastated villages . Tourists in towns to the north of us have also been marooned and there are stories of riots where food has run short.
We count ourselves very lucky in being so little affected here.
We spent last week at Spanish language school where we have 4 hours a day of one to one tuition. Antigua has a dozen language schools with Americans and Europeans coming here for Spanish lessons at very good prices.
Last week we also stayed with a Guatemalan family for more practice in speaking Spanish. An interesting insight into local life. And they had a lovely dog!
Our lessons continue this week and then we will decide whether travel further north in Guatemala is atall feasible.

Antigua, Guatemala and Tropical Storm 'Stan'

willlou — Tue, 4 Oct 2005 14:38:00 GMT

We are writing this from Antigua in Guatemala where we are experiencing Tropical Storm Stan. This storm is far to the north of us in Mexico but it has meant that we have had three days of heavy rain which is beginning to effect the country. A bridge has collapsed outside the town and lots of areas are cut off because of flooding. Everywhere is very, very wet and although the storm is weakening we will have a couple more days of rain to come. Over the last week we have traveled across Guatemala, going first to Flores, a lovely town on a island on a lake, now attached by a causeway. This is on the edge of the remote, jungle part of the country, which we visited to go to the famous Mayan site at Tikal. From Flores we went to a hill town called Coban, which is in the important coffee growing area and we visited a coffee farm and sampled the product. In this country you are always guaranteed a good cup of coffee. We then passed very quickly through Guatemala City to Antigua. This is like arriving in some sublime version of Europe. The center of the city is old and untouched with beautiful houses painted in bright colours, burnt orange, yellow and red with most of them are built around plant filled courtyards. Scattered amongst the streets are picturesque ruins of Spanish churches left after a huge earthquake in the Eighteenth Century. The town is surrounded by three volcanos which are covered with forests and small villages, when you can see them. As so many tourists come here the place is packed with great restaurants and hotels and everything is of the highest quality. You could almost forget you are in Central America. At the moment, the cobbled streets are swimming in water and everything is damp under a lowering sky. This is not such a problem for us as we are here (like so many people) to learn Spanish so we spend a large part of the day at school. Well put up our school report next week. Also in the last week, Graham wrote a piece on managing your finances while traveling which will appear in Januarys edition of Wunderlust magazine.