Diary for 2017 Year of Fun


**Year of Fun trips, tours and companies**

2016-12-28 to 2018-01-01

We have listed the trips, tours and companies we have used throughout our Year of Fun just in case this is the inspiration you need before booking your trip of a lifetime!

This diary entry will be continually updated throughout our trip.

STA Travel - Victoria

Itinerary - STA have been very helpful when planning this trip. We gave them our dates and rough idea of where we wanted to go and they helped finess our itinerary. 

Africa overland trip - We booked our Africa overland tour through STA. We scouted the internet to find which company, route and dates we preferred, and althouh Intrepid isn't one of their main suppliers, they booked it all for us.

Flights - We have booked  all our flights through them. I am a bit of a bargain hunter, and have always found absolute deals on flights. However, once I had found great prices to Zanzibar from London, I called STA and they instantly quoted me over £100 cheaper (it was bittersweet...)

We have bought a mlti-flex ticket, meaning that we can provisionally book a flight and then change it nearer the time if necessary. STA recommended this to us, so far we haven't needed it, but watch this space.

Baz Bus - The hop on hop off bus through South Africa. Our lovely friend Kim recommended this and STA booked it. They even told us when there was a special deal on, if we booked it before a certain date we got a free Cape Peninsular Tour.

Shark Diving - Knowing that this was high on our agenda, STA threw this in for free as we had booked (and spent) so much with them. They only work with reputable and ethical companies, so with this in mind we know that the day will be not only good for the sharks, but also safe for us!

Contact person - Shaun

Number - 0203 784 7820

Website - www.statravel.co.uk

Intrepid

We cannot recommend this tour enough! Details of the tour are below, but as mentioned we booked through STA. Our tour guide was MJ, and if you book this tour and are fortunate enough to have him as your tour guide you will be sure to have a blast.

http://www.intrepidtravel.com/uk/kenya/zanzibar-cape-town-103741


Year of fun begins!

2016-12-31 to 2017-01-03

To cut straight to the point - We made it!

We arrived into Zanzibar airport at 16:30 New Year's Eve 2016. In true Taylor-McGlone style, we were still packing half an hour after we were to due to leave to Heathrow, due to the death of our hamster (RIP Umbongo), a hard drive that we forgot to load films with, and a Kindle that apparently you will need to load with books if you want to do any reading.

With the exception of one sister and one brother, we had a whole family lunch in Heathrow. After a lovely albeit emotional goodbye, check-in was timely, and despite sadly not being grilled and frisked by immigration (one of these days it will happen, here's hoping!) we were very excited, which called for some airport prosecco, naturally.

If you've ever met James, you will know he can be a tiny bit grumpy. Africa 2015 saw his alter ego; he was happy, friendly, and people even liked him! It was then that his nickname 'African James' was born. Since then, Katryn has longed for African James to come back into her life and has dreamed of the next trip to Africa.

However, upon changing flights in Doha, she was sad to learn that Middle Eastern James was tired and hungry, therefore unsurprisingly grumpy to the max. Apparently Middle-Eastern Katryn walks around with her flies undone. We shan't be making a trip back that end anytime soon.

We landed without a hitch, and after a 50 USD taxi to our hostel we settled into our new home for the next few days. Our plans to explore the local town and restaurants were quickly changed once we were informed of recent nocturnal muggings on the beach outside our hostel where tourists were threatened with machetes...

New Year's Eve was always important in this trip - seeing in the year that has been aptly named 'The Year of Fun', greeting the excitement that 2017 would bring. It was a big shame that African Katryn and James (finally he had arrived!) were too jet-lagged to see these promises through... 11pm saw us both in bed. We were briefly woken by cheering from the other residents as midnight arrived, we whispered "Happy New Year" to each other and rolled over. Not quite what we had planned, but amazing and necessary just the same.

The first day of the Year of Fun could not have been any more different to how we had planned. Eager to change dollars to Tanzanian Shillings, we took a walk on New Year's Day along the beach to the local 'town' of Paje. A town that we now believe to be a joke on tourists. What is Paje like? Well, we can't tell you. Every person we asked told us a different way to Paje, some even confused as to why we were asking. Four hours later and both burnt to a crisp that has since turned to blisters, we headed back. The next morning saw exactly the same comedy of errors play out. After subsequently getting some shade, and realising that paying in local currency would actually only save us 10% we gave up and tried to relax, understandably the term 'f*ck Paje' quickly became a well-used saying.

The rest of the time here has been spent lazing by the beautiful pool in hammocks, swimming (practising our handstands, of course!) and ordering food and waiting 2 hours for it to arrive. We dipped our feet into the sea (with our faces completely covered with sarongs to avoid any more unnecessary burns) which was gorgeous and warm, like bath water! We had lots of fun spotting crabs and fish, and wrote our names in the sand.

We met some lovely guys from Serbia (if you're reading this, please comment so we can catch up!) who we enjoyed hanging out with, but were slightly envious that they successfully made their way to Paje (or did they really...?).

Today we are leaving to meet our group for our Africa trip on the other side of Zanzibar island, in Stone Town. We will spend 39 days with them, touring through Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Namibia and onto South Africa. We are excited, if not a little bit apprehensive. And if we don't see any signs for Paje on our drive over to Stone Town, we won't be surprised!

Quote of the day

 Day Zero - the day we arrived (New Year's Eve):
"I hate backpacking"
Katryn Taylor, 30.12.2016 (still 2016, so the Year of Fun hadn't officially started yet), 2 hours after arriving.


Zanzibar - Swahili for 'The Island of Food Poisoning'

2017-01-03 to 2017-01-08

On 3rd Jan, we ventured over to the other side of Zanzibar island to start our overland tour. We met our tour guide MJ in the hotel in Stone Town and had our pre-arranged welcome meeting. We had a quick explore of Stone Town and ate some weird cheese pizza, before joining the rest of our group for dinner. The group we had joined had been together since Nairobi and had seen the gorillas and been on safari together. There was another new couple and a couple of solo travellers joining the group the same time as James and I, so it was comforting to know we were not complete outsiders!

The following morning we went on a Spice Farm tour. We had a tour guide take us around the Spice Farm and it was incredible to learn where so many spices came from. We were told to smell different leaves and guess which spice we thought they made. We even saw a tree that produced antiseptic sap. You could rub the sap straight onto a wound to heal it.A highlight of the day was seeing a local chap climb to the top of a coconut tree using just a bit of rope around his feet as support. To warn people under the tree that coconuts would be falling he sang the coconut song, all the way up to the top and whilst cutting coconuts. It was a song in Swahili and went on for a while, so if you're peckish for a coconut in Zanzibar and there are none already cut down, there really is no quick fix!

After the tour, we headed north to the pristine beaches of Nungwi, where we spent the afternoon having a walk along the beach and drinking some beer with our group. Having seen the beautiful clear waters we decided to organise a snorkelling trip for the following morning. A huge group of us all went for dinner that night at what looked to be a lovely restaurant along the beach. However, in the small hours of the morning, I was violently sick. After spending much of the night on a chair in the bathroom it was apparent that we wouldn't be going snorkelling! James was sick not long after, and together we spent the day running in and out of the bathroom whilst watching films on our laptop. It was comforting to know that we weren't the only ones to have been sick from the restaurant, however we certainly were the ones suffering the most. To look back on this now, we are very pleased that we had air conditioning, a toilet within crawling distance and we were in a bungalow not a tent! The following day, a mini bus drove us to the port in Zanzibar to get a ferry over to Dar es Salaam (mainland Tanzania). By this point James had pretty much recovered and was able to stand on the deck and enjoy journey. I was indoors, with my head in my hands and a sick bag at the ready!Arriving in Dar es Salaam was pretty chaotic. It's somewhere that I would like to observe for a week and then come up with a plan on how to make it run more efficiently. The fear of being sick however, kept me sitting at the side whilst James located the bags.

We regrouped and then together found the Intrepid truck, which was waiting for us near the arrivals. This truck was to be our home for the next 39 days. When we got on the truck it was great to see who was actually on the rest of the trip. We met DeArne and Matt, a couple from Tasmania who were sitting on the table opposite us on the truck. I had to apologise that I felt like I was dying, the words "I'm normally I'm a lot more fun" were used! There are 18 of us on this leg of the trip, with our tour guide MJ, our driver Ben and our chef Peter.The following days went by as a bit of a blur, with me barely touching food or being able to drink a lot of water. A fond memory is being handed a bottle of Coke by James, and it tasted like the greatest thing on earth.

Days were spent travelling on the truck and pitching our tents when we arrived at each campsite. The drive through Tanzania was very interesting. We went from a built up city to vast fields of sisal and then on to moutainous regions of farmland and bush. James was extremely excited as we entered the Valley of Mbuyu or the Valley of Baobabs. As we streamed through landscape after landscape we saw hundreds of little villages and locals who were equally interested in the Mzungus (white man/ traveller) as we were of them. I would describe it as the atypical infrastructure when you think of Africa. Small villages, possibly not even on maps. The new roads have made it easier for villages to gain access to water, but it's still far cry from what us in the Western world would recognise as a village. James noticed that there were green crosses painted on many of the houses by the side of the road. MJ told us that this means that these houses are soon to be destroyed. They have been built on land owned by the government with no prior planning permissions, and in the next year they will be destroyed. The families inside them would not be rehoused and would simply be left homeless. The crosses went on for what seemed for ever.

Next stop is Malawi where we will be camping next to Lake Malawi. We have high hopes for seeing a crocodile, although our Australian friends are less enthused as they are commonplace back home for them. Looks like it will be a hunting trip for 2 then!

Quote of the day:

"That chicken looks like it would f*ck you up"

James McGlone, 04.01.2016, during the Spice Tour in Zanzibar


Malawi and Zambia

2017-01-09 to 2017-01-16

Arriving into Malawi and I'm beginning to feel a little better! The persistent stomach cramps are easing and I'm able to eat bigger portions, which is great as the food that is cooked for us is really very tasty.

For most of the journey we were driving alongside Lake Malawi. Lake Malawi is about 580 kilometers (350 miles) long and roughly 75 kilometers (47 miles) wide. It shares shores with Mozambique and Tanzania where it is known as Lake Nyasa (in Tanzania) and Lago Niassa (in Mozambique). The lake itself has been estimated to be as old as 2 million years old. It is the southernmost lake in the east African rift system and is home to about 1000 species of cichlids (and of course crocodiles!) At its southernmost point it feeds into the Great Zambezi river.

From the truck we could see clouds of gray just above the waterline of Lake Malawi. They looked like smoke, but we were told that these were lake flies (which are apparently a delicacy)- it was amazing! Apparently they weren't mosquitos - to this point James and I have apparently been quite attractive to them, so we were relieved at this.

We spent two nights camping on the shores of Lake Malawi, each night at a different side. As soon as we arrived at the campsites on each night we checked out the beach for crocodiles 9waving our head torches over the lake in the hope that we would see their eyes shining in the light) but again to no avail. Some of us took a rowboat ride to a small island in the lake made up of rocks. On the rock we climbed to the other side and were able to see Mozambique in the distance, it was beautiful. One local did a couple of plaits in my hair and told me he would braid my whole head for just $20 (US). If we weren't on such a budget I would have been keen, mainly because James was adamant I would look ridiculous...

After fun on the rocks we rowed back to the beach, and a slight case of mistaken identity led me to thank and shake the wrong guy's hand as we got off the canoe. James was hysterical, as the chap was another local who was minding his own business and had nothing to do with the boat or the fun we had on the rock. If there was ever an awkward moment in the history of Africa, this was it.

The following morning we did a village tour with a local guide. We were welcomed into locals' homes and saw their way of life. There was one water well in the village that was easy for us to pump the water, but not so easy for us to carry the water on our heads as the locals do. We were told that they learn to do this from 5 years old and that's why some don't even need to use their hands to balance it! Everything in the village seemed completely relaxed, a far cry from the hustle and bustle of London that we are used to.

In the afternoon, James and I along with 2 other truck mates Dan and Eryn went on a 2 hour horse ride throughout the jungle and villages near our campsite. It was what James wanted to do and he clearly loved every second of it. His horse was called Toots and lived up to the name, it farted in my horse’s face constantly.

My horse was called Boots, and it's probably a good time to mention that I don't like horses, at all Needless to say, I spent the whole 2 hours thinking I was going to be thrown off. Whilst the scenery and experience was great, my heart was on tenterhooks the whole time.

My fear became a reality when at the end of the tour we went swimming with the horses in Lake Malawi. We rode into the lake bareback (with no saddle) and as soon as Boots walked into the water I could tell she didn't like it, and neither did I. She tried to turn back to the beach, but the guide tethered her to his horse and led her further out into the lake. She wouldn't do the turnings I tried to get her to do, and when the other horse pulled her right, she stayed left, and I fell off into the lake! One of our truck mates is a bogan called Brad from Australia, and his doctor had advised him not to go swimming in Lake Malawi, as there are parasites that would cause infection. Remembering this - I was desperate to get out the water. I jumped back on Boots and we walked straight out. Not my favourite experience, and I was very glad when we were all safe on the land and Boots was tied up to the fence!

Sad that I hadn't seen a crocodile yet, but ecstatic that I hadn't seen one whilst I was on the horse, we asked around if anyone knew if there were crocodiles in the lake. A local told people in the group that a local woman had been killed by a crocodile last year. There were warning posters in the mens' toilets (but not the ladies’?) saying people shouldn't go swimming because of the crocodiles, but the manager said there weren't any.

In the evening we played Cards Against Humanity with the rest of the group, and went crocodile hunting in the evening again with our torches. And of course, there were no crocodiles to be seen. However, Zambia is our next destination where we will be doing a game drive, fingers crossed for the crocs!

Zambia

Zambia is beautiful, and we got off to a great start. When we were at the border to cross from Malawi to Zambia the television was on, showing what can only be described as Zambian EastEnders. We couldn't hear what was being said, but James narrated it for me… We saw what looked like African Pat Butcher with massive earrings, a really old chick which was of course African Dot Cotton, and a bald guy which was clearly African Max Branning.

The campsite we were staying at was incredible - right on the river. The other side of the river was part of South Luangwa Game Reserve. We were told that hippos would come out the water at night and feed on grass where our tents were! We had to pitch our tents in a circle, leaving enough room for hippos and elephants to move freely in between each tent, if we didn’t, they would just squash the tents. We could hear the hippos make a grunting noise which shows they are marking their territory. We didn’t hear any grunting during the night and were relieved that none were outside our tent when we went to the toilet first thing. We were later told however, that we wouldn’t be able to hear if they were by our tents as the grunting is only done in water… so who knows what was happening during the silence in the night! We got up early to go on a morning game drive, which was amazing.

The aim for Africa is to see the Big 5. The Big 5 are historically the 5 animals in Africa that are the hardest to kill, and are lion, buffalo, leopard, rhino and elephant.

On the two game drives in Zambia we saw 4 of the 5, which was amazing and the best we would see, as there are no rhinos in South Luangwa.

Each animal that we saw was a very special sighting. Instead of seeing a pride of lions, we saw one solitary lion asleep in the sun. He was a lovely male lion (see quote below) and he opened his eyes to look at us before drifting back off to sleep.

We saw the buffalo grazing, one in a bush and the other in the open. As I recall from a previous safari trip in the Masai Mara, there were so many buffalo they were everywhere! Therefore it was quite strange to see just a couple here, but I'm sure as the trip continues we will have the pleasure of seeing many more.

We were so fortunate to see a leopard on our drive. Leopards are notoriously difficult to spot in game drives as they often hide up trees and are nocturnal. Our guide spotted the leopard in the tree and stopped the vehicle. We saw it do a huge stretch and yawn, and then it was off, down the tree and into the bush. The other 4x4 carrying the other half of our group was not as fortunate to see this.

The elephants were enjoying grazing, and the mother got quite protective when we drove near, so the atmosphere was a little tense!

We also saw both of our favourite animals - James was hoping for hyenas, which did not disappoint. There were 3 of them and they were so close to the back of our vehicle where James and I were sitting -  it was amazing and James was able to get the shots he was after.

My favourite is the giraffe, followed closely by zebra, so I was blown away when we saw them grazing together! I got a great shot of them both together, certainly one for the wall when we are back home!

On the evening game drive we stopped for a break at the lake in the game (Luangwa River) where we were given orange juice and popcorn. There were so many hippos in the lake, and you could spot them as they just look like brown mounds in the water. in a waterhole nearby, we saw some hippos fighting! They fight with their mouths and have huge teeth, it was pretty tense to watch!

And then the best part... I finally got to see some crocs! You could see their eyes and heads pop above the water if you were quick! I was visiting the 'Bush Toilet' (peeing in a bush) when James saw it the first time, so I then had my eyes peeled waiting for it to emerge again when I returned.

The rest of the evening game drive was packed with animals. When driving through the park we suddenly saw about 50 impala run past our vehicle, and about 30 seconds later some more ran past, getting separated as they ran past trees, a waterhole in the park and even our truck. We all waited in silence, wondering what would follow, and low and behold it was a pack of painted dogs (also known as African wild dogs). These dogs are native to Africa, and are not in all game parks, so we were fortunate to see them anyway, but very lucky to have seen them in action! The dogs sniffed for the impalas’ tracks and then ran on. We followed behind, hoping to see a kill, but the dogs slowed down, and a few of them just lay in the road chilling in the African sun! We left them to it and changed direction, when we were able to see so many other wonderful animals, including Crawshays zebra, hippos and spotted genets.

The whole day had been amazing and on the drive back we were all in high spirits. However, it turned out that the drive out of the game park would be the highlight of the whole day.  As we were leaving the park, we saw an elephant on the road coming straight towards us. We stopped the vehicle, and it still just came straight towards us. It came right up to our 4x4, perhaps less than a meter away. I can honestly say that my heart was in my mouth, and I don't remember breathing throughout the whole experience. It stopped and looked at us for what felt like an eternity and then carried on walking. It was amazing, albeit darned scary! The game drivers don't carry weapons and if it had approached the vehicle and started to rock it I'm really not sure what would have happened! James was on the seat on the edge of the vehicle and I was sandwiched in the middle, so technically I was safe…!

Between the morning and evening game drive, I rationed my money and bought myself a chocolate brownie from the restaurant at the campsite. There were many monkeys living in and running around our campsite, one in particular caught my eye as it was limping when on all fours, it appeared he had hurt his left hand. I had had one small bite of my brownie, when the cute limping monkey came down a nearby tree and straight towards me. He looked me straight in the eye and came over to me, and braisendly took my brownie from my plate. James’s reaction was the best, as he stood up straight away, and shouted “oi, no!” He then started chasing the monkey, shouting “Come here!” It was hilarious, as I have no idea what he would have done if he had got the brownie back from the monkey, I certainly wouldn’t have wanted to eat it! The monkey climbed up the tree and ate my brownie, whilst staring me straight in the eye. The waiter then told us it was likely he got his hand injury from trying to steal some very hot food and had been burnt. I was much less sympathetic than I normally would have been after that!

Zambia has been spectacular. We were both left with such an adrenaline rush after our elephant encounter, it is by far the most outstanding experience of this trip until now, and we are looking forward to many more.

Quote of the day:

"Is it a female lion?"

Truck mate Katherine, whilst we were all watching a fully grown male lion, complete with mane.

Quote of the day:

"Oi you! No! Come here!"

James McGlone, when a monkey jumped on to our table and stole my nearly whole chocolate brownie.


Zimbabwe

2017-01-16 to 2017-01-23

Zimbabwe has absolutely blown us away.

On the afternoon that we arrived, we were taken on a tour of The Great Zimbabwe, a ruined city that was the capital of the Kingdom of Zimbabwe until 15th century. The hike was great, albeit a little dangerous as it was chucking it down, and some of our truck mates were in flip flops on steep cliffs…

We had the opportunity to go on an optional walking safari, which was 100USD. We didn’t have high hopes for the day, as we were questioning how close you can really get to animals on foot. The day was outstanding, and the fact that we had no expectations made it even better.

A chap called Ian came to explain a bit about what he does with the rhinos and how they are endangered. There are about 29,000 rhinoceroses left in the wild today; this mainly consists of the southern white rhino. Poaching is so out of control in Africa, he explained that there are armed guards roaming the park protecting the rhinos. The majority of poachers caught would prefer to fight when caught rather than be arrested and face a Zimbabwean prison, which ultimately ends up with poachers being shot, killed and left for the scavengers to clean up.

Rhinos are being poached for their horns, which are usually shipped to Asia and sell for up to $300,000. It is medicinally used by men as a form of viagra, as they believe that this will enhance their sexual performance and encourage growth, like a rhino. Which it doesn’t. More recently,  people in Vietnam have been snorting it. Ian explained that this doesn’t actually give people a high, it’s just seen as a sign of status and wealth. Ian said that to get the horn off the rhino, poachers are killing the rhino and taking the head with them to remove the horn when outside the park. He would prefer to cut off the horns and sell them to Asia, which is completely harmless to the rhino and the rhino doesn’t need its horn as a function. This means that the rhino would still live, it can still be used in Asian medicine and the money made can go back into conservation. Currently in Zimbabwe, by law they have to cut off the rhino horns and give it to the government for safekeeping. But it isn’t known what happens to them after that.

We drove about 10 minutes into the park, stopped the jeep, and followed Ian in silent single-file. Seconds later, we were face to face with 3 rhinos, just chilling out together. We stood there, jaws to the floor, just watching them, less than 5m away from us. While we were watching the rhinos and listening to Ian talk about (and to) the rhinos, we were totally oblivious to the 4th rhino which had managed to flank us and appear out of the bushes less than 4 meters away. James very swiftly moved behind the rest of the group as he was waiting for Ian to yell “run”. After a couple of seconds (which felt like hours) the rhino turned and walked back towards his friends, and every one could breathe. After that we all headed back to the jeep where Ian proclaimed that even his heart was in his mouth with the surprise appearance of the 4th rhino. After a lovely lunch that they whipped up from the bottom of the jeep, we hiked up a very steep mountain and up into a cave. The cave had paintings on the wall that dated back two thousand years. It was fascinating. We hiked up the rest of the mountain and were met with an incredible view. After a short descent, we were back in the jeep and he took us to a local bar to try the local beer. It wasn’t the best beer we’ve ever had, but the locals were lovely and they tried to dance with us… which was fun for about 20 seconds, and then we were just dancing, in broad daylight, with locals gathered around watching!

The jeep had a tracker seat, which was located on the left of the bonnet, completely out in the open with no seatbelt. James and I both had a ride on it through the game park, and it was exhilarating! We were so close (and vulnerable!) to the rest of the game it really was a thrilling ride and a great way to end the day.

In the city of Bulawayo we had free time, and with the rest of our truck group we visited a street market. After some deliberation and haggling, we purchased a wooden chess set, which has the Big 5 as the pieces, and hippos as pawns. It’s amazing and I love it, we just have the slight problem of carrying it around on our backs for the rest of the year... It does mean that if we ever get bored of talking to each other, or fancy arguing about something new, a game of chess is in order.

Throughout Zimbabwe, the truck was often stopped at police checkpoints. One time, a policeman walked round the truck and did a fist bump (mum - this is similar to a high-5) to all of us, and then he let us drive on. Another police officer came on the truck and asked MJ for a list of all our names and nationalities, then asked to see mine and James’s passport, and then he left. However, one time, it was a lot more serious. A policeman got on the truck, and counted how many of us there were and then said “I am going to arrest you all.” No one dared speak as we weren’t sure what was actually happening. The policeman then told us that not wearing a seatbelt was a crime in Zimbabwe and that we were all being arrested. As opposed to going to jail, we all had to pay a fine of 5 USD. Still none of us said anything, until MJ took him off the truck to discuss further. MJ told the policeman that he would pay the fine, if correct paperwork was completed. I shan’t go into the politics of Zimbabwe here and will leave you to draw your own conclusions as to the legitimacy of our situation, but MJ handled it very well, and once he was back on the truck, we all put our seatbelts on, and let our hearts return to normal speed.

The highlight of Zimbabwe was always going to be Victoria Falls, and it exceeded all expectations. We had a full free day in Victoria Falls, where James and I went hiking inside Victoria Falls National Park park. There is a clear route of where to walk, and the first area to see the Falls was amazing; we were absolutely in awe. However, each opening to the Falls on the route presented an ever better view of the Falls than the previous one, and it wasn’t long before we came face to face with the main part of the Falls. There are no words to describe it that would do it justice. It really was breath-taking, like nothing I could have prepared myself for.

Most of our group finished at Victoria Falls, with just 8 of us carrying on to Cape Town. We had a sad farewell dinner with our full group, complete with some African singers and dancers at the restaurant, making for a great send off.

The next day, James and I did a full day canoeing trip on the Upper Zambezi, the river above the Victoria Falls, and we absolutely smashed it! We only argued once throughout the whole canoe ride, and it was nothing to do with actually canoeing, he told me that our guide couldn’t find any hippos that normally lived in that area so one could pop up right next to us at any time. He basically walked himself into an argument with that one.

We canoed close to the bank when we were going through hippo territory, and we could see many of them in the water, just meters away from us. Not long into the trip, the guide saw a solitary male hippo unexpectedly emerge from the water, and we had to canoe very quickly to the bank and get out of the water. Male hippos get kicked out of the group by the dominant male as each pod of females only has one male, which was why he was such a surprise to see! This poor adolescent male is on his own, and when he grows he will return to the group and fight the male for the territory and females in the pod.

The Zambezi was so peaceful, and we were the only ones on the river that we could see. However, we did have a very scary moment, when the guides couldn’t see any hippos in an area where they normally inhabit. I looked up on the bank and saw a huge butt with a little tale, and shouted that there was a hippo.

Our guide shouted “Quick, reverse!” as we canoed backwards as fast as humanly possible. We pulled the canoe on the bank, just as the hippo charged down the bank toward us at full speed and at the very last second bombed straight into the river. Hippos are herbivores, and therefore won’t eat humans. However, they are deadly to humans when humans get in between them and the water, which this situation very nearly was! It was an immense, albeit scary experience which only left me wanting to get even closer to what was fast becoming my new favourite animal. Shortly after, the guides led us ashore and did us a bbq from scratch. We had some delicious chicken and salad, before getting back in the canoes and doing another hour along the river. All in all we canoed over 8km, and although a costly experience, it was worth every cent.

The following day we met the people joining our group and coming with us all the way to Cape Town. There are now 16 of us in total that will be going to Cape Town. With people leaving and new people coming there has been a change in the group dynamic, and it’s almost like it’s a completely different trip altogether. Looking forward to what the next chapter of our African adventure has to offer!

Quote of the day:

"Have you heard of Robert Mugabe?"

"Who? Robot Mugabu?"

Truck mate Erin

Quote of the day:

"MJ, when do we get our passport stamped?"

James McGlone, when we had just spent 3 hours in immigration getting our passports stamped in Zimbabwe, to wind MJ up.

Quote of the day:

"Holy sh*t, the sky is blue here!"

James McGlone, when looking out the window coming into Victoria Falls 19.01.2017


Botswana, Namibia and the end of the tour

2017-01-23 to 2017-02-09

From now until the end of the overland tour, we just have Botswana, Namibia and South Africa to visit. All three countries have different immigration structures, as British citizens we do not have to pay for visas into these countries, which is amazing news for us - as up to now we have paid nearly £400 for visas alone!

First stop was Botswana, where we had an early game drive around Chobe National Park. Chobe is well known as one of the best wildlife parks in the world, and is particularly famous for its vast amount of elephants. As with every game drive, it was tense and exciting to see what animals we would encounter. Whilst the game drive was generous in showing us vast amounts of impala, it didn’t really show us much else. In the afternoon however, we took a cruise along the Chobe River, which marks the perimeter of the park, and it was like looking on into a different game park completely. From the moment the boat left the dock, we saw crocodiles and hippos. About half way through the tour, we saw elephants, then more elephants, and then some more!

On the other side of the boat, we were fascinated to see 2 juvenile giraffes, fighting. James and I have seen this in Attenborough’s Africa documentaries, where giraffes use their necks to strike each other and the winner claims the territory and herd. We were told that the fight we were watching was just play-fighting, but nevertheless it was pretty awesome.

Once the boat had turned, I saw the greatest sight of all, a fully-grown male crocodile basking on the bank. We must have spooked him as he then waddled quickly into the water. I caught it on camera, and these are images for our wall in our new house. But as James is a Photographer and it is his job to provide pics for the blog (I can’t do everything!) the crocodile pictures on this blog are his.

Further along, we saw a bask of crocodiles. A boat ahead of us told us we had just missed a kill - a thirsty impala having a risky drink met an adult crocodile, and after being dragged into the water and killed, it was shared among the group of crocodiles - it was harrowing, but fascinating.  

The next stop was the Okavango Delta, which covers up to 15,000 square kilometres of Kalahari Desert in northern Botswana. To get to the Delta, we had to cross the Delta’s Panhandle, which meant all our group, including our truck had to get on a small ferry. I cheekily asked to join them up in the control room to see how it all worked - the man let me play with the ramp controller, and I watched the ramp lift up and down as we were crossing the river.

In recent months the Okavango Delta has been completely dry, and our guide MJ was worried there would not be enough water for us to visit the Delta as planned. However, all the rainy evenings, nights and mornings that the group has been moaning about (putting up or down a tent in the pelting rain really isn’t fun for anyone) had all been worth it - the Delta had water, and it meant that we could do the most amazing activity - ride on a mokoro boat to a remote island in the Delta to spend the night. A mokoro is a dug-out canoe, and is controlled much like a punting boat that you see in Oxford, but it is without a doubt a lot harder, relying on stomach muscles and very, very good balance. Each mokoro came with a driver, so we just had to sit back and enjoy the tranquil journey. The remote island was exactly that, there were no human inhabitants, just animals (we didn’t see any lions, but we certainly heard them roaring!). The mokoro drivers were our guides for our time there, and they dug us a long drop toilet (basically they dug a really deep hole) about 20 meters from where we had pitched our tents, and when you needed the toilet you took the spade with you, which you used to cover your business in the hole with some earth. When you returned, you would leave the spade in the middle of the walk way. The spade pretty much acted like an ‘engaged’ sign, if the spade wasn’t there, you weren’t to go further into the bushes.

We went on a mokoro safari, where we came within meters of a pod of hippos. I counted 30 hippos, but we were told that you should always double the amount you can actually see to get the real amount of how many hippos are present. Hippos stay in water during the day to keep cool, and can stay under the water for up to 8 minutes, so you can never really be too sure where hippos are. The mokoros took us to another island in the Delta where we did a safari walk. The guides led us in single file through the island, trekking for animals. We saw warthogs and elephants, and tracks of a stealthy lion, but the lion itself was nowhere to be seen. As we were on a walking safari, I’m not sure this was a bad thing.

In the evening, our guides made us a fire to sit around, and they graced us with traditional songs and dances. They asked us to reciprocate with a song and a dance, and the best one we could collectively come up with that the majority of our group knew, was the hokey cokey, or as the australians call it, the ‘hokey pokey’(?!)! There was quite a language barrier, so they definitely didn’t know what the song meant, but they were happy to get involved and put their left foot in, then out, then in and out, then in and out again, and subsequently, shake it all about.

The night ended with our guides singing the Okavango Delta’s National Anthem. It brought a whole new level of tranquility, knowing we were literally in the middle of nowhere, with great company, listening to a lovely, humbling song. After our night in the Delta, we were taken in the mokoros back to our campsite in Umvuvu, where we were very happy to see proper toilets and showers!

Back on mainland, we were given a lesson in how to operate a mokoro. I had enjoyed a rare hot shower in the morning and even treated the group by washing my hair, so I was adamant I wasn’t going to fall in. It required a lot of balance, confidence, and the thing that I lack the most, a good sense of direction. In summary, I didn’t fall in, but I sucked. Of course, James was a natural, and managed to take his guide for a lovely little ride. His parking needed some practice though, as it looked like a 10 point turn when he tried to moore his nokoro at the end! My guide was just happy I had managed to stop going round in circles!

That evening we had a lovely dinner of sausages in buns and some fit ‘lamington’ cake to celebrate Australia Day, our Australian truck mates had gone to great lengths to involve us all in Australia Day celebration, as if we were in Australia itself. We were still in the Delta that night, and were told that it was common for animals to roam around the tents. Another exciting night in Africa, and an unnerving sleep thinking that a lion would just unzip our tent and just come straight in.

Namibia

The following day we crossed the border into Namibia. Namibia is on high alert for Ebola, and because of this there was a lady taking all of our temperatures at the border to make sure we weren’t bringing the disease into the country. It looked like a very fun machine she was using, and I asked to try it out on her. It was like a gun; you aim the red light at the person’s neck and their temperature comes up on a little screen. I tested a few people’s temperature and when my giggles had subsided I asked the lady what would happen if my temperature was too high. She said she would kindly call me a doctor, but thankfully it had never happened before.

At our next campsite we had some free time, and a group of us walked along the main road and found a Sports Bar. The bartender didn’t have any drinks to serve us, but she did have a football pitch, complete with goalposts and children playing. The next thing we know, about 15 little kids were running towards the pitch wanting to play football with us. I sat and watched, whilst James got stuck in and played, for a few minutes. James and I left our group battling it out on the pitch, to go back to the campsite and look for crocodiles whilst enjoying a cold beer.

In Grootfontein we visited the San Bushmen, the oldest ethnic group in Namibia, having inhabited Southern Africa for an estimated 20,000 years! Today around 30,000 of them live in Namibia, but only 2,000 of them still follow a traditional way of life.

The Bushmen communicate by using a series of clicks, they taught us how to say a few things, but we either couldn’t make the right noise, or instantly forgot them. They took us on a tour of their village and showed us how they get water from trees, use different plants as medicine, and he even dug deep to find some what we know today as ‘deep heat’ for one of our truck mate’s sore muscles from the football the previous day. It was fascinating to see their way of life. The San people are very small, and this is down to their diet. They are all naked, which made it really hard for us to know where to look! They sang some traditional songs for us and danced around a fire. I bought a necklace they had handcrafted and James bought himself a bushman knife, which I’m sure won’t be needed for the rest of this trip, but that’s not the point, apparently.

The next part of our journey was on to Etosha National Park. Our truck was able to drive through the national park, so just driving to our campsite at one side of the park was a gamedrive in itself. We went on an evening game drive in a 4x4, and managed to see some lions mating. The event was very short, and the female letting out a huge yawn was a sign that it also wasn’t that enjoyable.

With each campsite we arrived at, it was clear the terrain was becoming drier and drier and by now we were camping in the desert. At Spitzkoppe, in the Namib Desert, we were taken on a hike to see some original cave paintings. These paintings had been a lot more exposed to people and animals than the ones at Motopo in Zimbabwe. However they still were impressive and it’s fascinating to see how bushmen used cave paintings as a form of communication.

Some of our group decided not to come on the guided tour, and to climb Spitzkoppe mountain instead. They were told that the hike would take 6 hours and they were advised not to climb it, but thinking it would take just 30 minutes, they started to climb at 5pm. The rest of us enjoyed a beautiful sunset on a neighbouring mountain and came back down for dinner. During dinner we joked that the other group had got lost, and sure enough, as we were doing our washing up in the dark, we saw torches flashing halfway up the mountain. MJ communicated with the group that as they were so far off the track they should be on, they should stay put and he would get help. This involved a lot of organising from MJ’s side, and as two guides started the ascent up the mountain  at around 10pm, all we could do from the bottom of the mountain was watch torches flashing and hope that the guides would get to our group safely but quickly. Thankfully, the guides and group members were down the mountain safely by 2.30am, and no one had been attacked by the leopards in the area.

The next morning we went on to Cape Cross - a small headland in the South Atlantic, one of the largest colonies of Cape fur seals in the world. Even though it was pretty stinky, it was fantastic! There were seals everywhere, and we were able to get pretty close, so we managed to get some great shots.

We journeyed on to Swakopmund and James and I instantly fell in love with this germanic, coastal city. Here we stayed in chalets of 4, I stayed with 3 other girls from our truck and James stayed in a batchelor chalet. Having just spent the last 30 odd days sharing a two-man tent, this was a welcome break! We went for dinner on the first night there for Maria’s birthday, and ended up dancing the night away in a Namibian disco. We did quad biking the following morning in the Namib Desert, which needless to say, I sucked at. James had a manual quadbike and was able to get to speeds of 58mph! And fishtail the hell out of the quad! I felt like I was doing 100mph, but James kindly reminded me that it was probably more like 10mph, as I certainly wasn’t the fastest in the group…

We had a romantic picnic on the beach for lunch, when suddenly James became very itchy. When we left the beach and ventured back into town, it had become apparent that he had been savaged. The pharmacist told us he had been attacked by sand fleas, which tend to single one person out and stay away from everyone else. In this case, they liked James, and were not at all attracted to me. James stayed in that night to avoid his bites bursting, whilst the rest of the group were taken to some bars in the township, where we had a great night. We arrived at a bar and were the only white people there. We mingled in well with the locals - I even had a dance-off with a lady in the toilets, and she was impressed with my ‘white girl moves’ with my ‘small ass’... Probably the best compliment I’ll get all year, so I’ll take it!

James and I had to cancel our bike tour of Swakopmund the following day as his feet had swelled up so big that he couldn’t wear any closed shoes (this was obviously hysterical, but only now am I allowed to laugh at it).

The most famous part of the Namib Desert is its vast dune fields, and here we were able to climb Dune 45 - the most photographed dune in the world. It was huge, and really quite steep to climb. We climbed it first thing so that we were on Dune 45 for sunrise. It was a truly awesome sight.  While others in the group walked down the dune the way we had come up, I am immature and slid down the dune on my bum. It was harder than I expected, and when ¾ of the way down, I lay horizontally on the dune and teddybear rolled down. It was a lot more fun than I remember it being as a child, and having sand in every oraphis for the rest of the day was totally worth it! We visited the Sossusvlei and the Deadvlei, which is home to 900 year old dead trees. which were both as amazing as expected - the pictures just don’t do them justice!

Next stop in Namibia was Fish River Canyon - the second largest canyon in the world after the Grand Canyon. Neither of us have ever seen a canyon before and weren’t really that sure what to expect. This is the second time on this trip that that way of thinking has worked in our favour, as Fish River Canyon was spectacular. We hiked around it (not in it!) and when we reached the end we had a lovely surprise waiting for us - Peter, Ben and MJ had prepared cheese and wine for us to enjoy whilst watching sunset over the canyon. It was out of this world, such a great experience and a wonderful view. It was very overwhelming and a sad realisation that our overland adventure is coming to an end.

The next night was spent camping by Orange River, and we went on a canoeing trip along it the following day. Our final full day on the trip was spent driving to our campsite, which was situated in Klawer, South Africa on a vineyard. Naturally we did some wine tasting and spent time appreciating the fine wines produced there.

Our overland tour ended at lunchtime upon our arrival in Cape Town. The truck parked up outside the hotel where MJ’s next tour would start (the reverse itinerary to what we have just done). And there we were, on our own with nothing more than a hostel reservation, our massive backpacks, and only each other for company. The group tour was over, and our independant fun was just about to begin.


Cape Town - Durban

2017-02-09 to 2017-03-07

Cape Town

Although our tour finished upon arrival in Cape Town, the fun with our group was far from over. After checking into our respective hostels, 7 of us met in town in the afternoon to climb Table Mountain together. Table Mountain is a well-known mountain overlooking Cape Town it’s aptly named as when the cloud is low over the mountain it looks like a tablecloth. MJ told us that if it was a clear day we should climb it, because as soon as the clouds come out, visibility is so poor you can’t climb it. However, Cape Town was experiencing a heat wave, making climbing a mountain really, really tough. The 1hr 45 minute slog was worth it; the view from the top was immense. After a cooling ice cream, we took the cable car down and met our tour group for a fond farewell dinner.

Cape Town is great, and James and I had a lot of fun exploring the town together. We never had any problems security-wise, but some of our tour group were mugged, twice in two days. We had previously booked shark cage diving in Gansbaai, courtesy of STA Travel as we booked the tour, flights and the Baz Bus with them. Gansbaai is famous for shark diving, and divers see sharks ‘100% of the time.’ However, just our bad luck, the heatwave had brought orcas to the area, who had scared off the sharks. Divers went down in the cages and saw no sharks, but smelt like fish upon their return as they still chummed for the sharks. Our diving was cancelled because of this, giving us more time to enjoy Cape Town.

The following day we were booked on a Cape Peninsular Tour, which took us on a ferry to Duiker island to see fur seals, to Boulders Beach to see the penguin colony, a bike ride through Cape Point Nature Reserve, to the Cape of Good Hope, and Cape Point, It was pretty fascinating and the day was a great success. And James finally got to see the animal he’s been waiting to see all along, the elusive Eland.

Shark diving was cancelled again, so we rebooked for a few days later, hoping the orcas would have left and the sharks would be out in force.

Our lovely friend Kim had recommended the Baz bus to us, a hop-on hop-off bus that goes daily from Cape Town to Durban. Providing you’re staying at hostel recognised by the Baz Bus, it picks you up and drops you right at your specified hostel. Through STA we bought a one way ticket, allowing us to travel the coast and the famous garden route at leisure, before arriving in Durban to stay with our friend Zita. Our first Baz Bus experience was when it picked us up at 7:30am from our hostel in Cape Town, taking us to our first destination, Stellenbosch.

Stellenbosch

Stellenbosch is the start of the garden route, and it famous for its wineries and wine tours. Obviously we were well aware of this, and booked on a tour to pick us up at 10:30am on the morning we arrived. The tour was amazing. There were 8 of us, and we were taken to 4 wineries throughout the day. It was valentine's day, and as we were the only couple on the tour, the guide picked me to do a sabrage, opening a bottle of champagne with a sword! This was really cool, and it really works! The second winery paired delicious wines with even more delicious cheeses, and we purchased some to enjoy later that evening. We were given lunch (which was a necessity as our stomachs had not yet been properly lined!) and headed to a very beautiful vineyard. The fourth and final winery of the day was the best, as we paired wine with chocolate! Having been drinking since 10:30, we had a relatively early night, but were woken up in the night to a couple having a very intimate yet public time together… currently so excited for 11 more months of shared dorms….

Mossel Bay

Mossel Bay is well known for its beaches and shark diving. The company in Gansbaai were still not taking any divers out, so we managed to book with another company in Mossel bay, which takes divers out to a different location. The location was seal island, literally an island in the sea covered with fur seals. As soon as the boat moored, we could see the sharks in the water on the lookout for a weak seal. There were 16 of us on the boat, and they split us into 3 groups of 6 to do the dives. 6 people can fit in the cage at one time, and when they called out that they needed one extra person in the first group James volunteered himself. No word of a lie, he said “You don’t mind if I don’t dive with you, do you?” Obviously, I 100% minded - if I was going to be in shark-infested waters, he was coming with me! We were in the third group, which meant that when the first 2 groups were diving, we were at the top of the boat looking down at the sharks.

When the time came for us to dive, I was petrified. James was totally calm, so he went in the cage first, and I followed in shortly after. They use the breath-hold method, which is basically going under the water to see the sharks by holding your breath. You are in the cage holding on to the inside bars (that small bit of info is very important), and they throw out the bait. When a shark swim towards the bait they shout “Shark on the right” and we had to hold our breath and put our heads underwater to watch the action.

As soon as we saw the first shark swim towards us and I realised I was completely safe I started to relax, and it was the best 20 minutes of the trip so far. The sharks came so close to the cage we got to see them in so much detail.

One small detail that the guides didn’t mention is that the cage doesn’t sit flush against the boat, so the back of our cage was exposed to the sharks too! We quickly learned to keep our feet fully in the cage at the back and not let them hang out.

The first fascinating sight was when we looked below the cage and saw a humongous shark swimming right underneath us. It was a darker colour than the rest and noticeably bigger. White sharks can grow up to 6.5m, and we were told that this one was probably only about 4.5m, but it was still ginormous. It was such a thrilling experience and I would recommend it to anyone (maybe not my sister Morag, who has a fear of sharks and was very pleased I only told her we had been diving after the event!).

Our hostel in Mossel Bay was on the seafront in a converted train. Our carriage (room) had 16 bunk beds in it, and we fell asleep and woke up to the sound of the waves.

Having learned my lesson from doing horse riding in Malawi just because James wanted to and absolutely hating it, I had an afternoon on the beach whilst James went to see some of the oldest caves in the world to have been inhabited by humans. Apparently it was very fascinating (for James) and he learnt a lot about what had been found by the archeology team working on site.

Plettenberg Bay

Our hostel in Plett was our favourite by far, not only because we upgraded to a double room to finally get a good night’s sleep, but because it was so relaxing, with comfy hammocks (I am so getting one when I come home!) and a BBQ each night that we could cook our own dinner on. We didn’t do any activities in Plett, we used it as a base to book the rest of the Baz Bus trip, relax and walk along the lovely beach and lagoon. We even had a cheeky ice cream sundae!

Storms River

For a town that was so unbelievably quiet and small, we managed to get a lot done in Storms River! The hostel that we arrived in was disgusting - 2/3 of its toilets were blocked and wouldn’t flush, and there was no running water to wash my hands! Luckily, we were just 200m from another hostel, who were happy to take us in, and I was happy I could wash my hands.

Our first activity in Storms River was the Bloukrans bungee jump - the highest commercial bungee jump in the world. We held back doing the bungee in Victoria Falls with our friends so we could bungee jump here, so there was no backing out, even though James came pretty close...

It’s a good time to mention, that despite being willing to fight off monkeys and dive with man-eating sea creatures, James has a fear of heights (I feel sort of bad that we’ve been together nearly 4 years and I just found this out…?) We've both independently done skydiving before and assumed it would be as tranquil and beautiful as that… We couldn’t have been more wrong. There were 8 of us in our time slot, and once we were all harnessed-up, they walked us over to the Bloukrans bridge, then on a small rickety bridge that runs alongside the Bloukrans bridge. Up until this point I was absolutely fine and really excited for the jump, as I assumed I would love it. However, the bridge was actually horrifying, and my nerves went from hero to zero, and I was surprisingly very relieved to arrive at the bungee jump platform. We all had our weights in kgs written on our hands (in black, indelible pen, what every girl wants on show...) and they based our jumping order on this. Other than the reasoning that they went heaviest to lightest (I went last, so makes sense, right?) there was no visible logic to the order, and we only found out what order we were going in when it was time to jump. The 6 people in our group jumped flawlessly, and all came back up saying how much they loved it, I assumed that James and I would experience much of the same.

First they call your name for you to take a seat for them to fasten your leg straps and then they walk you near the edge and explain you need to jump after the “3 2 1” countdown and on the word “bungee”. They then carry you by your arms to the edge of the bridge and start the countdown. James was the penultimate jumper, and he was visibly petrified. When they shouted “3 2 1 bungee!” James shouted “No, I can’t” and didn’t jump! The nice chap then whispered that that was just a test and shouted “3 2 1 bungee” again. This time, they gave him a gentle tap, and James fell so far over the edge that he didn’t have the option to back out. He hated every second of it and he tried to fly by doing some crazy looping motion with his arms. The go-pro that he wore on his wrist documents his dislike for the jump quite well. However, because of his foul mouth, this video is not uploaded to the blog (mum - you’re probably the only person actually reading this blog, and you wouldn’t like what you’d hear).

Once you’ve jumped and you’re dangling upside down in the air, some chap lowers himself on a chord, clips you onto his rope, then together you get pulled back up to the bridge, but on the opposite side that you jumped from. James came back up just as I was on the jumping platform. In my video, you can actually see him tell me it was great, then look at one of the chaps in the group and tell them that he hated it! I was calm right up until the platform, but the video shows me double-checking with the guys that I’m 100% safe, so perhaps I wasn’t as calm as I thought.

Ever since I can remember I have had a recurring dream of falling, and some nights I wake up thinking I’ve landed on the floor, or my pillow. With this in mind, I shouldn’t have done the bungee, it was my worst nightmare becoming a reality. At the platform I tried to do what they told us, just fall forwards and before you’re horizontal, you have to push yourself off. I failed miserably at this and did a little girlie jump instead. A few seconds in, when I remembered I had paid for the experience and that I should be enjoying it, I opened my eyes. It didn’t help me enjoy it any more!

When I had finished screaming and the chap came to collect me, even though I knew I wasn’t, I felt very unsafe. I grabbed his leg and wouldn’t let go (much to his disappointment “Ma’am, I’m going to need you to let go of my legs… please”) until I was safely back on the bridge.

If you’re a thrill seeker without a fear of heights or a falling recurring dream, then you will love bungee jumping, so if you fit that criteria, I definitely recommend it.

After a celebratory beer back at the hostel, we packed for the 5 day hike that we were embarking on the following morning.

Storms River is home to a well known hike called the Otter Trail, which we found out normally gets booked up over a year in advance. When we were told that there were no cancellations for that trail, we booked on to the Tsitsikamma Hiking Trail in the Tsitsikamma national Park, the ‘garden of the garden route’. Hearing that for us to have the service of a car bringing our food and bags each night would be 800 ZAR per night (£50), we decided to carry all our own things, which included clothes and food, for 4 nights 5 days.

When we set off into the park, our bags were incredibly heavy. However, the more we ate along the trip, the lighter they became. We followed a route into the park, so each day we knew how many kilometers we needed to hike in order to reach our hut for the night. Each hut had 24 bunk beds, but we were the only people who had began the hike on that day, so each night at each hut we were the only ones staying there! We started our own fires and made our own dinner each night, enjoying it overlooking beautiful scenery. The park is home to many animals, including leopards, (which unfortunately we didn’t see), baboons, (which we did see as they tried to steal our food most nights!) and snakes. James and I found sticks which we used as hiking poles, and on day two, I accidentally stabbed a puff adder with it when walking. It was coiled up in a bush next to me with just a little bit of his coil on the path. James reckons that with this behaviour, it was likely he was going to strike as I walked past him as puff adders are notoriously bad tempered and willing to strike without hesitation.

In total, we hiked over 50k in 5 days. Upon our return, we celebrated with a burger, milkshake, and a very well earned shower (and hair wash!) before getting on the Bas Bus in the evening to Port Elizabeth.

Port Elizabeth (PE)

PE is an obligatory stop on the Baz Bus. It arrives there at 10pm, and for those who want to travel on to Durban, the bus starts again the following morning. Because the Baz Bus doesn’t run every day, we had a whole day spare in PE. We used this day to top up on necessities (toothpaste etc), to write and upload the blog (it’s so hard to stop and write when you’re having so much fun!) and chill by the pool. We got an early night as the Baz Bus came at 6:45 the next morning, on to Chintsa.

Chintsa

Our main aim at this point was to get to Durban as we were staying with our friend Zita from 2nd March. The bus from PE to Durban was approx 16 hours, so we used Chintsa as a halfway point to break up the travel day. However, because the bus doesn’t run every day, we would be in Chintsa for 2 nights.

After a mix up with the room we had booked, they put us in a luxury room with a balcony overlooking the sea. It was gorgeous, and for the whole first day we just chilled out on the balcony, knowing that the second night we would just be in a standard room. The standard room the following night wasn’t bad either, and after a relaxing stay, we got the bus at midday to take us to Durban.

Durban

We are currently in Durban, having fun with Liney, who I knew when she lived in London, and is a childhood friend of Zita.

Our next adventure begins in a couple of days when we fly to Moscow, which we will enjoy before embarking on the Trans Mongolian railway, through Mongolia and terminating in Beijing.


Russia and the Trans-Mongolian

2017-03-07 to 2017-03-27

After 2 full months together, we have firmly established our #2017yearoffun roles. I am, as always, the planner of everything. I like to be very organised and prepared for everything that we are doing, including sorting all reservations, travel and itineraries. Whilst I am busy doing this, and sometimes when it’s just for fun and games, James packs our bags. He got a bit of a reputation on the truck in Africa for incessantly packing the bags after each night in the tent and it became a bit of a running joke. Jokes aside though, as I soon found out, he absolutely loves it. Which suits me perfectly, as I see packing very much as a chore, whilst I see planning and booking as ‘downtime’. Our final day in Africa at Zita’s was spent with James packing and repacking, and me finessing our China itinerary and making necessary hostel bookings. All packed and ready to go, Zita took us to the airport after a morning of fun sightseeing in Ballito. It was a bittersweet departure; Zita has permanently moved to SA, and as we will be unemployed upon our return, I know I won’t be able to save up and visit Africa and therefore zita again in a while. However, we were happy to be on our way to a new continent and to start the Russian part of our adventure.

We always knew that going from Africa to Russia was going to be hard, in terms of weather, scenery and of course the language barrier. In reality, nothing could prepare us for the sub-zero temperatures that met us when we landed in Moscow. Whilst happy to be there, I was secretly longing to be back in Zita’s pool or even just to be wearing flip-flops. James was a lot more prepared for the cold than I was, as he was wearing a very thick wine jacket upon landing. He got very carried away with the free alcohol on the flight, whilst I was sleeping soundly next to him he ordered 2 red wines (one was for me, of course) at every opportunity. He was being mildly unreasonable when we stopped over in Dubai and I said “Is it because you’re drunk?” and he replied with “No, I’m just really, really hungover!”

Hangover and tiredness aside, we were very excited and made our way to the hostel flawlessly. We only had 4 days before our first train (Moscow to Irkutsk), but we managed to see absolutely everything we wanted in the tight time frame.

Moscow is fantastic, and we enjoyed every moment of it. There is so much to do, but my sister Kirsty lived in Moscow whilst teaching at the British school in 2008, so she was able to help with our itinerary. The obvious choice for our first outing was Red Square, Moscow’s famous central square. Red Square is home to St. Basil’s Cathedral, once a church and now a museum. Its exterior isn’t what you would expect from a cathedral, more so what you’d imagine Willy Wonker to live in, which is obviously one of the reasons we paid to venture in and wander around. We also went into the Kremlin, and explored the armoury museum. It was all very interesting, but our time there got a whole lot more exciting when we had to stand at the side of the road to let a fleet of expensive cars through, which turned out to be the Turkish Ambassador making a visit.

One of the great things about being in Russia is that we completely blended in (although not everyone was in hiking boots and fetching hiking trousers). In Africa, it was very obvious that we were tourists, and we experienced people taking pictures of us, or shouting ‘Muzungu’ at us, which is swahili for white man, or traveller. With this in mind, it was refreshing for locals to start conversing in Russian with us, expecting us to be Russian. However, it did become mildly irritating when once we had said we didn’t speak Russian, they continued to speak Russian to us, just at a louder volume and with more pronunciation, and therefore sending spit in our direction. The ‘No English’ theme was everywhere, which we found surprising as we thought Russia was meant to be a bit more international. But it has since become apparent that tourists don’t really visit Russia much and therefore people would either speak Russian to us, or loud Russian to us. This was more amusing than problematic, and we embraced the challenge of conversing with an open mind. It did mean that we were completely unable to find a restaurant we had chosen on Trip Advisor, and no one in the whole of Moscow seemed to be able to point us in the right direction. In this instance, we admitted defeat and settled with a restaurant that looked Russian and warm (exactly what we were after). It was only when I connected to their wifi to find out exactly where we were on the map that the name of the wifi was the name of the restaurant we were looking for, and we were in the right place, it was just the sign outside the restaurant was in Cyrillic rather than the English title we were searching for. Never mind, it’s all part of the adventure...

One thing we were both keen on doing was going to the Bolshoi Ballet at the Bolshoi Theatre. Ticket prices online were through the roof, and upon turning up to the theatre during the daytime we were told it was sold out for the next 3 weeks. Not wanting to give up easily, we found an official looking ticket kiosk nearby. The official lady said she couldn’t help us, but made a phone call to an old and very unofficial looking chap who could. He gave us a price for two tickets and said he would walk us to a cash machine inside a metro station so we could pay him. It was all super dodgy and underhand, and I couldn’t help but worry that the tickets were were paying good money for weren’t actually tickets at all… Nevertheless, I bartered with him (if I’m going to buy illegal and potential fake tickets, I want to at least get a good deal for them!) whilst James withdrew the cash, all the while trying not to make eye contact with any of the scarey official-looking security guards. It appeared the old chap was doing the same thing, so I reasoned if we were to be sent to jail, he would be joining us.

If I close my eyes and imagine going to see some of the most famous ballet in the world, I am indulged with scenes of romance, glamour and prestige, With this in mind, we dressed in our best… Best being our hiking boots, thermal North Face jackets, accompanied with scarves and wooly hats. Hey, we are backpackers in freezing weather on a year’s travel! My cocktail dress and designer stilettos unfortunately didn’t make it into my backpack, James was adamant about that. Don’t worry - I went all out and brushed my hair, I even dusted the cobwebs off my mascara and put it to good use! Feeling good, we left our hostel and trekked to the theatre.

Walking up the famous stairs, we saw hoards of taxis dropping off beautifully dressed young women, with equally well-dressed (but at least double their age) men. We got plenty of stares as we entered the theatre but as soon as our tickets were scanned and we therefore knew we weren’t going to get carted off by the Russian police we didn’t care at all.

The theatre was beautiful, as expected, and the ballet even more so. Our seats were awesome, so very near the stage in a lovely exclusive-looking box. Throughout the performance, the heat was rising and it came to a point where I couldn’t remove any more layers (the removal of my hiking boots notedly raised a couple of eyebrows as it was). At one of the 4 intermissions, I went to buy a bottle of water at the bar on the top floor. I’m sure that everyone has one moment in their life, when they don’t just think it, but actually know everyone is looking at them. Mine, was then. I felt like I was straight out of Pretty Woman, where Julia Roberts is looked down upon by everyone in the clothes shop and was made to feel like she didn’t belong there, despite the fact that she had enough money to buy anything she wanted. As I walked through the room over to the bar, I felt all eyes looking me up and down, and I’m sure the music even stopped. I held my head high and got a spot in the queue, but as my turn to be served came, the bartender looked at me for a second, then went on to serve the next customer. Let’s just say I was very British about it, with the old “Excuse me, I believe I was next” followed by… “I’ll just have a water please.” Fair enough, it was probably the smallest sale he made all night, as I wasn’t quite in the mood for caviar and Moet. Back in our seats, James and I shared the $3 250ml bottle of water, before refilling it in the bathroom. And that, is how you do backpacking at the Bolshoi.

To continue with our ballet date night, we visited a bar that had been recommended to us by the hostel. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed in as we didn’t have our passports on us, which meant that to get out from the cold, we went into a nearby bar. Continuing with the Russian theme, we ordered some vodka. I’d like to go back to this very moment and tell myself that if you don’t like it in England, you still won’t like it in Russia. This meant that James effectively enjoyed a double vodka, before sharing a bottle of red (which was necessary to warm ourselves) with me.

Kirsty recommended that we visit Izmailovsky market, which was excellent advice. James bought himself a Russian belt from the 1970’s, and because we have had a lot of experience bartering by now, we got it for a great price. Kirsty also told us of the GUM shopping centre - which is effectively a shopping centre for the rich, definitely not backpackers. Having said that, the cake looked good, and I think it’s important as a traveller to embrace all cultures and delicacies. Cake in every country is therefore a must.

A definite must in Moscow is a trip into the Moscow Metro stations. The stations are world famous for their interior designs and architectures, most of it born with the idea that luxuries should be enjoyed by the people, and not just royalty. Even one station had pews that had been taken from the church and put in the station ‘for the people.’ After some googling, I comprised a list of the best stations and we set about doing our own walking tour. My words won’t do it all justice so please check out James’s pictures.

One thing James was adamant on when planning our trip to Moscow was that he wanted to see Lenin lying in state. Sadly, however, at the time of our visit, he was being spring-cleaned. Naturally James was livid, but the idea of a Russian leader getting the once over with a Dyson certainly helped to soften the blow. The fact that we couldn’t see Lenin would only mean that visiting Chairman Mao in state in Beijing was of top priority upon arrival.

When our time in Moscow came to an end, we boarded our first Trans-Mongolian train, with the first stop being Irkutsk in 5 days time. The train was simply awesome. We had booked all of our trains in advance through Real russia (info on our contacts page if you need it) and they had booked us two bottom bunks in a 2nd class (‘Kupe’) carriage. The best part, was that when we boarded the train, we were the only ones in the carriage, and it continued like this for the rest of the journey to Irkutsk. This meant that we had all the space we wanted, to laze around and read our books, take up the whole table when eating dried noodles, but most importantly; use the whole table to play our favourite card game Skip-bo. It also meant that no one interrupted us during the night, so we pretty much had 4 undisturbed nights’ sleep. We didn’t know at the time how valuable that would be, and just how lucky we were.

Irkutsk and Listvyanka

After 5 days on the train together, our first stop was Irkutsk. It’s a pretty standard route to go from Moscow straight to Irkutsk and as such, it seemed like the whole train was disembarking also. The plan was to spend a couple of days exploring Irkutsk, then head to Listvyanka, a small town on Lake Baikal for a couple of nights, before returning to Irkutsk and getting back on the Trans-Mongolian.

Without trying to insult the places we are visiting, Irkutsk is like the town that time forgot. Obviously we didn’t know that upon arrival, so we opted to do a free walking tour of the town. The tour is basically for tourists to follow the a green line on the pavement around the town and they will be taken to landmarks, each with a placard of information about it. Much to our amusement, the green line just stopped, mid pavement, and we had no idea which direction to go in! When the line randomly started up again and took us to some landmarks, more often than not the landmark placard had been removed, so we had no idea what we were looking at! Still, we enjoyed all the sights, which included another local market.

The following day we took a local minibus to Listvyanka, and found our hostel which was conveniently on the top of a hill, and obviously super-fun to reach on foot, with heavy snow and ice underfoot, with massive bags on our backs. We explored the small town of Listvyanka, and James wanted to walk on the lake. During the summer months, Lake Baikal is exactly that, a lake. It's the oldest and deepest freshwater lake in the world, and by all accounts very beautiful. As we were visiting in the winter, it was completely frozen over and you can walk out on it. I was very dubious about this, as one step in the wrong direction on a thin bit of ice and you’re a goner, so I was determined that we would only stand from the pavement and just admire the view. However, the following day we saw a woman with her children on the lake alongside quite a few tourists. The deciding factor for me, however, was seeing cars drive on the lake. If it was sturdy enough for them, it would be sturdy enough for us, despite the fact that we had recently eaten our body weight in dumplings and were not at our trimmest.

It was a great decision, as walking on the lake was an amazing experience. The ice was so deep - we jumped on it to see if it would crack but it was completely solid, which was comforting. We even walked out to where the lake met the river and the ice started to form, but we were careful where we were stepping as the ice got progressively thinner. Needless to say, life by and on the lake was freezing, and it called for all our thermals to be worn. We had been carrying them round since 30th Dec so it was actually a relief to be finally utilising everything in our bags!

A typical delicacy in Listvyanka is omel, a dried fish, which James was keen to try. I am not a fish eater, but I am embracing all experiences this year, and I must agree, that omel is pretty tasty.

Listvyanka had a snow-covered mountain with a cable car going all the way to the top. We were told that it wasn’t particularly safe to walk given the weather, and after a few disappointing grumbles we rode the cable car to the top. It was a great ride, and the view at the top was even better, despite almost getting run over by some rogue skiers. In the evening we had a traditional banya in our hostel, which is a sauna where you are literally given leaves to whip yourselves with. And it is as weird as it sounds.

Back in Irkutsk, we went out for typical russian food and sampled some crimean wine. It was delicious and we had a wonderful date night. The following morning we got back on the Trans-Mongolian to our next stop, Ulan Ude.

The train to Ulan Ude was only 6 hours, and as it was so short and during day time, we opted to travel third class. What this meant was that we still had a bed, but instead of the cabin of 4 beds and a door, we effectively had 6 beds in a section, but there were no doors separating each section. So technically, anyone and everyone could walk past at any point (and they did). The atmosphere was friendly and light-hearted so it was pretty fun to experience, but if it was overnight I can imagine you wouldn’t get much sleep.

Ulan-Ude

The highlight of Ulan-Ude is the giant statue of Lenin’s head (the largest in the world), which is 25ft (7.7m) in height. Large as this was, it was not the biggest thing on our minds. Russian law states that tourists need to register within 7 days of being in any russian city, or you could face a hefty fine, or worse, deportation. Because we were on the Trans-Mongolian we didn’t think this applied to us as we were not in any given place longer than 7 days, but some chap told us at the hostel that it’s not 7 days in each city, it’s being in Russia after 7 days. With all this confusion, I was very worried. We arrived in Ulan Ude on Sunday morning and expressed our concern with the hostel receptionist. She told us she could register us for free (yippee) but it would have to wait until the following morning during registration business hours (oh sh*t!). To avoid being in trouble with the absolutely terrifying Russian police, we spent a day in the hostel, hiding from any kind of russian authorities. In the evening we had to go to the shops as we were by this point starving! We made our trip brief and straight to the point, avoiding eye contact with everyone and anyone to stay on the safe side. I was pretty scared as it was probably one of the naughtiest things I’ve done, but to my lovely other half, it was just another day in the life of James McGlone.

As it turns out, the receptionist processed our registration early the next morning with absolutely no problems, and we were able to venture out and explore the town, and of course, Lenin’s giant head.

The following morning we were back on the Trans-Mongolian for a 25 hour train Ulaanbaatar, the capital of Mongolia. On this train we had to cross the border from Russia to Mongolia, which made the journey quite eventful, if not a bit lengthy. We were in a carriage with Ivor, another British chap who had also booked his trains through Real Russia. It was fun sharing a cabin with him, he was great company and he had delicious chocolate, and even better stories to share with us!

Russian border control came on the train whilst we were still in Russia and did a check of the whole carriage, and even asked to check in our bags - needless to say James wasn’t that happy having to repack his bag again afterwards. We then had immigration come on the train, and examine each of our visas and took our passports away. Next we had the Mongolian border control come on the train and go through the same motions that the Russian chaps did. We were at the border for a good 4 hours, so we ventured off and found a supermarket to spend the remainder of our Russian Rubles. Once the lengthy border crossing was out the way we were able to get some sleep. It didn’t help that the fourth bed in our cabin was taken up by a mongolian lady who was super noisy and kept either talking loudly on her phone, or coming in and out of the cabin. Our solution was to turn the light off and lock the door. She ended up spending the night in one of her friend’s cabin which worked well for all of us.

Ulaanbaatar

We were met off the train by a chap from our hostel holding my name on a sign (I absolutely love it when I see my name on a sign!) who took us straight to the hostel and let us check in - which was amazing as it was only 7am!

Our priority in Ulaanbaatar was to get our Chinese visa. We weren’t able to get this before we left London as you need to travel within 3 months of applying for a visa, which we couldn’t do. Getting our visa in Mongolia was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing being that for a 30 day single entry visa, we only had to pay 30USD. If purchasing a Chinese visa in Britain, we would have had to pay £190. However, the curse was that they only granted us a single-entry visa, meaning that we wouldn’t be able to go to Hong Kong and then get the train to Vietnam as planned. We would have to skip Hong Kong, and go to Vietnam straight from China. We didn’t have the best time sorting our visas out in the embassy and therefore wouldn’t recommend it... But there is something to say for getting a visa for so cheap, and we are on a tight budget after all!

Once we knew our visas were being processed, we signed up for a trip to see Genghis Khan - the founder and Emperor of the Mongol Empire - then on to a mongolian homestay in a traditional ger, complete with horse ride.

The 40m tall statue was pretty impressive, and we could walk inside and come out at his horse’s head to get a panoramic view of... the Gobi Desert. It was a very weird place to erect such a huge, iconic statue as it seemed that nothing else was around for miles. The museum inside the statue was pretty cool, apart from I asked James why they seemed to have picture after picture in succession of the same chap on the wall, when he informed me that it was actually different men in each picture, the just bore a great likeness to each other.

Back in the car and after a while the driver stopped the car at some rocks, and pointed that we should climb up them. Not needing to be asked twice, we ventured to the top, not really too sure what it was or why we were there. When we descended, the driver pointed to some camels and the camel owner came over and told us to get on a camel each. We knew that the trip came with a horse ride, and when this chap pointed at the camel we just assumed that they had a change of plans, which we didn’t want to argue with. James didn’t hesitate, and as such got given a really smelly camel, who was apparently “bit arsey” when James climbed on. I got given a nice looking camel, which James’s camel proceeded to bite on the rear. After a few minutes’ walk we turned round and walked back. It was a great ride, but I certainly wasn’t sad when it was over. When we got off, our driver asked if we enjoyed the ride. Being British, we both just said “Yes thanks, it was great!” Which he then replied “Ok, you pay 20 Tugrik” This was awkward, as we weren’t expecting it. What was more awkward, was when we discovered we didn’t actually have that much cash on us to pay for it! We had tried the local ATMs that morning and the night before, but they had a shortage of cash and we couldn’t withdraw anything. We sheepishly explained that we didn’t have enough, and the driver then got out some cash and paid the camel keepers. It was at this point that we realised we hadn’t arrived at our end destination, and got back in the car and taken along the road to some gers. We had to specifically ask him if we were here, to avoid any more awkwardness!

We were taken into a ger which was a family home. They had their beds along the walls, and in the middle a stove/cooking area, with a wood fire that went up the pipe and out the ceiling. At one side of the ger there was a flat screen TV (?!) and a table, where we were invited to sit and enjoy some homemade soup. It was really delicious, and when we had finished, she brought out a traditional mongolian snack which looked like pasta tubes. I eagerly tried one, as I was desperately missing my home comfort food of pasta. It couldn’t have been more different, it was like a tube of fermented cheese, and probably the most disgusting thing I’ve ever eaten. James saw I didn’t enjoy it, and very sweetly finished it for me so they wouldn’t think I was rude. He told me after that he too found it the most vile food ever, he’s just really lovely sometimes!

A couple of hours later, one of the girls from the family ger called Knock Knock (?) came to our ger to collect us for our real horse riding session. She was very friendly, especially when talking with James, and she loved to come up to him and feel his beard. Apparently Mongolians can’t grow beards! Knock Knock walked us through the village on the horses and it was actually great - a much better experience than horseriding in Malawi!

We were given evening dinner in our ger, which was another homemade dish, and before they went to bed they came into our ger and topped up our fire. By the time we went to sleep we were absolutely roasting and had to go out the ger to the snow in our pjs to cool down. However, of course during the night the fire went out and we both woke up frozen to our cores! It was a joy when they came in in the morning and relit the fire and served us a lovely warm breakfast.

Those who know James well, know that he is a huge fan of dinosaurs. Those who know me well, know I don’t even believe in them. As Mongolia is at the forefront of new dinosaur discoveries, James forced me to go to the Central Museum of Mongolian Dinosaurs (another thing that is as exciting as it sounds…) As my luck would have it, the museum was the size of a corner shop, saying that,  James had a great time and was able to view the oldest fossils he had ever seen.  

Back on the Trans-Mongolian a couple of days later and we were on our way to our final destination: Beijing. Again we were in a second class carriage, this time James was on the top bunk with me below him, and a British lady (about 60 years old) on the other bottom bunk, and a Mongolian chap on the other top bunk. The best part about this train journey is that they gave us a free breakfast and lunch voucher to use in the dining cart, which was very tasty and our first use of chinese chopsticks with chinese food. The border crossing from Mongolia to Beijing was late evening and was quite disruptive. It was the same set-up as crossing the Russian/Mongolian border in that we had Mongolian security checks, then China visa and passport checks and then the China border security checks.

There is a joke on Family Guy that all Asians look the same to Westerners, and likewise Asians can’t differentiate between Westerners. On this train journey I experienced the latter first hand, and it was so embarrassing. When the border controllers had finished with our passports they came round to our carriage to return them individually. Before returning each one, they scrutinised our faces, and then the passport. However, the passport they handed me back belonged to the British OAP I mentioned. The only resemblance between me and her passport picture was that she also had long hair, they obviously didn’t look at the fact that she was born in in the 50s… She was flattered. I however, was not. After a pretty sleepless night (with thoughts on purchasing an anti-wrinkle cream as soon as we arrived), we were very excited to arrive in Beijing and start our Chinese adventure!


China

2017-03-27 to 2017-04-22

When arriving in Beijing in a sea of Chinese people, it was comforting to know that if we were ever separated, James and I wouldn’t lose each other for long. The african sun had lightened my dark brown hair, and James by this point has a pretty girthy beard. Two things that we would learn would draw a lot of attention, and within a few minutes of being in Beijing station, someone came up to my face and took a picture. Unlucky for them though, I was looking at the metro map with much confusion, certainly not a picture I would like to keep, let alone a stranger!

James is like a navigational wizard; put him in a place he’s never been before and he will find where we need to be. Starting the way I wanted to go in China, I volunteered myself to find our hostel and be in charge of getting us there. Obviously I got us totally lost, at any other time this wouldn’t have been so bad, but with 20kg each on our backs and feeling hotter than the sun, naturally our first chinese argument broke out.

Our hostel was in a great location, but for anyone reading this who fancies going to Beijing, don’t stay at The Lucky Hostel. Whilst the employees were pleasant enough, the bathroom was dirty and students who live in the hostel (I know, not cool) woke us up with their alarms for early morning classes. We minimised our time there, by leaving each morning by 8ish, and not returning until 9pm. There is so much to see and do in Beijing, and in true #2017yearoffun style, we managed to do pretty much all of it.

I am a firm believer that everyday is a gift. This belief is magnified a hundredfold when in China; every day you survive the chinese traffic, is a true gift. It’s absolute chaos. If I’ve ever said that sentence before about anything I want to go back and reword it, as nothing has ever been more chaotic than a chinese crossroad.

First of all, the quantity of both cars and bikes (surely Katie Melua’s ‘9 Million Bicycles in Beijing’ single should have prepared me for this one) is off the scale. There are so many of them that you will never be crossing the road without a vehicle coming towards you. Second thing to note: they love to put their foot down, sadly for us, it’s on the accelerator, not the brake. After understanding these 2 points, you would think that a zebra crossing would be an answer to all our problems, right? Wrong. A zebra crossing is not a safe haven for pedestrians to easily cross from one side to another, it is merely an area where cars are more aware of pedestrians… but they can still just drive straight through it and beep their horns to make pedestrians run out of their way. In England, if some joker beeped me when I was walking along a zebra crossing, I would slow right down and make them wait. In China, when a car is approaching a crossing with or without the use of their horn, just leg it to the other side, whilst cautiously looking in both ways at the lanes of traffic you are crossing. If you make it unscathed to the pavement ahead, give yourself a high-five. But don’t celebrate too much, the pavement in China might as well be renamed a cycle lane. Motorbikes, pushbikes and even tuk-tuks take precedence on the pavement, and if you’re not on high alert, they will just stealthily come up behind you and honk their horn, and you are expected to move.

Whilst the roads and pavements took a lot to get our heads around, the notion that chinese people love to constantly be on their phones and can be completely oblivious to the world around them is a complete juxtaposition. We have seen so many near-misses, where speeding cars have met a pedestrian deeply engrossed in their videos, shouted some words and moved on. If that were me, I’d call my mum and tell her about my near-miss and my epiphany on how life is special. The pedestrians we have witnessed, however, have stuck their heads back in their films and continued. We have since learned that there are over 700 deaths a day on the roads in China. We are very fortunate that we were not part of that number for 2017.

When we arrived we made the obligatory trip to Tiananmen Square. It’s one of the largest public squares in the world, and as squares go, it’s pretty cool. Shortly after arrival, a sweet-looking chinese girl approached us and asked us where we were from. Having been on our travels for 3 months, we are dubious of chatty strangers, as they almost always want to sell you something. She told us that she was chinese but on holiday in Beijing too. She asked us where we were going, we said back to our hostel. She said her hotel was in the same direction, and as she was keen to practice her English she said “We can walk this way back together, and perhaps afterwards go and get some tea and talk.” In normal life, I sometimes struggle to say no, and would probably have gone along with it, especially if this ‘tea’ involved some cake. However, as we had just had a painful (read ‘Russia and The Trans Mongolian’ to see why!) 26 hour journey, I politely said “Sorry, we are really tired after a long train journey so we are just going back to sleep.” She seemed very nice and friendly about it, and not even disappointed. But oddly, considering her hotel was in the same direction as us she didn’t follow, she stayed put in the Square and pretty much watched us walk away. As with every mildly confrontational situation, I asked James if he thought I was rude to her. He said he was very proud of my ability to say no and glad that I didn’t rope us into chatting with a stranger.

However, this story took an unexpected twist when we arrived back at the hostel. The manager greeted us and took us to the noticeboard and explained The Great Wall trips we could do. I noticed there was a poster about a ‘Tea house’ scam and asked him to explain what it is… Basically, tourists are approached by sweet looking chinese girls/women and asked to go and practice their english at a tea house. The willing tourist believes they are being helpful, but in reality they are being completely scammed. At the end of the tea, they are landed with a huge bill (200USD), being told that they drank the most expensive tea. The sweet chinese girl is in cahoots with the tea house staff, and both parties greatly benefit financially from the ‘helpful’ tourist.

James is pretty street-wise, and wasn’t surprised at this at all, I was just really disappointed that the sweet girl we met was nothing more than a common thief - and I am so grateful that I was tired so just said no. I’m pretty sure if I had said that we would join her James would have intervened and told her we wouldn’t; he’s pretty friendly like that. I did a bit of reading on the subject and the scam is pretty huge, and I’m bit disappointed I didn’t know of this before we met the girls. I read that 99% of all defendants in China are convicted, and for fear of punishment in general crime is pretty low. However, this tea house scam is technically not stealing and therefore falls into an acceptable gray area, which is why it’s done, and done often.

This got me fired up, and upon our return trip to Tiananmen Square to watch the flag come down at sunset I tried to look as clueless and nice as possible, wanting some girl to dare ask me to a tea house... We were ready to go hell for leather with her. As sod’s law would have it, no one approached us this time, much to our disappointment. The lowering of the flag was good, and we made an evening of it and went out for some lovely chinese food afterwards.

Still annoyed with Lenin’s Mausoleum being closed to the public in Moscow, seeing Chairman Mao lying in state was a priority. It was only after we queued for a good hour or so, at the Forbidden Palace, had our bags searched and even our bodies frisked, that we were told inside that Mao was closed to the public until August… Needless to say that we then needed something extraordinary to follow this, to avoid James getting super annoyed with the second communist leader being closed… well if he wanted to be cheered up quickly, he could have always tried to play with the traffic and quickly report back how the little things don’t matter, and he is just lucky to live to see another day.

A priority in Beijing was evidently seeing the Great Wall of China, and we did this with a fellow Brit called Olie, whom we met on the train to Beijing. There a few different parts of the wall that you can climb, but the main one is Badaling, which has been fully restored and open to the public. After extensive research, we chose to explore a part of the wall called Jiankou. This area is completely unrestored and branded as ‘dangerous and wild’. Because of this, it’s illegal to climb. We caught a public bus to the terminal and a cab to the start of the wall. It’s worthy to note at this point that research had told us that there will be people trying to scam you on the bus by telling you to get off the bus and then you have no option but to get in their overpriced cab. Even the bus driver told us to get off earlier than the website told us, which was actually quite difficult to refuse, it was likely that he was in on the scam to get us into a super-expensive cab and then take his cut of the taxi ride. After the bus, our taxi - which we bartered on the price before we got in - took us to a desolate track, and when his car couldn’t go any further we were told that this is where the route started. Only about 200m away from this, we came to a fork in the woodlands and took a right. We now know from experience that we should have taken a left...

We trekked for a long while just going up. When we came to the ‘top’ of where we were at we believed we would be on the wall. Reality hit hard when arrived at the top - we were on a steep peak of a mountain, and we could see the wall in the distance, not attached to this mountain. Olie has spent the last few years in the navy, and appeared to really enjoy being our guide. He navigated us well to the actual wall, and within a couple of hours we were on the wall overlooking the rest of the wall from a tower. It was spectacular.

It was a tough walk - it certainly wasn’t flat. But the views were outstanding. A highlight of the wall was when James was looking over the edge of the wall, somehow his glasses managed to fall off his face, fly over the edge of the wall and land on the ground, about 30m below us. He panicked, and unable to see, he just sat down on the wall telling me he couldn't see anything! Luckily we were near a tower and Olie managed to navigate his way down and retrieve the glasses, thankfully both Olie and the glasses were unscathed.

My reading had said that if we continue to walk this part of the wall we would end up on a restored part of it, and from there we could descend. Low and behold, the path got a lot easier, and we were greeted with a lovely chinese woman selling Snickers and beer, for which we were very grateful! The beer was delicious, and very well deserved. After a lot more walking, we made our way to the cable car which we took back down to the bottom, then got a cab and a bus back to Beijing. To celebrate our success, we went for dinner where there is no menu - the chef cooks you whatever he likes. Whilst it definitely went over our budget of food for the day it was delicious and well worth it.

As with every city, there are obligatory sites that should be on every traveller’s to-do list. In Beijing these are the Temple of Heaven, Summer Palace, the Lama Temple and the Forbidden city. To avoid this being a standard blog where you’ll read and think ‘how generic’, I won’t go into detail here. If you do want any info on them, both James and I will be happy to chew your ear off about them all. James took some lovely pictures, please check the out in the photos section. All the above mentioned sites really are great, and if you’re thinking of going to Beijing you should slot them into your plans.

Our final evening in Beijing was spent chasing Peking Duck (not literally). We went to where TripAdvisor recommends, and didn’t have a pleasant experience. We went to another highly recommended place, but after reading that they wanted about £100 for the experience, we left and enjoyed some nearby street food, which, we reasoned, would be equally as tasty.

With an afternoon bullet train to Shanghai, we filled our morning with a walking tour of the Hutongs, which are small narrow alleys in Beijing. We got the route from The Lonely Planet, and I cannot recommend it more. Each hutong uncovered an area untouched by tourists and allowed us into the world of traditional chinese villages and homes. The Hutongs really should be up there with The Great Wall in the ‘must-do in Beijing’ lists.

We got the train flawlessly, despite the fact that our knife (as in knife and fork) got confiscated at security as apparently it’s too dangerous to take on the train. Although it was slightly annoying, we were pleased that security on the train was taken seriously. The bullet train was a very different experience to the trains we had experienced so far, as in it actually went faster than what felt like 30kph. In actual fact it went up to 300 kph (186mph) which was pretty exciting - and we made it to Shanghai in just over 5 hours.

Shanghai

Despite not being China’s capital, Shanghai is pretty darned expensive. We found we could pay just a fraction more to have an apartment for 6 days then to have 2 beds in a mixed dorm for the same amount of time. This turned out to be one of the best decisions we made. It was really lovely to have our own space again, and it meant that James could do what makes him happiest… pack, repack and further repack his bag.

It was in Shanghai that the pollution hit me, and that combined with not having taken my inhaler in a few months (the African air was so fresh!) I really wasn’t very well as a result. However we did manage to get everything done that was on our to-do list and we had a really fantastic time.

A central point of Shanghai is Nanjing Road - one of the world’s busiest shopping streets. It certainly lived up to its description; it felt similar to walking down Oxford Street, and therefore a home away from home. Nanjing Road stretches to The Bund, a famous Waterfront which is the symbol of Shanghai. We saw this both in the daytime and at night, and both were great but different experiences. In the day you can see the beautiful old buildings and enjoy some quiet time one of the many little cafes. Once the sun goes down the buildings on the other side of the river all light up - check out the pictures, although I’m not too sure they do it justice - it really is one of those you have to be there places.

Our time in Shanghai included an obligatory visit up the Shanghai Tower. With the pollution, however, visibility wasn’t at its best.

If you had time to just do one thing in Shanghai, we would recommend Yunnan Gardens. It is a well-preserved traditional chinese garden, and it was magical. We had a picnic consisting of a Snickers each (they are so cheap here!) whilst inside and we didn’t want to leave. Both of us love being outside, and if we had known just how beautiful it would be inside, we would have scheduled in a lot more time, and brought a much more wholesome picnic with us! We were sad to be leaving Shanghai, from our great apartment and landlord (who has since sent me a whatsapp saying he misses me...?) to the beautiful sights, we had had a blast. Back on the train and we were off to Xi’an, less known, but equally a ‘must’ visit.

Xi’an

As mentioned, going to Xi’an when in China is a must, and not just because it’s home to the Terracotta Warriors.

As we are on quite a tight budget, we have refrained from going on tours and have so far managed to do activities independently. We stayed in an outstanding hostel, The Hang Tang Inn who were so accommodating and they know just what backpackers want. They ran their own tour to the warriors, which we did along with 24 others from our hostel. It was so interesting, and even better than what I had read it to be. As part of the tour we all went to a restaurant where we ate chinese style - lots of dishes are laid on the table and you all just help yourselves. The food is put on a lazy Susan which you can just spin to get the dish you want. It was great - if it was just the two of us we wouldn’t have had the opportunity (or money!) to order and sample so many dishes.

Our hostel advised us on a local noodle restaurant, and four of us went for dinner (James and I with a lovely American couple Levi and McKenzie) with the bill coming to 44 RMB for all 4 of us (about £5). It was great to get off the beaten track and eat where more locals than tourists dined. Our hostel also recommended an absolutely delicious dumpling restaurant, which James and I wolfed down. However, at the time of writing this, James is on the bunk bed next to me feeling terrible, and believes it to be from the dumplings we had yesterday… so i’ll hold that thought and say no more.

Xi’an’s muslim quarter is where you can get pretty much anything, from food to fake North Face bags, and it’s where we spent a lot of time sampling local delicacies and buying cultural things (most of which we won’t see again for 9 months as we have just shipped a lot of it home.. I am hoping we still like it all by then!).

The date I was dreading for a good few years arrived when we were in Xi’an - my 30th birthday. Just typing this I still can’t believe I’m actually 30, it sounds so grown up. However, I had the best day I could ever have asked for. James made the whole day so special, starting with a McDonald’s Sausage and Egg McMuffin, which I had been craving for weeks. He surprised me with some birthday cake (which was seriously delicious, I was not expecting that from Asia!), a tandem bike ride on Xi’an city wall, a picnic in a beautiful park and a pedalo on the lake in the park in a boat that would certainly not pass UK standards, but when in China… In the evening we went to a dumpling feast (yummy!) and saw a Tang Dynasty dancing performance. Our hostel knew it was my birthday and gave us a free upgrade to a huge double room, complete with ensuite, so I was in my element. James was in his element too, as it meant that he had plenty of space to pack, repack and further repack his bag, so we were both in very good spirits.

Chengdu

Next stop was Chengdu, home of the famous giant pandas. Our hostel was called Mrs Panda, and on that basis we were expecting some amazing panda tour. To our disappointment, we found out that their tour consisted of transport to and from and an unguided ticket in the panda breeding center. As the breeding center was what put Chengdu on the map, it was very easy to find and easy to navigate once inside, so we did it independently. James was very annoyed when I said that we had to leave the hostel at 7am to have the best time in the center, but we were both overjoyed on arrival, as it is in the mornings when pandas are most active. By the time the lazier tourists arrived at 11ish, the pandas were pretty much all asleep and the fun was over. The pandas were split up into baby, juvenile and adult, and all age groups were awake and eating when we were there. I know I sound very much like a 13 year old teenage girl when I say this, but they really look very cute and cuddly. At another place in Chengdu you can actually hold them, and I seriously was considering doing this on my big 3-0, however you only get 20 seconds and it costs around $250. The deciding factor, however, was that you used to be able to do it at the breeding center we went to but they recently banned it as it wasn’t in the pandas’ interests. If it wasn’t in the pandas’ interests, then it wasn’t in ours either.

The breeding center is also home to the red panda, less famous but equally as cute. One even climbed through a hole in the fence and joined James and I on a walkway. It was amazing, until some chinese chick on her mobile phone saw the red panda, increased her volume and ran towards it with a camera. Needless to say it ran off scared.

Guilin

From Chengdu we took a train to Guilin, known for its scenic landscapes it did not disappoint. However, our hostel certainly did. The mould in the bed was pretty rancid, but the deciding reason to leave was that the bed was actually wet from mould. In three and a half months this was only the second hostel that we have walked out of, not bad going I don’t think!

Once settled into our dry beds in our new hostel, we booked a ‘Chinese’ tour (James’s idea?!) to visit the rice fields. The Chinese organised tour was just £1 extra per person than it would be if we were to get public transport, which would involve two public buses and an extra hour added onto our journey. We were told that the Chinese guide was just for the bus, when you get to the fields you are told where to go and a certain time to meet back in the carpark. This suited us perfectly as we could do it all at our own pace. What we didn’t quite realise was that she would be chatting chinese down the microphone on the bus for a good hour of the journey. I was bothered that we didn’t know what she was saying and that we were missing out on hearing value information on the fields we were about to visit. James was more bothered that her voice was interrupting his nap time, and he had to have his ipod on loud to block out the noise.

The fields were spectacular, and our route took us through some lovely little villages where were able to have a peek at traditional village life. Despite the immense heat, we made it to the top for a well deserved drink, and much needed shade. Throughout our 3 months, James and I have loved noticing the ‘sensible’ footwear worn by women. You wouldn’t believe how many people wear heels at major tourist attractions that require lots of walking. The rice fields were no exception, as a buxom woman passed us in huge and uncomfortable wedges. We therefore weren’t surprised when we saw her arrive at the top at least an hour after we had arrived and we were ready to start our descent.

In the People’s Park in Guilin (again, we love a good park!) we found a lady selling baby bottles full of fish food that were attached to big sticks, so people can put the sticks in the water and the fish would suck on the bottle and eat the food. We paid the equivalent of 50p and got a bottle, it was so much! We also took the opportunity of trying Chinese tea in the park. James is a big tea fan, whilst I can’t stand the stuff. Naturally he therefore loved it, and ended up drinking mine also.

After a great time in Guilin, it was time to spend the last of our Yuans and jump a train to Vietnam. One thing to note about China, is that nowhere takes visa cards. We wisely spent all our cash just before leaving China, but with an unexpected 5 hour wait inside a train station we were pretty hungry. I attempted to buy some fried chicken, but they didn’t accept visa. I tried to get cash out, but the ATMs didn’t accept visa. We have come to accept (and appreciate) that weight loss through hunger is all part of the backpacker experience!

We finally made it onto our last train in China where we tried to have a little sleep, knowing that we would arrive in another country in the small hours of the morning. That in itself is enough to keep me awake through excitement, James however, as always, slept like a baby.


Vietnam part 1

2017-04-21 to 2017-05-03

The train ride to Hanoi from Nanning in China was the last of our planned train journeys, and after 10 train journeys in 6 weeks we were not that sad about it. What we were sad about, however, was when we got to the China/Vietnam border the visas that we had paid for and printed out were rejected.

We followed the information on the gov.uk website and used the link they provided, but the problem was that on this particular border we couldn’t use this visa. If we wanted to enter Vietnam on this visa, we would have to spend the night in China and come to the road border crossing (not the train border crossing) and try again. As it was 11:45 pm, this was not an option. We had no option but to ask them to ignore the paper visa, and issue us with a 15 day visa that is free of charge to British citizens, with which they obliged. Not only did it mean that we had wasted $40, but our plans to spend 30 days in Vietnam had been obliterated. This was really annoying, as I had already had a stress with our visas; for some strange reason I submitted my visa application with the incorrect name and it was therefore rejected (of course I spelt James’s name correctly didn’t I?). I had to get this amended and resubmitted, but it was still ‘in progress’ the night before the morning we were due to leave and I had to send a number of panicked emails to get it sped up. It was like I already knew the visa wouldn’t work so I might as well not put the right name to spice it up a little...

There have been a few occasions when we have found it’s the same price or even cheaper to get a double room than get 2 bunk beds in a dorm. Of course this option suits us much better - I am happier because I get a pretty much undisturbed sleep, which is very, very rare for me in dorm rooms, and James gets to do what he fantasises about each time we check out of a double room until we check into another: pack and repack our bags. Our double room in Hanoi was really central, right next to Hoan Kiem Lake and a great base to have when spending the whole day exploring the city. As with any new place, we spent the first afternoon exploring and finding places we want to explore further.

As you know, James has been incredibly disappointed to miss Lenin and Mao on our travels so far. Therefore seeing Ho Chi Minh was crucial. The queue to go into the mausoleum was gigantic and knowing that it shuts at 11am, I was fearful that I would have a crying grown man on me for the rest of the day. Thankfully though, it must be that they shut the queue at 11am, and those in before would get in for certain, I reckon I was actually happier than James was!

Seeing Ho Chi Minh lying in state was very weird; you’re literally just walking round a dead guy. But it was pretty impressive to be looking at someone that had been so inspirational for a whole nation. James was very pleased to have visited, and that was the best part.  

A top priority for Hanoi is a cruise to Halong Bay - thousands of beautiful islands in northeast Vietnam. We asked around a few travel agents to get an idea of the prices and to find what sort of trip we wanted, but ended up booking with the company Apricot Cruises directly. Booking directly saved us at least $30, and we put that money towards an upgrade to a deluxe room with an ocean view, and a fruit bowl. I very generously received some birthday money which we put towards this trip, which made it more special. Needless to say the trip was absolutely amazing and is a real must when you come to Hanoi. Aboard the cruise we had a delicious lunch and were then taken to a cave inside one of the islands. It was pretty spectacular. We visited a beach before getting back on the cruise ship for another delicious meal and cocktails. We were then shown how to do squid fishing, which James was infatuated with. We stayed up until nearly midnight hoping to catch a squid, but the closest we experienced was a squid touching the bait and then spraying his ink in the water, making a dark blue cloud in the normally turquoise water. It was disappointing we didn’t catch one, but we later realised we wouldn’t actually know what to do with it once we had caught it, so it didn't seem to be such a bad thing, and James was just happy with his ink spray, I guess you could just call us low maintenance.

The following morning we visited a floating Pearl farm, where we were shown the process of farming pearls from oysters to them ending up as necklaces or earrings. It was strange how other ‘backpackers’ were able to afford such wonderfully expensive souvenirs at the Pearl Island gift shop, leaving James and I to wonder if we were a little stingy when buying my mum a Chinese comb…

Back on the boat and we were given a crash course in spring roll making, which was very hard to go wrong with, and were very tasty.  

Hanoi is a pretty vibrant city, but what struck us the most was how many white people there are. In every street and in every bar there are so many caucasians. This is a complete juxtaposition to our experience in China, where it sometimes seemed like James and I were the only westerns to have ever set foot there by the reaction of some of the locals. I guess that it is for this reason that it’s so easy to get around in Vietnam. People speak English and everyone is happy to help (for a small fee, of course), a very different experience from the few weeks we had spent with their Chinese neighbours.

To maximise our 15 day stay, after a good few days in Hanoi we jumped a plane to Ho Chi Minh City. A bus between these two cities was our first option, but after a quick google search and reading many tourists’ accounts of near-death experiences, we opted for a flight, luckily it cost just a fraction less than the 24 hour bus.

Our priority in Ho Chi Minh was to visit the Cu Chi tunnels - and did not disappoint.

The tunnels were small and intricate, built and utilised by the Viet Cong during the Vietnam war. If you don’t know much about the Vietnam war like I didn’t (don’t worry though, James absolutely loved to share this knowledge on the subject, of course), it’s definitely worth reading about. By all accounts it was very violent, and the tunnels were just a snapshot into the everyday lives of the Viet Cong. The tunnels were rigged with booby traps to prevent the Americans from entering. A few of these were still in tact, and our guide was more than happy to show us how they worked.

It was at the Chu Chi Tunnels that James got to fulfil his life-long dream of firing an AK47. It was pretty costly, but that was no issue for James (unfortunately it never is for James, which is why it’s my job to look after the budget!). We bought a round of 30; James shot 20 and I shot 10. James absolutely loved it, and the guy thought he was pretty good and gave him some targets. Clearly the guy didn’t think I was much of a shot because he said nothing to me… It was actually pretty hard and not the most comfortable experience I have had - the kick of the rifle was strong and the noise unbelievably loud. James fired off a few tester shots and then went automatic to finish off his rounds. Although he absolutely loved it, he’s not stopped talking about when he can do it again, and at $60 it won’t be anytime soon (but unless he reads this, he won’t know that!)

So far on this trip we have met many lovely people and really enjoyed hearing other backpackers’ stories and travel tips. The same way that when backpacking there is always one c*nt with a guitar (straight out of Inbetweeners, but we have found this to be literally so true in each and every hostel we have stayed in, and we have no idea why backpackers love to play the guitar?!) there is always at least one fellow backpacker on hand to ruin your fun.

Believe me when I say that we have met these fun suckers (keeping it clean, just for you Mum) everywhere, and they have taken on many different forms. A notable one would be the horny Chinese chap in the bunk below me in the hostel in Beijing, who enjoyed pleasuring himself whilst I was trying to sleep above him. Of course, I sadly didn’t get any sleep during or after this event.

The most common form of fun-sucker we have met are those that rustle plastic bags at 3am in the dorm room, or go even further and repack their whole bag while the rest of the world (well, the people in our dorm) are trying to sleep. Another habit of a fun-sucker is having a full-on conversation at normal volume during this time, and another common one - banging around in their locker for something. Needless to say, we have never encountered any lockers made of foam or material, of course they are always metal. Just writing this is making me pretty hot with fury; the only way the situation could get any worse for us during the night would be for a lovely person to combine all activities, which we most unfortunately encountered one night in Ho Chi Minh, and of course, to make matters so much worse; he was British, of course he was.

He came in at 11pm and turned the light on. What a d*ck.

The light quickly went out, as did he, so we went back to sleep.

He came in at around 1am and started speaking at normal volume to his girlfriend. After an encounter of “excuse me, could you be quiet please, it’s 1am and we are all trying to sleep” he quietened down and went back out, what a diva.

At 3 am, he came in again, but this time with a mate, which we later found out to be his brother. On went the light, up went the volume of their chat, and on went his ipad and a FaceTime call with his mother started.

Words were exchanged about how he was being pretty selfish and could he please turn off the light and his ipad and just finally let us sleep, but he got pretty aggressive, louder and more annoyed. I suggested that I would go and find the hostel manager as no one could sleep like this, and he responded by calling me a “grass”. Not realising that people in real life actually spoke like that and believing it was more of an Albert Square thing, I said “Alright Danny Dyer.”

I have now learned, that this was not the right thing to say.

He got right in my face and started yelling at me to not “disrespect him” (It was like he wrote the Eastenders script or something) when James intervened and told him to leave me alone. He turned on James and went to grab him, leaving him with marks on his chest. His brother then got involved, as did I, and it all ended before it began, but within seconds I got the manager in, who turned out to be nothing more than a 4 foot, 20 year old Vietnamese chick. She was tiny and shy and there was literally nothing she could do as she was too afraid of the drunk boys, who were actually pretty huge. She was also too afraid to get the police involved, and all the other beds in other rooms were full, so the most she could do was let James and I sleep in her room.

The reason we were in bed so early was that we needed to be awake for a Mekong Delta river cruise at 6am the next morning. Of course, with all the adrenaline pumping, we were not able to get back to sleep. The two chavs were like sleeping beauties the next morning as James and I left tired and grumpy for our Mekong Delta cruise. We felt better thinking that at some point they would start on the wrong people and their night wouldn’t have ended as well as it did with us.

A trip along the Mekong is an absolute must. We chose a 4-day trip, which included a one night homestay on an island on the river, and involved a river border crossing going from Vietnam to Cambodia, ending in Cambodia’s capital city of Phnom Penh.

Each day the cruise took us to a new place on the Delta and gave us an insight into the different lives of the locals living there. We were taken to where they make rice noodles and got to witness and get involved with the whole process. We were taken to a floating market on the Delta, which is basically where boats drive over to other boats selling items. If a boat was selling fruit for example, fruit would be hoisted to the top of the mast so that other boats could choose to approach and buy fruit, or keep driving along to another boat of interest.

One night we stayed on a small island at a homestay, which was a fantastic experience! The family we stayed with were so accommodating and fed us local delicacies, one that stands out is the deep fried Mekong river fish. The fish is about the size of a dinner plate and they deep fry it-scales and all- in a wok full of oil.

Upon serving, it is placed upright (like it’s swimming) and sliced from spine to belly either side of the spines on its back. The meat is beautiful and light and literally melts in your mouth.

The family then showed us how to eat it  ‘like locals do’, by getting rice paper, lettuce, rice noodles and chilli oil to make these amazing little spring rolls. This was the most delicious fish I have ever tasted (hating fish normally). Being happily excused from the washing up, for the rest of the night we relaxed in hammocks close to the shore of the Delta and eventually retired knowing that we had a lot of busy days ahead of us.

The highlight of all the trip was being taken in small canoe boats along the Delta, and we were just surrounded by lush jungle. It was absolutely amazing, like something straight out of my imagination, and it has since become my new happy place.

As mentioned, the boat cruise took us seamlessly through from Vietnam to Cambodia, and was by far the smoothest border crossing we have encountered to date. Leaving Vietnam was a sad moment for us, as although we had only had 15 days there we were both absolutely loving it. However, as always we were in high spirits arriving in a new country, and coming in by boat just added to the excitement.


Cambodia

2017-05-03 to 2017-05-21

Arriving by boat in Phnom Penh was pretty cool, despite the weather being anything but. Hot and sweaty, we couldn’t find our hostel for love nor money, and of course, our first Cambodian argument erupted. On a wing and a prayer we somehow managed to stumble across a dirty, stinky building and we straight away knew we had made it to our hostel.

We try and eat out at one good restaurant in each place that we visit, not only to ensure we can sample the local delicacies, but also to have a bit of a date night too. Phnom Penh was no different and we found a delicious noodle and dumpling restaurant, and the food was fantastic. Since leaving Russia we hadn’t really been able to cook our own food in hostel kitchens (with the exception of Shanghai where we had an apartment to ourselves). Because of this, eating out for 3 meals a day has become the norm, and therefore unfortunately marginally lost its appeal. There’s nothing more I love when in London to go out for a pizza or cheeky Nandos, but by now in Cambodia we were a little bit ‘over’ eating at restaurants, with our budget forcing us to pick the cheapest item on the menu and potentially sharing a coke, if the meal was relatively cheap. The first thing we noticed in Cambodia is that the food is NOT cheap, we were paying around $6 for a main each. When typing this, I do realise that that is cheap when comparing it to a meal in London, but not so when there are two of you and you’re hungry enough for 3 meals a day. Our second night in Phnom Penh saw our 4 month travel-aversary (it is totally a thing) take us to another great restaurant, number 2 cheap eat on Tripadvisor! However, as soon as we were back in our hostel, James had stomach ache. Whilst he lay on the bed I went downstairs to book our tour to the Killing Fields and S21 museum the following day, and our bus out of Phnom Penh to Sihanoukville the day after that, and then I jumped online to book accommodation for our first night. Of course, once I had parted with a hefty sum of cash for the above, the inevitable happened: James got worse. So much so that the following day we were not able to visit the Killing Fields, but I sweet-talked the chap at the desk and he managed to book us on the trip the following day, and on a bus for the day after that. But of course, he was so unwell my rearranging efforts were fruitless. Phnom Penh (PP) was quickly becoming somewhere we didn’t like, of course it was just circumstantial, but we did decide we would even prefer to be looking for Paje than in PP (read our blog on Zanzibar and you’ll understand how greatly we must have disliked PP)!

As soon as James was better and able to be on a bus that didn’t have a toilet, we left PP and went to Sihanoukville, with the idea that we would return to PP when James was in full health and visit The Killing Fields and S21 museum.

We spent a couple of nights at Otres Beach in Sihanoukville, where we spent our days overlooking a lake sitting in swing chairs. We then got a boat straight over to a Cambodian island cambodia Koh Rong Samloem, an island that had been recommended to us by a fellow traveller we met on the Mekong tour, and it was amazing. The beach was golden and the sea turquoise, perfect for those who love to relax. Unfortunately this wasn’t James and I, although we did have books to read (I am in the middle of The Beach by Alex Garland - preparing myself for Thailand in a few weeks!) and did chill out in hammocks with cocktails on the beach for an hour or 2. The three days that we spent on the island was at a place called Sleeping Trees, the attraction of which was that they had tree tents that you sleep in! Being like a child I got extremely excited and booked. This was a great idea at the time but 3 days and a tropical storm later,  I was over the excitement. We used our remaining time to go exploring around the island, snorkelling in the sea, swimming with all kinds of fish and playing Skip-Bo.

On the ferry on the way back to the mainland we met a chap who was leaving the island purely to get cash out on the mainland then to come back to the island to continue is partying. He told us of some girls at his hostel who gave a local man who was going on a day trip to the mainland their bank cards and pin numbers to him to get cash out on their behalf. Now I’ve never thought of myself as any kind of genius, but that is the dumbest thing I have ever, ever heard. The islands don’t have wifi, so I’m quite sure that when those girls get back to the mainland (if they can ever borrow any money for the ferry fare) and check their internet banking they are in for one almighty shock, and will be putting in a call to their parents for some emergency cash...

The ferry took us to Sihanoukville, where we found a hostel for one night before travelling back to PP. Our hostel was pretty dingy (as most of them are) but had a pretty cool bar with an even more appealing Happy Hour. The bar filled with young solo men, and we soon realised why. There were some real life prostitutes hanging out at the bar. We got two super-cheap beers and sat back to watch them in action. It was so cringey. Men would buy them drinks, and flirt and smack their bottoms (being PC just for you mum) and then disappear shortly, with the men leaving the bar and heading off in the same direction just seconds later. Call me sheltered (as James often does) but I had never seen this so blatant before, and whilst James found this all hilarious, which it was, I found it more sad. The sex industry is huge in Asia, and I had the feeling that this was just the start of what I was going to see.

The following morning we travelled back to PP, and with both of us in full health we were able to visit The Killing Fields and S21 museum, yippee. We managed to pick up the book ‘The Killing Fields’ in Vietnam (didn’t realise it was an illegal photocopy of the original book until we had paid about $5 for it and opened the cellophane cover around it) and had both really enjoyed reading it. It’s a horrific true story of a couple of journalists’ experience of Cambodia during the Khmer Rouge takeover, during their reign and their time in the infamous Killing Fields. If you haven’t read it (or probably even heard of it) I highly recommend you do so. It’s a chilling read, especially when you know it’s all true. In essence, the Khmer Rouge took over as the government in Cambodia in 1975 and carried out The Cambodian Genocide. They had a seat at the UN until 1992.

The Killing Fields and the S21 prison themselves brought so much of the book to life and James and I were very saddened during and after our trip there. Another reminder that the events were so recent is that researchers are still finding human bones at the Killing Fields. James and I could even see what looked like a human thigh bone in the ground. They excavate the ground every few months and put the bones they find in a glass box which is on display. Something that struck a chord with both of us was that in the museum it states that we know so much about the German holocaust and there is always something in the media to remind us of this, but the atrocities that took place in Cambodia that ended within our lifetime are quite unknown and rarely mentioned.

Despite it being our second visit to PP and the fact that in total we spent about a week there, it wasn’t our favourite place to be. It was a busy capital city, not particularly clean, and we also didn’t really feel any ‘culture’ whilst there - as in we felt we could have been in Birmingham or Liverpool, nothing about it said ‘Cambodia’ or ‘Asia’. With that in mind it was time to move on.

Our final day in PP was spent visiting the sites mentioned in the Killing Fields book, before catching a night bus to Siem Reap, which was a completely different experience altogether.

Our hostel was just $3 each for a bed in a 6 bed dorm with aircon - which was like music to our ears! We had some great people in our dorm, one of which was Matt, a fellow Brit who introduced us to the street food he had tried and tested, and also fruit shakes, which turned out to be our diet for our duration of our stay there.

Together with Matt and another dorm mate Zac from Canada, we explored Angkor Wat, the famous temples in Siem Reap. We bought a 3-day pass, and for 2 of those days the 4 of us got a tuk tuk around the temples and were in awe. The first day we did the ‘big loop’ seeing all the famous temples, before going back to the hostel and going out for pizza and beers. The second day we opted to go for sunrise, which meant we had to wake about 5am to get ready, get there and find a good spot at the famous Angkor temple, all in the dark. Despite our tiredness and feeling a little delicate from the night before it was a really great sight.

For the final day of our 3 day passes, James and I rented bikes and cycled to Angkor Wat and to the more hidden temples, off the beaten track. It was fantastic, as a lot of the ‘tours’ don’t take tourists to these temples, so with the exception of a few chinese tourists and their many cameras we were the only ones there, and it was lovely and tranquil, certainly a high point.

By this point we were ‘templed out’ and we resigned to enjoy the other sites and markets Siem Reap had to offer. Our next destination was Laos, however as our route was not a common one we didn’t have any other option than to head to Don Det, part of 4000 islands in Southern Laos. Chloe, another room mate in Siem Reap was going there too, so the three of us caught the bus together. The plan for Laos was to do lots of cycling, and by this point I had already found our route, but based on experience we should have known not to make any plans…


Laos

2017-05-22 to 2017-06-14

Don Det, part of the 4000 islands on Southern Laos held a lot of promise, it’s meant to be a haven for tourists who want to relax. Again, this isn’t really James and I, and although I do love a good hammock (so much so on this trip I have purchased a grand total of 3 to take back to England and to put up in our garden) it’s not something we could do for days on end. Although at this point I must tell you that when James and I were peacefully reading on our hammocks, James’s hammock gave in and he fell to the floor with a thud. Needless to say he was not happy about it, at all. I however, was hysterical, it was simply brilliant, and definitely a Don Det highlight!

On our final day in Don Det we hired bikes and cycled to Don Khon an adjoining island. Part of the Mekong running between Cambodia's border and this island was home to the rare irrawaddy dolphins. There were only 3 dolphins left and we were both determined to see them. We haggled with a chap with a boat, and to much surprise, they did exist and we were able to see them! It was amazing! They didn’t come far out of the water but we could mostly see where they were by their blow-holes. We were so fortunate to see them - we met some girls who said they went on a day trip kayaking to try and see them but they had no luck.

The following day we took a bus to Pakse. There’s not much to do in Pakse, and we immediately booked a night bus for the following evening to take us to Vientiane, Laos’s capital. On our evening in Pakse, I suddenly felt quite sick, and thinking it was food poisoning I spent the night with the bin close to my head. I wasn’t asleep for long when James saw a little bed bug trying to crawl into my hair - every backpacker’s dream. He woke me immediately and woke the staff to give us a new room. I was in quite a lot of pain so wasn’t able to help James pack the bags (oh look how that worked out!). Our new room didn’t appear to have any bugs, and we went to sleep.

I woke up feeling worse, so instead of exploring before our night bus we headed to a cafe with comfy seats (in my head I tried to pretend it was our local Neros). I did what no ill person should ever do - googled my symptoms. Suddenly I was full of malaria, with a touch of yellow fever, and terminal gout. Time seemed to move so slowly that day and I was so happy when we were able to board our ‘hotel bus’, a double-decker bus that had double beds (sort of). Though I was wearing pretty much everything I owned I was shivering all night, whilst fashioning quite a high fever. By the time the bus arrived in Vientiane I was in tears.

Luckily, our hotel was great and they let us check in as soon as we got there (it was only about 9am). I tried to rest but felt worse and worse. James took my temperature, which measured 39.5(!),so we skyped our insurance’s medical team, who told us to waste no time and go to the nearest hospital. She gave us details of the hospital - it was called an International hospital, and my new best friend Google told me it was affiliated with Oxford University. This made my heart sing, as I assumed I would get great care in great facilities. If there is one thing that travelling in Asia has taught me, it is to never assume. In this instance I was left bitterly disappointed. To their credit, they took me very seriously and took me to a bed straight away. However they took James out and asked him to pay, which was quite distressing as I had literally no idea what was going on. It’s moments like these where I like to close my eyes and visit my happy place. They told us they suspected it was dengue fever and did tests for that and malaria.

They took me to a private room whilst I waited for the results to come in, and instead of sitting by my side holding my hand, poor James was up squatting about 100 mosquitoes which were swarming in my room. They probably came from our private bathroom which had a bucket of stagnant water in it...

The good news was that it wasn’t dengue or malaria! The bad news was that they didn’t know what it was, so they sent me home (back to the hotel). The drugs from my drip had made me feel better, and the next day I even ventured out the hotel to a nearby cafe. The day after, however, I felt the worst ever, and the hotel got another taxi for us and I went back to the hospital that Oxford University have clearly forgotten about. In an immense amount of pain I was kept in for 2 nights, on a constant drip with James again as a human mosquito-swatter. We joked that if I didn’t come in with dengue, I certainly would leave with it! James was the sweetest and didn’t leave my side. He stayed both nights with me in my room, sleeping on a hard wooden bench. I don’t know which one of us looked or felt worse when we woke up! Again, tests showed it was neither dengue or malaria, which meant that it could have been a virus from something I had eaten, or a bad dose of gastroenteritis.

Just writing this I am reminded of how much of a low point this was. There was one point that I genuinely thought I was dying (this was before the drugs kicked in). James was worried about me too - I started crying whilst watching some basketball, wishing I could move or even walk like the players could, and when James came back and I told him why I was crying he saw the TV was showing table tennis, and thought I was delirious.

Once happily discharged (they took me off the drip and asked me to stay in all weekend for the Monday doctor to see me, but if they weren’t giving me any drugs there was no way I was staying!) I spent my days in the hotel room watching ‘Don’t tell the Bride’ and ‘Say Yes To The Dress’ (Americans buy some UGLY wedding dresses!) whilst James roamed the streets trying to find some bland western food for me. It was like all my Christmases had come at once when one evening he returned with my all-time favourite dish - pasta and cheese. I am convinced that this helped speed up my recovery. If nothing else, it certainly helped my mental state!

The original plan was to cycle from Vientiane to Vang Vieng, a trip we had both really been looking forward to and had the route planned scrupulously. As I couldn’t really walk well or for more than a couple of minutes at a time this plan was right out the window, much to our distress. When I was well enough, which happened to be 10 days after arriving, we got a bus from Vientiane Vang Vieng.

Vang Vieng is well known for the infamous activity ‘tubing’ where people (mostly tourists) sit on tractor tyre inners on the Nam Song river and get take by the current downstream, visiting bars as you go. It used to be that tourists would start early in the day and visit up to 12 bars. Along the way there were bridges and swings for people to play on and jump off. Of course the tourists would be absolutely battered, and there were many tourist deaths (apparently around 20 per year!) because of this. In 2012 the government shut the activity down, and when it reopened the rules were that only 2 of the 12 bars were allowed to be open each day. The town has really suffered because of it as it lost a lot of its income. Despite that, tubing still exists but is a very different activity from what it once was. It was an absolutely fantastic day; we met some great people and had an absolute blast. It made me feel like I was 18 again, so of course I was absolutely loving it! James was daring and went on a zipline across the river, which threw him in the water half way across, and we both tried jumping off a high platform into the river. My new friend Fran wanted to jump together, which in essence sounded great, but I didn’t bank on her being the impatient type. When we got to the top we both started counting down to jump, and she counted a lot quicker than me, as we were already holding hands I got dragged off the board and down into the water below - face and belly first! There is a video of this, but the best part is James cackling with laughter when I hit the water - he is such a keeper!

With not much else to do in Vang Vieng, we got a bus to Luang Probang - a town in northern Laos. It was really beautiful and very refreshing, and by this point I was well enough to go back to sleeping in dorm rooms which definitely helped us cut back on costs!

Luang Probang is famous for its beautiful waterfall - Kuang Si falls. We got a tuk tuk along with some other lovely travellers we met and had a day trip to the falls together. This was probably one of the most beautiful natural sites that we have seen on this trip. We were able to swim in the water, but inside are those nippy little fish who feed on your toes and dead skin. This meant that if you didn’t want to be nibbled on you either couldn’t stay still in the water, or you just should just get out to dry land!

The park is also home to a sun and moon bear rescue centre, so we got to see some bears in a really happy and healthy environment - one was splashing water in a bear bath, looking like it was having the time of its life!

Some other travellers told us of the street food market at night, where you could have an all you can eat asian buffet for about £5, which was a bargain, as everything else in Luang Probang was pretty pricey. The food was delicious and we were able to try lots of new and local delicacies.

Not that we didn’t enjoy Laos, but with being unwell and our cycling plans cancelled, it certainly was a bit of a low point. We booked a flight out of Luang Probang to Bangkok and were looking forward to a new start in Thailand, where we would both be in full health and have an absolute blast together. Of course, however, going back to the previous lesson I learned, if you look forward to something or have expectations of something, it will almost certainly not happen. Sadly, this was true for James in Thailand.


Thailand

2017-06-14 to 2017-06-29

James and I went to Thailand in November 2013, it was only for a couple of weeks (the most amount of  time we could get off work at once), but in this time we managed to see Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Koh Phi Phi and Koh Lanta. We even managed to squeeze in some pretty horrific food poisoning into that too, so all in all we had a pretty well-rounded trip. The aim of being in Thailand as part of the #YearOfFun was so that I could fly from Bangkok to London to be bridesmaid at my best friend Anna’s wedding, and it was also a cool place for James to hang out and have a week of fun.

Before I flew back, I had about a week in Bangkok. We found a great little hotel, but sadly we had to leave once James walked into the hallway and saw the most ginormous man having a pee in the bin. He turned round and saw us both staring directly at him (talk about awkward!). We told the Reception who checked it out on CCTV and assured us that they would ask him to leave. But as he was absolutely massive, and the neighbourhood was pretty small, we didn’t fancy our chances of bumping into him waiting for us outside after hours…

So we moved to a cool part of town, Silom, which is an area where the sex industry is prevalent. As you can imagine, we left the hostel with the giant with the uncontrollable bladder in quite a hurry, so we didn’t actually look for somewhere to stay, so in true backpacker fashion we walked the streets with our massive backpacks trying to locate somewhere cheap. We went in to one sketchy looking place and asked the price, he told us that it was about £40 for the night - way above our budget. Then James spotted a price list on the wall and said “Hold on, it says here that you can get a room for £15!” On closer inspection though, we noticed that this was if we only wanted the room for 3 hours…! (Mum, if you’re reading this and don’t understand, it’s basically a BYO whore-house). Our next place to investigate was the gay district, and as luck would have it, the cheapest hostel was directly on this road. Outside it was a huge sign calling the place ‘Red Lips’, yep, it was another one of those. But it did the job, and when coming in from a bar one night (James got really checked out on the way home and a few she-males tried to pull him into a few bars, obviously I thought this was hilarious) we noticed there were a lot of pairs of shoes at the bottom of the stairs leading to the bedrooms, which weren’t there in the morning!

Our evenings in Bangkok were spent checking out the different areas and enjoying the nightlife. One evening we sat opposite a ladyboy bar in Soi Cowboy, watching the ladyboys tempt men of all ages and races into the bars. The lady boys, I must say, were absolutely stunning and really put me to shame. For a start, these women actually plucked their eyebrows, and they definitely brushed their hair, so they instantly had two up on me. Not to mention the gorgeous high heels and makeup… in my top knot hair and overgrown monobrow I certainly felt very substandard in comparison!

We saw this one young white chap, perhaps in his early twenties get approached by this sexy ladyboy, and the next second she was holding his hand, leading him into the bar. We couldn’t decide if the men who went in were aware of the niche lady-company inside the bar, or if they were and were just into that kind of thing. Either way, it was fascinating to watch.

We were outside a bar, and it hadn’t occurred to me that we should actually go in, until we saw this white couple come out and walk past us. By this point I’d had a couple of beers, so I asked the lady what it was like in the bar, and if it was acceptable for us to go in. She assured us it was just ladies dancing on the bar and it was totally fine for women to go in, and that we wouldn’t get roped into anything untowards! She was bang on, the inside was full of tiny asian girls dancing on the bar, with both men and women below them drinking from the bar. We discussed at length if all of the women were women, or ladyboys. I am clueless when it comes to that sort of thing, but James by nature doesn’t miss a thing, he was impressively able to distinguish between men and women, and shortly after he did this, it became very clear he was correct, for example we saw an Adam’s Apple appear, or large manly hands. We had a great time playing this game, and it’s all fun and games until one of the ladies dances above you and you can see directly up their skirt. Annnnnd it was time to call it a night and go home.

We actually had quite a tearful goodbye at the airport, as it would be the longest time I would spend away from James in 6 months. Until this point, the longest time apart was for a couple of hours when I was in hospital in Laos and James went out to find me some food! Being by myself weirdly meant that I had to think for myself too. With James around, he is a born navigator and knows exactly where we are and where we need to be, despite never having been there before, so it was strange to actually have to pay attention to things around me.

My week in England was amazing, the wedding was beautiful and such an honour to be a part of. I loved seeing all my family, and of course I loved pigging out on fry-ups and Cadbury’s. I spoke regularly with James, who was staying in a lovely little hostel that we had spent a lot of time finding before we left, to make sure it was the perfect place for him to spend a whole week. During his time without me he visited all the areas of Bangkok, from Sukhumvit to the Khao San road and saw places like the Erawan shrine and Lumpini park.

The night before I came back to Bangkok there was an incident in the hostal James was staying in,so I hand over the laptop to James to explain exactly what happened:

So I was sleeping in the hostel, and suddenly I was woken by mental screaming and banging sounds and “no no no no no” and “help” etc, the Chinese guy I'm sharing the dorm with jumped off bed and locked the door.

The noise suddenly stopped and there was utter silence except the noise of other doors being locked. I burst out laughing and the Chinese guy was like "plea Mr Jame he will hear and we in trouble" at which point I realised there are only two young girls on reception who must be terrified. So I sprang from my bed and grabbed an object which could be used as a weapon. I went to the door as the Chinese man begged me not to open the door "no Mr Jame, he coming he coming don't open door plea!" I ignored him and unlocked the door slowly. I slid the door across leaving myself enough room to attack.

I gingerly stepped into the hallway. I moved towards the stairs creeping and ready to pounce, I heard foot steps and my adrenaline spiked as from the corner of the stairs a large black man covered in blood appeared.

He said “Please help, a man with a knife has attacked me!” I ushered him into my room and sat him on one of the spare beds and got my first aid kit out and started to see to his wounds.

The Chinese guy was white as a sheet and hurriedly locked the door again.

As I cleaned the blood away, I noticed that the cuts were very superficial and a horrible thought crossed my mind. Pushing it to the back to continue with the first aid, I cleaned his wounds and by this time the black guy was shaking and heaving to vomit. I covered him with a blanket and decided that I had better continue down stairs to the girls on the front desk.

Again the Chinese man begged me to stay " plea Mr Jame it no safe stay here we phone police." But I knew I had to make sure the girls were Ok.

Again, repeating my previous action and this time making it all the way down stairs and through to reception. I was greeted by the sight of two Thai girls cowering outside the locked entrance to the hostel. Telling them to unlock the door and phone the police I turned to look at the CCTV monitor. I grabbed the nearest stool and moved towards a bend in the corridor where I knew if anyone came down I could easily deliver a blow to the head.

I held my breath for what seemed like an eternity again the rush of adrenalin coursing through my body making my legs tremble and my mind focus. I waited. And again this sinister thought entered my mind - why are his cuts so superficial and none of them defensive…

A police car screeched to a halt outside and broke my train of thought. 2 police men jumped out and started taking Thai to one of the receptionists. I slowly walked back and placed the stool on the ground. I proceeded to tell the bib (boys in brown) what I knew and where the victim was. By this point the police were demanding to see the CCTV. The younger of the receptionists rewound the footage in the fourth floor (two floors above mine) and we witnessed what could only be described as the "here's Johnny" scene from The Shining. The footage showed the door suddenly move violently and a fraction of a second later a blur of a body part came through the door. Blow after blow landed on the far side of the door smashing a hole straight through. The next second a person flew out of the door and into the hallway - too fast for the CCTV to pick up. The police ran back to the car and grabbed stab vests and batons. Putting the vest over his head I could tell he was nervous. He didn't want to go up. The other officer slowly moved towards the stairs and was joined by his friend. They walked up to the 4th floor and I watched on the CCTV as they investigated the door frame (or what now remained of it) I turned to the receptionist and asked " who else is in that dorm with him?" she turned and said "that no dorm it private room." The thought from earlier flashed back into my mind...it's the black guy who went mental and he's locked in the room with the Chinese guy!

I sprinted up the stairs and told the police what I knew and that he was now in my room. With the police behind me I knocked on the door... "Who it plea?" "It's me, Mr James" I replied. The door unlocked and the the black guy and the chinese guy were stood there...the police escorted the black guy up to the fourth floor and and then made the arrest. I came back to my room and told the Chinese guy what I now knew... that the black guy had gone mental and smashed his room up. The Chinese guy almost fainted.

I literally couldn't stop laughing and the Chinese guy thought I was totally unhinged. Funniest thing is the black guy was sleeping in our room 2 nights before, and the Chinese guy told reception that he snored really loudly so they moved him to a private room !

*Passes laptop back to Katryn*

It was a tearful reunion in Bangkok airport (man that place knows how to make me cry!) and once back at the now smashed-up hostel, we moved all our stuff to another hostel next to the Koh San Road - a tourist road in Bangkok, where it’s literally sin city- and anything goes.

Regaining our youth, we went to a bar on the Koh San road, but instantly felt like OAPS at a playgroup - way out of our depth. It’s amazing how many fellow travellers we have met on this trip that spend their time drinking all night and sleeping all day. Now I’m not saying that that doesn’t sound like fun, and this might make me sound a little boring but we came travelling to see stuff and do fun things, not just repeat something I can do on a weekend (at least back in England you can have a proper fry-up the next day, rather than veg and rice, or scorpions on a stick to help you recover…!)

Originally, we had high hopes to visit the Thai island of Koh Phangan for a Full Moon Party (Mum, that’s basically a party on the beach that 20-somethings go to and have the night of their lives at) and head to Koh Tao for some diving, but having now been in South East Asia for 2 months and our budget rapidly decreasing thanks to me being unwell, we were keen to get to South America and start our Year of Fun Part 2.

From Bangkok, we flew to Da Nang in central Vietnam. If you read our blog ‘Vietnam  part 1’ you’ll know that we were denied our 30 day visa on the border, and had to settle for a free 15 day visa instead, which meant we had to completely change our plans and do Vietnam in 2 parts. Our first trip to Vietnam was outstanding, and both James and I agree it was one of the top countries we have visited so far, so we had high hopes for Vietnam part 2.


Vietnam part 2

2017-07-01 to 2017-07-07

As we arrived in Da Nang it felt great to be back in Vietnam. We had just 10 days to explore central Vietnam before a flight to Hong Kong, to then catch a flight to Buenos Aires, Argentina. We didn’t waste anytime getting to Hoi An, which had come highly recommended from everyone we met who had travelled there already. Hoi An is the place you go to get clothes tailored, and the majority of backpackers we met there were doing just that. We weren’t jealous or anything, but we secretly hated everyone who told us of their brand spanking made-to-measure suits.

We stayed at a wonderful hostel, which knew exactly what poor backpackers wanted. Each night they had an activity on, and our favourite one was a spring roll making class, which is exactly as it sounds and we were left with a tonne of springrolls to devour afterwards, bliss! It was here that we met a British chap called Andy, who turned out to live not far from us back in London. Whilst he was lovely and his chat was good, his spring roll making left a lot to be desired, and once the spring rolls had come out of the oven we were hoping we didn’t get the baking tray with Andy’s creations! The springroll class conveniently fell at the same time as happy hour, so everyone was in very high spirits, with their stomachs thoroughly lined, perfect for the activity that followed - a pub crawl.

As a form of taxi from bar 3 to bar 4, the hostel had organised free scooter rides for everyone. This had been a topic of contention for James and I throughout our whole time in Asia. Sober Katryn is very much against riding a scooter as we are not legally allowed to drive one and we are also not insured, so any accidents would have to be paid for out of our budget, which is, as mentioned, disappearing rapidly. Damn I’m such a bore. Luckily for James, drunk Katryn loved the idea of getting on a scooter taxi! I sat behind the diver, cuddling him closely (looking back I’m quite sure this goes against the advice for passengers) and James was behind me on the bike, correctly holding on to the bar behind him. It was a pretty cosy ride - and it was fabulous! I was so sad when we arrived at the final bar and the ride had ended. A highlight of the night for me was dancing with some German travellers to Liquido (English people just don’t know it?!) whereas James’s favourite part of the evening was the Banh Mi (pork sandwich) he got from a street stall outside the last bar. Well they do say opposites attract...

We had the pleasure of meeting up with Monica and Kelly, two Americans (I wanna say they were preppy girls? ;) ) who we met at our trip to the waterfalls in Luang Prabang. They showed us around Hoi An on our first night and it was them who introduced us to the food night market and the local dish Cao Lau, which we enjoyed most of out nights in Hoi An.

Another activity organised by our hostel was a street food tour, which was amazing. They took us to little places that we wouldn’t even think of ordering from and encouraged us to try some crazy local dishes- most of which were really tasty. And any that I didn’t find as tasty, James was more than happy to finish for me, he’s such a selfless boy!

A popular way of moving on from Hoi An to the nearby town Hue was to rent scooters and ride your way there. The route is supposedly beautiful; it takes you along the shore and by waterfalls and beautiful scenery. James and I loved this idea and we were deadset that that’s how we were going to leave Hoi An. And then we spoke to Andy, who shared my original view that they were really dangerous. We had seen countless amounts of tourists in the rest of SE Asia who had what is known as ‘road rash’, bad grazes down their arms and legs from motorbike and scooter accidents. James had driven a motorbike before, but I certainly hadn’t. If you know me well you’ll know I am a bit of a calamity and sometimes not all together there (my sister calls me a Space Cadet?) so if anyone was going to have an accident, it was going to be me. My original thought was that if anything did happen to us, we had a long-haul flight to South America in less than a week, and we couldn’t afford to miss the flight, especially as we would be too busy affording the medical bills. When speaking with Andy, he brought me right back to my original belief and I wanted to take train, an activity that the 3 of us could have done together.

However, I didn’t want to be boring, and I had worked up the courage to rent a bike with James. But then, the day before this meant to happen, we went to the beach.

Hoi An is also well known for its beautiful beaches, which we hired push bikes and cycled to one afternoon. The cycle there was great and I felt very comfortable and confident on the roads. After a long stroll on the beach and some crab spotting, we cycled back around 4pm. This was a terrible idea, as it was as good as rush hour. There were maniacs on the road and they came very close to my bike. There were quite a few hairy moments, and it was when we safely got back to the hostel with the bikes that I decided I couldn’t ride a scooter the following day as it could only be scarier than what I had just experienced. We went to find Andy but when we couldn’t find him we figured he was busy chatting up some 19 year old. James and I went to buy our train tickets, as we were told that the train follows the same route as the road and we would see everything on it that you’d see from a bike. We came back to the hostel for our second spring roll class of the week, where we found Andy, who excitedly told us that as a compromise, he found a company called Easy Rider  who rode a scooter, and he would ride on the back of it to Hue, and he had booked it for tomorrow, the same day we were due to be riding to Hue. We felt terrible, once we explained that we had just bought train tickets, he did say he would have got the train with us!

Nevertheless, Andy safely rode on the back of his Easy Rider whilst James and I got our ‘scenic’ train (which turned out to be anything but, as the locals wanted to keep the blinds shut?!). The carriage we had booked was a standard class and we were sitting opposite a family who appeared to be relocating with all their worldly goods, including a cockerel, which was placed in a box behind our chairs. It was the most surreal thing when it started it’s cockadoodle from right behind us, I can’t quite imagine that on a Virgin train.

We met up with Andy in our hostel in Hue, and we also befriended an Aussie, I literally couldn’t understand a word he said… but that didn’t stand in the way of the four of us going out for dinner at a local ‘cheap eat’ on Tripadvisor. Once there, we decided to have the set menu for 4, which was such a brilliant idea as it meant we had copious amounts of food on our table for us to try, and it worked out as just the same price as if we had just ordered one dish each.

The following morning, Andy got back on the back of his bike (apparently he had a bit of a taste for it and loved it, so arranged with his chap for a few more days of riding!) and after a morning of exploring we got back on the ‘scenic’ train to Da Nang, only this time we were the ones with the window seat, and of course, the blinds stayed firmly open and we saw exactly what all the fuss was about with the lovely view outside.

Our time in SE Asia sadly came to an end when we boarded a plane to Hong Kong. But a highlight of our whole stay there came in the form of our taxi ride to the airport - a ride on the back of a scooter. Sitting behind the driver as he weaved through the traffic was simply liberating, and I loved every second of it. It was such a surprise - when we asked for a taxi we were thinking more along the lines of a black cab - and it turned out to be the perfect end to an amazing two months.


Hong Kong and Toronto

2017-07-07 to 2017-07-09

The original Hong Kong plan was to spend 4 days there before catching a flight to South America, however as we brought our flights forward to get to South America earlier, it worked out that we had just 24 hours in Hong Kong before our flight to BA. With such a quick turnaround time, we knew that we just had to whiz around the highlights.

Upon arrival in HK airport, we queued up for the bus to take us to Hong Kong Island where we were staying. As in each airport, we withdraw cash in local currency, but on the bus the driver told us he didn’t have any change. We could either get out the queue, break the note on something we didn’t really need and then queue for the next bus, or just not get our $2 change and put it down to ‘tourist tax’. We decided upon the latter, and it was a brilliant decision, as we climbed the stairs on the double-decker bus and got my favourite seats on the bus - the front seats! I even like to ride up front in London, and I’ve lived there for over 7 years, so you can imagine my happiness when we had bagged them in Honkers of all places! The bus ride was of course amazing, we had such a great view, something we would have happily paid more than $2 for!

Once checked in to the most expensive accommodation so far to date (£16 each?!) we caught the Star Ferry to Hong Kong mainland to have some dinner. The ferry was an experience in itself, and something James had wanted to do for many years. It was a great photo opportunity as the sight from the boat was phenomenal, and it left us on a bit of a high. The restaurant we ate in did not disappoint, as we found it was voted in 101 best places to eat in the world! It had been a while since we were in China so the dim sum was more than welcome! It was delicious in fact, and after sampling some tasty new food including a pineapple role thing that James loved, we literally had to make a run for it to get the last ferry back to Hong Kong island. The boat ride back was again great, and we crept into our dorm room setting our alarms for very early in the morning.

We woke up at 6am and got an early subway to Victoria Peak - a mountain in Hong Kong. We were on the first train up to the peak, and when we got to the top we had the most spectacular view of Hong Kong. Because we were some of the only ones there due to it being crazy early we pretty much had the place to ourselves. A kind jogger told us where to go for the best view and we enjoyed a good half hour just standing and taking it all in.

We moved swiftly back to the hostel in time for check out and to catch our bus back to the airport. We bagged the best seats again… but it was chucking it down so we didn’t really get to see anything! I like to think that it was Asia being sad for the fact that we were leaving. Since arriving in China 27th March, and this was now 7th July, we had been in Asia longer than any other place (technically earlier if we are counting Mongolia, or should we really be counting from when we crossed the Volga river in Russia?) and despite a couple of low points, we have had an amazing time there.

Onwards and upwards, or should we really be saying Eastwards and upwards, as we boarded a plane to Buenos Aires, with a quick stop over in Toronto, Canada. Once again, as we had a 4 hour stop over planned, we should have guessed that our stop over would be, in reality, anything but.

Toronto

A four hour stop over in a Canadian airport certainly doesn’t warrant an entry in a blog. However, a flight that was delayed by 10 hours, a stay in a courtesy swanky hotel with a pool certainly does.

Basically, at this point in time we are no longer fans of Air Canada. The hefty delay in HK airport meant lots of waiting around, with just $10 in the form of a meal ticket for food which would barely buy us chicken nuggets from McDonalds we weren’t in the highest of spirits. They had told us in HK that we would miss our connection, or more like we had to tell them that, as they were content with putting us on a flight to Buenos Aires that took off just 30 minutes after our flight to Toronto landed (really?!), so at Toronto airport an attendant presented us with a hotel voucher at the Crowne Plaza. I had heard of this chain from movies (literally all my American and Canadian knowledge is from films or from my Nashville pal Megs) and knew it would be nice. It was by far and away the most comfortable bed we had slept in in the last 6 months and getting up the next morning was painful!

In the afternoon we made full use of the hotel’s swimming pool, jacuzzi and sauna, and then back in the room I jumped in the bath. Definitely the cleanest I had been since December, and it was bliss. A highlight though was taking a walk to a nearby ‘gas station’ (that’s a petrol station for us Brits) and buying things we had heard about in films - like Cheetos and a Tootsie-roll.

That evening we left Canada behind and flew off to Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina.

As we have learned the hard way that plans don’t come in to fruition, we have just one night’s accommodation in BA booked, and the rest, they say, is unwritten.


Argentina fun - From whale watching to the end of the world

2017-07-11 to 2017-07-23

We were really excited to arrive in Buenos Aires, which offered a new start in a new continent. My sister Morag and her then boyfriend (now husband) Mark travelled around South America in 2012, and in her blog she writes “On the whole our experiences of South America is that the food is much cheaper than we have encountered elsewhere in the World.” With this in mind, we were very excited to nurture our budget.

Upon arrival in BA airport we were faced with 2 options: get a taxi to our hostel in the center of town for 40USD, or get a local bus for 2 hours for about 1USD each. If you know James well, you will know he has a taste for the finer things in life, and will sniff out (and want) the most expensive item in any shop. With this in mind, despite the fact that he has been a backpacker on a budget for 6 whole months, he vouched for the expensive taxi option. Minutes later we were on the bus. However, apparently you need some kind of oyster card to use this bus service which of course we didn’t have, so a  generous Priest paid for us on his oyster card equivalent and wouldn’t accept our cash. We were off to a great start - having spent no money, and already having met some really lovely people.

With my sister’s words of inexpensive food in mind, we headed out to the supermarket for our first South American meal. Either my sister takes after James and has expensive taste, or Argentina has got a whole lot more expensive since 2012 - as we are northern, I reckon it’s the latter. To put things in perspective, a loaf of bread was going to cost us FIVE GREAT BRITISH POUNDS! In that very moment, my carefully planned budget just exploded before my eyes. Our eating habits would have to change (in that we wouldn’t be able to eat again, ever). Whilst James was upset about the potential malnourishment,I was just excited about the impending weight loss.

After a couple of nights in our hostel, I began to get a bit itchy. The hostel staff told me they had “mosquitos in the wall” and not wanting to cause a fuss, I took this at face value. I learned shortly after that mosquitos don’t live in walls, and the bites were most definitely from bedbugs.

The following evening in a new hostel, after being unable to sleep from all the itching,I saw a bed bug crawling on my pillow. I was completely naked in bed, having taken off my pjs thinking that I still had bugs in them biting me. After seeing this humongous bedbug on my pillow I jumped straight out of the bottom bunk and woke James, who was sleeping soundly on the top bunk. I was pretty much in tears and violently shaking at this point as I had no idea how many bugs there were and how many were on me, and James had to escort me out of the 10 bed dorm in a towel!

Having just woken up and realising the room was dark, our conversation went like this:

James: “How did you see the bed bugs?”

In my tearful panic, and not fully understanding the question I responded with:

Katryn: “With my eyes!”

James: “I meant, how did you see them in the dark?”

Katryn: “Ohhh, by my phone light.”

To make sure the bedbugs hadn’t come with us to this new hostel, the manager of the new hostel washed all of our belongings, including our bags in poison to ensure anything that was previously living there certainly wouldn’t be alive anymore. It was at this point however, that James washed a lovely little toiletbag in the poison, without realising it had all of our anti-malarial medication inside. Deciding that it would be worse to ingest the poison-laced drugs than to get malaria itself, these tablets made their way to the bin, and we would have to rethink going to any malaria zones later in our trip!

Not ones to let a small issue of having bedbugs in 2 consecutive nights stand in our way of having fun, we ventured out in BA to enjoy a free walking tour, the La Recoleta graveyard where Evita’s grave lies, BA’s famous artisan market (which is apparently the largest in South America) and of course, a tango class.

James almost cried when I told him we were going to a tango class and that it was non-negotiable. The class was at an old church, and as instructed by our hostel we raced to get there for 7 when it would start, necking a bottle of wine before we left the hostel for some dutch-courage. However, upon our sweaty arrival from racing through the streets and subway, we found it didn’t actually start until 8pm, giving us time to watch the professionals whilst having another bottle of wine, to ease us into it.

When the class started, there were only 6 first-timers. She taught us basic steps, and in our couples we had to practice them. It was only then that I actually felt sorry for James, because he was really hating it. If I’m honest, I didn’t actually enjoy it that much either, as we both really sucked at it. Especially when the teacher watched us, and said “no, you need to do it more like this” and showed us by demonstrating with either James or myself. When she did the demonstration, it actually made sense and looked good, but when James and I were partnered together again, we just didn’t get it, and she just had to stop us again and re-show us, for the rest of the class.

We were a lot more drunk than we were sad when the class had come to an end, so went back to our hostel and showed them what we had learned, they weren’t that impressed… The hostel had an amazing BBQ on that night, which meant we could try all different cuts of meats for a fraction of what we would have paid in a steak house. It was delicious, and so was the free Argentinian wine to accompany it.

Out last night in BA was spent with a date night to an Argentinian steakhouse. The steak (and the wine) was probably the most delicious steak I’ve ever had, and James was made up with his steak,which was arguable the size of his head. It was a great way to end our BA experience before we headed south on a bus to Puerto Madryn to see some whales.

Puerto Madryn

Tourists flock to Puerto Madryn to see the Southern Right whales, and we were in luck - it was whale season! The rich tourists get a boat out see them, and apparently they can come right up to your boat. Having spent all our money on bread, we hired some bikes (which were 15USD each!) and went on the longest uphill bike ride ever to the beach to see them. We sat on the sand with our make-shift picnic and waited until 3:30, which is when we were told they would appear. Southern Right whales are clearly divas, as we caught sights of the first one about 3:45. But then they came en masse and were swimming right in front of us in all directions! The sight was absolutely awesome; the whales came right up to the shore so we were able to get an excellent close-up view, and James was able to get the pictures he was after. It was a wonderful afternoon, and everything we could have possibly hoped for.

Ushuaia

From Puerto Madryn we had a long night bus through Patagonia to reach Ushuaia. Being the southernmost city in the world it is appropriately named the “end of the world.” Over the last 6 months of our trip, we have repeatedly been told that we are doing our journey all wrong as we are not in high season for any country we have been (the only exception was whale watching!). This was true of Patagonia, but the fact that we went in winter didn’t change anything for us - we were able to do all the activities we had planned, and although everything was covered in snow it just made it all the more special for us.

The trip to Ushuaia forced us to make a stop at Rio Gallegos, which is literally just a transient rundown town. If you’ve read our earlier blog entries you’ll know that we often play a game relating to the town Paje, that we spent hours tirelessly searching for in the blistering heat in Zanzibar and never found it. The game goes something like this:

“What would you rather be doing right now, [enter horrible situation here] or looking for Paje?”

This game has now changed, substituting Paje for Rio Gallegos, it really is that bad.

After a sleepless night in a room where we thought we would get savaged by local vagrants, we got our connecting bus down to Ushuaia. Ushuaia is separated from mainland Argentina by the a small channel of sea, so our bus ticket included a boat  - similar to the one in Botswana that we crossed to get to the Okavango Delta, just a lot, lot colder. It was absolutely freezing, so donning all of our thermals we enjoyed the view from the boat, with the world’s most expensive hot dog and hot chocolate.

Buses to Ushuaia only leave Rio Gallegos in the morning, hence why we had to spend a night there. The reason for this became clear upon arrival to Ushuaia, because the whole town was covered in snow, and most evenings we were there it snowed non-stop from about 4pm. The final hours of our bus trip was spent driving very slowly, and we both breathed a sigh of relief when the bus trip terminated.

A highlight of Ushuaia, and certainly one that currently comes in my top 5 trip activities of the Year of Fun so far was the day we spent dog sledding and snowmobile riding.

I wasn’t that excited about driving the snowmobile - we had done quad biking on the sand dunes in Namibia and I sucked at it, so it was intended to be more of a thing for James. James was upfront first and was a pretty reckless driver. We had a speedometer on the vehicle and he ended up going 48mph! The scenery we went past was fantastic - into the woods and around the snow-capped trees, it was just stunning.

At the halfway point we switched over so I was in the driver’s seat, and I was pretty nervous. But as it turned out, I’m a pretty reckless driver too and absolutely loved slowing our snowmobile right down to distance ourselves from the rest of the group, and then bombing it to catch up with them. There was a point when I took a corner a little too fast and the whole left side of the vehicle lifted off the ground and we came very close to being overturned. Luckily James stuck his leg out and pushed us back firmly on the ground! I was absolutely buzzing and was sad when it was over, but whilst we waited to do dog sledding, we were given sledges for us to have a play around on the mountains with. There is a brilliant video of James tobogganing, and I shan’t ruin it for you because it’s just too good. Sadly this blog site won’t let us upload videos, but I’ve popped it on Facebook so I recommend you check it out and see if you can watch it without wincing!

We tried to do dog sledding in Listvyanka in Russia, but were told the dogs were on a marathon (whaaaat?) so we missed out, and were determined to do it elsewhere. We couldn’t have asked for a better dog sledge ride - it was fantastic! One of the dogs was naughty and kept trying to pause or run off and sniff the bushes, so he became our favourite. We spent some time with the dog-owners afterwards hearing about the dogs’ lives and how they are trained. They were very friendly and playful, but they absolutely stank so we quickly learned to keep our distance!

Lunch was included on the day, which is probably the #1 best thing a backpacker can hear. It turned out to be lamb, which they were roasting on an open fire in front of us. It was probably one of the most delicious things I’ve tasted on this trip, and the best thing was it was all you could eat - #2 best thing a backpacker can hear! Both activities and the wonderful lunch made it the best day ever, so I have therefore since referred to this day as my second birthday on the trip.

A mandatory trip when you’re in Ushuaia is to go in the Torre del Fuego Park and visit the actual ‘end of the world.’ The park was cool and we enjoyed having our pictures taken at the sign, but for 50USD each, it was pretty expensive, and sadly on this trip, there was no free lunch.

Quote of the day:

James: "Oh sh*t, I think I wiped my nose on this guys's towel in the night. Who leaves their towel there anyway?"

Katryn: "Well obviously you if you thought it was yours..."

Quote of the day:

Katryn to Texan guy: "I love your accent, it sounds like you should be wearing a Sherriff's hat and chewing on grass."

James to Texan guy: "I think you sound like Clint Eastwood!"

Texan guy: "Haha - I think you sound like Harry Potter."

*Awkward silence*

******

James in Puerto Madryn: "Oh look, they draw dicks in graffiti here too!"


Patagonia - hiking on glaciers, when it rains - it pours, wine tasting and salt flats

2017-07-27 to 2017-08-23

Our first stop in Chile was to Puerto Natales to do some hiking in Torres del Paine National Park. We arrived in Puerto Natales well after dark. Arriving anywhere at night is always a bit dodgy - it’s a new area, we have no idea if the bus station is near the town or our hostel, and if we’re going to be jumped and killed and have our skin used for making lamp shades. On arrival we whipped out our maps.me app and made our way through the unlit, eerie streets of Puerto Natales.

After walking as fast as we could in the direction of our hostel (whilst being followed by the local street dogs, some of which are the size of small bears) we got to a crossroads and heard “KATRYN?” James turned around to see a shadowy figure calling out from a dilapidated car. Obviously being scared of the dark (it’s the only thing stopping me from being a police woman) I continued walking hoping that it was just a mighty fine coincidence. James being extremely brave and handsome (edited by James) asked in incredibly broken Spanish (and by that I mean he turned to the car and had his hands in a ‘what do you want’ pose) what the person wanted and quickly found out that they were from the hostel and had tried to meet us at the bus station. They drove us back and helped us to organise a trip for the next morning to hike in Torres del Paine National Park.

We had an early start the next morning (a backpacker’s #572 reason to love backpacking) to the National Park, a beautiful park which encompasses mountains, glaciers, lakes and rivers. The hike to the top was great, but once there we turned to blocks of ice - a combination of it being about -10 degrees and gale force winds. With this in mind, it was clearly the obvious destination for our guide to organise for us to have lunch. The view was extremely beautiful, and one that would be great to enjoy if you were lying under about 50 hot water bottles. Alas we were not, but it was incredible all the same. Within 10 minutes of starting our descent we were hot and sweaty - our bodies were so confused!

Our route took us back over to Argentina to visit El Calafate, home of the Perito Merino Glacier, which we just couldn’t wait to climb. We arrived at our hostel and no kidding, this is how the conversation went, on a Saturday afternoon:

“Hello, we would like to book on the next tour to hike the Perito Merino Glacier.”

“Sorry, but the glacier is closed for the season.”

“Oh no! That’s the whole reason we are here!” (Great sadness now showing on our faces)

“Well, if you have some time to spare, the season reopens on Monday.”

“Monday...as in the day after tomorrow?”

“Yes.”

Just think - we have had to deal with these kind of douche bags non-stop for 7 months.

We spent our spare day visiting the Glaciarium museum in El Calafate, which worked out perfectly as we could learn all about glaciers before hiking one the following day. Did you know that the Perito Merino Glacier is the only glacier in the world that is getting bigger? We didn’t either.

So the season had finally reopened after such a long wait (24 hours) and we were very excited! At the beginning of the day we did a walk to the glacier so we could see it in its entirety. There are simply no words to describe it, it was phenomenal. Whilst we were there, we were fortunate enough to see some of the glacier break off in the water, which is a special sight in itself. After a picnic lunch we donned crampons and our thermals and began the hike on the glacier. We were told to walk like John Wayne with our legs apart so that we don’t injure ourselves with our spiked footwear. All the rules in the world couldn’t stop me from falling on the ice though, and obviously, if I were to rank it on the graceful scale, I would say it was anything but.

The hike wasn’t easy, especially as there were a few crevasis in the ice we had to breeze past - one false step and we would have disappeared into the abyss. When we reached the top of the side of the glacier (writing that doesn’t sound like I’m making sense, but that was literally what it was), the guides stopped us and ran further up, to what appeared to be a massive silver box hiding within the ice. From out of the box he produced a couple of bottles of whisky, glasses and some chocolate. They then hacked up some ice from the glacier with an ice pick and popped them into the glasses before adding the whisky. It was fantastic - and exactly what we needed to warm up!

After the glacier in El Calafate, we headed to El Chalten, a village within Los Glaciares National Park in Argentina, and a gateway to Mount Fitz Roy and the Laguna de los Tres viewpoint. El Chalten however, was like a ghost town, or straight out of a zombie apocalypse film, as we seemed to be the only 2 people in the whole town - you could almost hear the tumbleweed. On our first day of hiking we intended to do a 10k hike to see the Laguna de los Tres viewpoint, but due to a slight wrong turning (ok, it was totally my fault, it wasn’t clear where the trail started, so we started hiking on this thin little path) we realised that none of things we should be seeing on the trail existed. We did, however see puma footprints in the snow, which we knew were fresh because it had been snowing all night. This meant the puma hadn’t long been where we were. It got even better when we saw some other little footprints in the snow, alongside the puma’s, which James identified to belong to a rabbit being chased by the cat, and once their small footprints had disappeared and just the puma’s footprints continued we were saddened to realise he had met an unfortunate end.

After hours of hiking we eventually saw 2 people who worked in the park and were changing the signs whilst it was low season (another trip which wasn’t great timing on our part - but it did mean it was a lovely quiet hike) and they pointed us in the right way to go back to the village. The route we took back was the same as the route we *should* have taken to get to the laguna, but we had had a fabulous morning hiking the untrodden path we were actually very pleased with my terrible navigation skills (phew!) The following day we hiked to the Fitz Roy mountain. The hike was really challenging due to the vast amount of snow, but it got a whole lot harder when we reached the base of the mountain as it was incredibly steep, and covered in deep snow and ice. With each step we took we were unsure if it would be a safe one, or if we would lose balance and simply fall/roll down the mountain - believe me, it sounds a lot more fun than it was.

Reaching the top was amazing - it was the most incredible view and we were so proud of our achievements, as we learned some hikers had turned back during the ascent. Our descent was deceptively dangerous, but we took our mind off the danger by seeing the funny side - we were slipping and sliding all over the place. James held the gopro for this, and the video is full of him falling on his bum, or me in front of him doing the same, and of course, with that came many expletives (sorry mum)! Back at our hostel, we warmed up with hot showers and red wine, and we put our laundry in for a load.

The following morning as we were waiting for the snow to pass, our laundry was returned to us. You may have noticed in absolutely every picture where he isn’t wearing a winter hat, James is wearing his cap. It’s become quite sentimental by now as it only really leaves his head at night or for the wooly hat when in snow. The cap was put in for laundry, as you can imagine by now it’s a little pungent. However upon its return, the plastic size adjuster had melted. I found this absolutely hilarious, James did not. Long story short, the hostel apologised and gave us some cash to get a replacement. Little did we know that this would be the start of the most disastrous 48 hours on our trip so far.

We got the bus back to El Calafate (it’s the only place you can go to from El Chalten), and as we had been there before we knew that there was a hostel right next to the bus station. We intended to get a super early bus to Puerto Natales the following morning. It’s always my job to book stuff, and because we didn’t know the name of this perfectly-located bus stop, I found it by looking on our maps.me app. We arrived as the heavens opened, and ran from the bus station to the hostel, only to be told we didn’t have a reservation. Confused, I got my confirmation email out to prove it, they told me that I had booked a different hostel, one that is next door to the old bus station.

At this point we were both pretty annoyed (James more so, as it was my fault I couldn’t really justify getting too cross!), and being poor backpackers we had no choice but to venture out in the torrential rain to the hostel all the way across town. The trek was tough, we were soaked through and freezing, and we had to make our way across deserted marshy fields and down creepy roads. It was so dark and eerie and we both just couldn’t wait to get there. We saw the big ‘HOSTEL’ sign from across the street, and marched over excitedly and rang the doorbell. There was no answer, and all the lights were off. We rang again, no answer. We knocked on the doors and windows, no answer. We shouted as we knocked, no answer. After a good five minutes, we realised that there wasn’t going to be any answer. The only word I can think of to describe our feelings would be: livid. Livid at the rain, livid that we were soaked through, livid we were cold, livid it wasn’t the hostel next to the station, and most importantly, livid at Hostelworld for letting us book a hostel that clearly was shut for the season.

We had no choice but to walk back the way we had came to the hostel next to the real and active bus station. Our half an hour walk in the torrential rain consisted of us ranting about the strong email we were to send to Hostelworld, whilst every single bit of clothing was quickly soaking through.

When we arrived back at the hostel that was next to the real terminal, we wrung our clothes through and were shown to our dorm beds and the hot showers. My first job before getting warm and dry was to log on to Hostelworld and start the complaint-ball rolling. I double-checked the hostel we had booked and mid-way saying “they’ve even emailed to confirm our booking”, James took the phone off me and said ”hang on a second…” The Photographer in him zoomed in to the picture of the front of the hostel and said “Katryn… that’s not the hostel we were knocking on…”

I died there and then, when it sunk in that we had walked to where the hostel was meant to be, but we were just on the wrong side of the road, and were knocking on the wrong building.

I was drenched, freezing, and now mortified, and believed that this leg of the trip could not get any worse.

Early next morning we woke up and walked to the bus stop, very excited to get on the bus and leave the nightmare of El Calafate behind us. The journey started out slowly as there was heavy snow on the ground and after maybe an hour in, we came to a stop. Assuming it was just a casual police stop we didn’t stir from our books. Moments later, the driver stood up and told us in Spanish that there is so much snow that the road has now closed, so we would have to turn back and go to El Calafate. You can imagine our unimpressed faces at this point.

The bus turned around and slowly started its return journey. However, 5 minutes later we had stopped again, to learn that we were stuck in the snow. Not to worry though, a snowmobile was on its way to help us. A couple of hours passed and the snowmobile was in full helpful mode, when it too, got stuck in the snow. Our driver tried to radio for another one, but there was no radio frequency, of course there wasn’t. Hours passed, and another snowmobile was sent out to help us, but right on queue, it got stuck too.

Some very clever fellow passengers had got off the bus and were trying to hitchhike to Puerto Natales, our original destination. When they had been unsuccessful for about half an hour, I went out to speak to them and they said they were hopeful that the next car would take them. I then said “Isn’t the road to Puerto Natales closed?”

-”Yes it is.” He replied

-”So how are they going to drive you there then?”

*Silence*

Moments later, they rejoined us back on the bus.

Some of our fellow passengers were loving it (mainly the children) and they were out making snowmen and having snow-fights with each other. I really feel this trip has aged me quite a few years, because I know full well in my normal, real life that would have been me (playing outside by myself though, there is no way in either life James would have come out in the snow for playtime).

The journey from El Calafate to Puerto Natales should have taken us 4 hours. 13 hours later, we arrived back in El Calafate. We were pretty grumpy, slightly dehydrated and above all, starving. We had no food all day except for a tiny lunch the bus driver gave us when we got on, that we devoured at 9am (the terrible hostel next to the station didn’t offer breakfast) and the bus didn’t give us any extra water.

As they say, third time's a charm, at least we weren’t met with rain when we arrived back in what was quickly becoming our least favourite town (it could have been worse, it could have been Rio Gallegos). We made our way to our original hostel we stayed in when we climbed the PM Glacier, as we knew they did evening food. We ordered the biggest burger they did, and placed an order to have a packed lunch for the following day, as the bus company had told us to return at 10 am to try the journey again. Of course we were incredibly dubious of this, but it’s as if by miracle, the snow seemed to have vanished from the roads and we had a very speedy and smooth journey and arrived in Puerto Natales as planned, just one day later.

The next few days were spent in a lovely little log cabin in Puerto Arenas, eating good food (cooked by James, of course) and drinking some local wine. From PA we flew to Puerto Montt, where we had grand plans to travel to Bariloche, which is famous for its chocolate (amongst other things, but chocolate was our primary motive). However the chap at our hostel told us that with the weather so bad we wouldn’t have a chance to get the bus there and back reliably before our next internal flight in a few days. So we went to Plan B, which was to hire a car and drive to the Lake District in Chile.

We had a fantastic few days staying in a beautiful log cabin in the middle of nowhere, with a roaring fire and plenty of local red wine to celebrate James turning one year older - the Year of Fun certainly knows how to do birthdays! We visited local towns and even popped into some natural hot springs for an extremely quick dip - it was boiling!!

We woke up on James’s actual birthday to no electricity - which meant no hot water for a shower, no wifi for family to sing the Happy Birthday song, and most importantly, no kettle for a coffee! Assuming that the situation would be different in main town Puerto Montt, we checked out as planned and made our way back to our original hostel - only to find the manager greeting us at the door by candlelight. The whole town had been struck by the electrical storm due to the bad weather! That didn’t stop us finding a pizza house to celebrate his birthday in style, with a family sized pizza and a beer or 7.

The following morning we flew to Santiago in Chile - for a short stopover before catching a bus to Mendoza in Argentina. A city famous for its red wine, it was one of the first places to be written on the ‘Places to visit in the Year of Fun’ list.

We hired bikes and spent the day cycling around the famous wine region. We managed about 6 different vineyards throughout the day, but our memory of the final one is a little hazy. All of the wine was delicious, and as predicted when I told each place that we were there for James’s birthday he was given an extra glass. Did you know that 2013 was a bad year for wine? No we didn’t either, but some pretentious wanna-be wine connoisseurs chewed our ears off about it all day. But the more we drank, the easier it became for us to block them out.

The following day we enjoyed the other highlight Mendoza has to offer, and our Big Macs were delicious.

We took a bus ride back to Santiago before taking a flight up to San Pedro de Atacama - a town set on an arid high plateau in the Andes mountains of northeastern Chile, home to deserts, hot springs, geysers, and of course, salt flats.

The Atacama is like any other desert we have visited this year - boiling in the day, and freezing during the night. We found a great travel agency and ended up booking a trip to the geysers, an evening star gazing, and a 3 day salt flat tour. The geysers were pretty impressive, but stinky at the same time. The trip started at 5am so we had a great opportunity to see the sunrise over them. Our trip stargazing was not something I was excited about. James loves that sort of thing, and he was not only excited about viewing stars we can’t see from the UK, but also to use a super telescope. I was just excited by the fact that we were promised wine when we got there.

But this trip completely exceeded all expectations, and I absolutely loved it! They started the session with the much awaited red wine, accompanied with copious amounts of cheese and crackers - I loved it already. We sat in a semi-circle around a huge telescope and each had a blanket to keep warm. The first sight though the telescope was Jupiter, which they had to show us early on in the session as it disappears over the horizon. Next up (after some hot chocolate) was Saturn, and we could view it so clearly we could even see its rings, it was absolutely fantastic and I genuinely couldn’t believe my eyes (it would be pretty funny if it was just a kaleidoscope and it was all fake for tourists…). We saw so many different constellations, and as we went up one by one to look into the telescope our guide would give us a detailed explanation of it. Both of us absolutely loved our whole experience, and I got an “I told you so” from a smug James on the journey back.

The next morning we had a super early start as we were picked up for our 3 day trip salt flats trip. For the 3 days we were driven around in a jeep stopping at amazing lakes, including a borax and an arsenic lake. We also saw so many flamingoes - including the illusive James species (I’m being deadly serious!), which were very beautiful but because I had to wait so very patiently for them to be photographed, I would be quite happy if I didn’t see any more for a while.

On the three day trip, we spent one night in the famous salt hostel, which is, as its name suggests, made completely out of salt. It was pretty cool, but a little strange on the soles of your feet! It was at this hostel that a man stood outside the showers and timed you to ensure you didn’t spend more than 5 minutes under hot water - it’s the desert, so it does make sense. Whilst in the queue he asked where we were from. James answered ‘England’ of course, but he then went on to talk to us in Spanish about the Falkland war and how he shot many English soldiers. It was all very strange, and even though our spanish is currently minimal (we had great plans to take lessons in Buenos Aires, but the small issue of ‘bedbug gate’ changed the course of our stay) he was very animated with his arm gestures. We were therefore very pleased when it was our turn in the bathroom and tried to be super speedy to avoid his angry knock.

During this trip, at nearly 4000m I was quite badly affected by altitude sickness (of course James didn’t feel anything and was perfectly fine) and it felt like there was a permanent hammer crashing into my head. I tried to keep myself to myself and drink plenty of water and pop ibuprofen regularly. On a positive note, it meant that I didn’t have to engage in small talk with anyone, and left that up to James, who of course hated every second of being friendly.

The highlight of this 3 day trip was always going to be the salt flats, and on our final morning we got up super early to climb Isla Incahuasi, an island in the middle of the salt flats so that we could watch the sunrise over Salar de Uyuni - the world’s largest salt flat. It was absolutely incredible, and you could just look out onto never ending land. Soon after, the jeep took us onto the salt flats to take the famous pictures that you see pretty much every South America-travelling backpacker feature somewhere on their social media. Our guide left us to try and figure out how to take the photos, but after 10 minutes of struggle he took pity on us and gave us some creative direction. We had lots of fun doing the usual kind of shots - if you want a laugh check them out in the pictures section. It was one of those moments that I have waited for for such a long time as they have been on my ‘must do’ list for many many years, and it was as incredible as I had always hoped.

Ridiculously tired quote of the day:

Katryn: That looks like a nice hostel

James: I don't think that's a hostel...

Katryn: I was taking the piss because I thought that was our hostel.

James: This building looks like a nice hostel though

Katryn: It's horrible - and it's made of tin

James: Katryn, that's our hostel

Katryn: (Pause) Ok, I literally have no idea where the hell I am.


Cycling La Paz’s Death Road and the race against the clock to get to Ecuador

2017-08-24 to 2017-08-30

Upon arrival in Uyuni we got a night bus to La Paz - the administrative capital of Bolivia. About a month before this, my mum had expressed interest in visiting the Galapagos, and within 10 minutes we had decided to make this part of our itinerary, and she had booked her flights to join us for it. The dates we gave her were meant to be provisional to get an idea of price for her flights over from the UK. But before we knew it those dates were fixed. Whilst this was incredibly exciting, it also left us just 1 week to get from Uyuni in southern Bolivia, all the way up through Peru and into Ecuador, where we would meet her in Guayaquil. Knowing this, we had to prioritise what we wanted to do in this time and just get it done fast.

Ever since I heard about The Death Road in La Paz many years ago I’ve wanted to cycle down it. If you don’t know what it is, google it right now (and then you will have new found respect for James and I!) Yungas Road is commonly known as The Death Road due to the incredibly high amount of deaths that occur on it each year. The second we arrived on the Death Road and mounted our bikes (we went with an amazing company who gave us protective clothing and ensured we are all safe by taking it at our own pace and cycling in a group) we could immediately understand the reason for the name. The road starts at 4650m and descends to 1200m, which in layman’s terms means it’s super steep. You’re basically cycling (or free-wheeling because it’s just a vertical drop) along a thin path on the cliff edge. If you go too fast it’s likely that you will lose control of the bike and end up cycling over the edge, and will certainly be met with an instant end. Along the cycle the guides told us of many of the deaths that had occurred exactly where we were cycling. There were so many make-shift grave sites and crosses in memory of those who died on the road, each one told a tragic tale. One story that stood out to me was when a bus driver with a coachload of people saw two children playing on the road. He stopped the bus and got out to look for the children, only to realise he hadn’t put on the handbrake. The coach rolled backwards over the cliff and there were no survivors. The driver realised that these children he saw were ghosts. Haunted by the deaths on his hands, he came back to the road a few years on and jumped off the edge.

Putting all that aside (we had to if we wanted to enjoy the bike ride for what it was), it was a brilliant but scary ride. The scenery was exhilarating, and at times it was hard to concentrate on the condition of the road and staying alive because the view was breathtaking.

When the whole group made it successfully to the bottom of Death Road we all celebrated with a well-earned beer, though my heart continued to race for a while longer. We were taken to a nearby hotel where we had an all-you-can-eat buffet (a backpacker’s dream), and obviously, we didn’t hold back. The second highlight of the day (the first was completing the Death Road!) was when they handed us a brand new t-shirt celebrating our feat! We haven’t worn new clothes (or clothes that we can be certain of its cleanliness) for a long long time, and we both smelt great in it!

Back in La Paz we visited the local Witches Market, famous for selling local clothes at a good price, and llama fetuses. The latter is a local tradition, and one we were happy to bypass in favour of buying ourselves ponchos, which we of course look fabulous in, and just like locals.

La Paz is fantastic city and actually very different to others we have visited on this trip, mostly because it sits in a basin with beautiful mountains surrounding it. Alas, time was creeping upon us so we had to curb our exploration and get on a 28 hour bus to Lima, capital of Peru.

A 28 hour bus ride sounds horrible. Throw in a very long and slow border crossing and the fact that James had food poisoning and could barely stand, it was horrendous. The icing on the cake was that we bought some sliced plastic cheese and a loaf of bread for the journey - you couldn’t bring any fresh foods over the border so making a packed lunch proved very difficult. By the time we were on the bus long enough to make plastic cheese sandwiches, the loaf of bread had turned to crumbs - and I had to resort to squishing the crumbs to make a solid chunk of bread and then wrap the plastic cheese around it. However a very ill James was very hard to please, so it turned out to be a make-shift ‘cheese wrap’ for one.

We had less than 24 hours in Lima before our next long-haul bus, and with James still in agony and spending much of his time in the bathroom we didn’t get a chance to see any of Peru. The following afternoon we boarded a 29 hour bus from Lima to Guayaquil in Ecuador. If you’re reading this and thinking ‘I’ve never heard of Guayaquil’ let that thought come and go, and if you ever get the opportunity to go on a trip to Guayaquil - turn it down.


The Galapagos - a trip of a lifetime in itself (guest starring Elizabeth Taylor)

2017-09-01 to 2017-09-13

The truth about writing this Galapagos blog entry is that I’ve started and deleted it a good handful of times already, there is just no way to find the words to make this part of our adventure sound nearly as amazing as it was. Eight whole days with two of my favourite people was going to be amazing anywhere in the world. Throw in the fact that we were in the place that I have always always dreamed of going above anywhere else it becomes something totally different altogether. Of course, you then have the fact that we were on a luxury catamaran, seeing and being within touching distance of the most diverse and amazing wildlife on the planet, the whole 8 days was like a dream. One that I hope to be reliving forever, as it was probably the best 8 consecutive days of my whole life.

So despite my struggle to find the words, I’ll try my best to write something that comes remotely close to capturing our Galapagos magic - but the best way to be struck by the Galapagos is to visit it for yourself. And then please call me, and we can have hours and hours of discussion about it. Actually please call me before you book, as I have some amazing money-saving tips, which is, when it comes to the Galapagos and its prices, a well-needed bonus!

***

We arrived in Guayaquil the day before my mum’s flight was scheduled to land to allow for any bus issues (if you read our blog entry in Patagonia you’ll understand our need to be cautious!).

We were waiting at the airport with a homemade ‘Elizabeth Taylor’ sign (no I wasn’t waiting for the late actress) and I was the happiest girl in the world when she appeared at arrivals!

We had booked ourselves onto an 8 day luxury catamaran with G Adventures before we had left the mainland, so we were aware that we had a couple of days to spend on the islands before meeting our group at the airport. We booked ourselves into a hotel on one of the main islands Santa Cruz, and upon arrival checked in no problem.

They say that you should never meet your heroes, as you’ll only be disappointed. James had to remind me of this when we arrived at Santa Cruz island in the Galapagos, as it was absolutely nothing like any of the gazillion documentaries I had seen on the Galapagos islands. It was very touristy, a lot of buildings were in a state of disrepair, and for an acapellago that makes you pay 120USD before you arrive on the islands to help keep them clean and tidy, it was a bit of a mess, with litter in every direction. I was so disappointed and felt rather cheated. However, we remained positive and enjoyed our couple of days alone on the island. James and my mum were able to try lobster freshly caught that morning, whilst not really being a fish person, I tucked into a burger. We got a boat ride over to San Cristobal island, which was a lot, lot choppier than expected, which just added to our amusement, as my mum was hating every second of it!

The following morning we met our group at the airport and were taken to the port to wait for a speedboat to take us to our catamaran. At the harbour we played a guessing game as to which boat would be ours. There were many small boats and one rather sizable luxurious looking boat at the back, we joked about how great it would be if it was ours - and low and behold it was the huge luxurious catamaran that we were taken to. We were speechless - it was absolutely amazing.

Each morning and afternoon a different activity on a different island was scheduled, followed by the opportunity to go snorkelling in the Pacific and in reefs next to the islands, which of course we did every single day. My mum had never snorkelled before, and after a quick lesson from Milton our guide she was like a pro. One time in the water, a reef shark swam right below us. I looked over and saw my mum bravely snorkelling within inches of the maneater (well, not quite a maneater, but it was pretty scary all the same!).

Our trip took us to 6 different islands, each displaying different fauna and flora, and more importantly, each having a slightly different breed of giant tortoise. We went to 3 different breeding centres during our time, the most significant being the Charles Darwin station on Santa Cruz island. This is where a lot of the research and projects happen, and also where the famous late Lonesome George is exhibited. He’s only been here since March, before that he was on display in the American Museum of Natural history in New York, so we were very fortunate to come at this time! At each of the breeding centres it was possible to see the differences between the tortoise species, such as the difference in their necks. The theory is that they have evolved over time to adapt to their surroundings, and tortoises on islands where they have a ground-level food source have smaller necks than those on islands where they have to reach up high for their food.

On the Galapagos islands, animals are the priority, and they are also not scared of humans. This means that if a sea lion is in your way, you have to walk around it, making sure you keep at least 1 metre away from them. When we were on the dock waiting for our boat a sea lion was sitting on the bench, this meant that everyone else had to stand and wait, rather than sit comfortably and wait!

We swam alongside sea lions, turtles and sharks and each time we were in the water we saw something new. A highlight for me was seeing some penguins hunting a school of fish in the water. They dived into the water and the fish quickly separated, yet managed to stay synchronised. It was incredible - exactly like what you’d see in a documentary, and we were there to witness it first hand. James was in charge of filming it on the gopro, but the video just does not do it justice.

We also saw both land and marine iguanas - the latter is famous for spitting salt, and we were (un)lucky enough to be so close that spit landed on my shoe. It was exactly like Attenborough’s documentary, and as my mum said: it was like he was right here with us.

These 8 days alone were a trip of a lifetime, one that is so hard to put into words, I’m well aware that what I have just written doesn’t even begin to capture the magic and beauty of the Galapagos islands. Please please check out James’s pictures and hopefully they can provide a better glimpse of what we were able to experience.

I can only assume that the 10 days my mum was here was a little intense for James, spending all day every day with one Taylor girl is apparently quite a challenge (or so he often tells me), so with 2 Taylor girls I can only assume it was double the fun. But if he found it tough he didn’t show it - I expect he was happy that I was chatting to someone other than him and giving him some peace and quiet - for the first time in 8 months!

It was a very sad morning when we took my mum to the airport, but I was so happy that we were able to share these 10 days together, an experience I hope the three of us will talk about fondly for many years to come.


The Amazon Jungle and the Middle of the World

2017-09-14 to 2017-09-25

Seeing my mum off at the airport was a real low point. The three of us had had so much fun together and it was an absolute pleasure to have her as an honorary guest on our Year of Fun (for good reason we have become quite picky). After she left we adapted to life just the two of us again quite quickly, but it was hard to adjust to life without an all you can eat buffet, hot showers when we wanted them and we actually now had to pay for stuff instead of getting it all-inclusive, sad times.

We left Guayaquil as soon as we could (we had very much overstayed our welcome having been there before and after our Galapagos visit, and I’m quite sure no other traveller has ever stayed- or has ever found reason- to stay there for that long!) and we jumped a bus to Quito - the capital of Ecuador. It was on this journey that I read about ‘Express Kidnappings’, which is when you get in a taxi, and instead of taking you to your desired destination, the driver takes you to an ATM and at knifepoint makes you withdraw all your savings. Once they have your cash, you are left there. My book specifically told us to avoid yellow taxis as these are common in ‘Express Kidnappings’. I relayed this information to James, and when the bus pulled into the bus station, all we could see was a plethora of yellow cars. Brilliant.

By now though we have become quite vigilant and we only take taxis from a taxi rank, when we get in the car we have our maps.me app open and it shows us the route we should go and the route the driver is taking, so that if there is any deviation we can alert the driver that he is going the wrong way (they are expecting you to not know where you are going so when you rock up at a deserted ATM you’re surprised). We also take a photo of the driver’s licence/ID which is often placed on the back of the driver’s seat. It sounds like we are crazy, but you can never be too careful - I do hope these habits stop once we get back to London! Who am I kidding, we will be way too broke to be catching taxis anyway!

Quito is notorious for being a little bit unsafe for travellers, especially in the evenings after dark all travel books and hostels advise you to not be on the streets. We are normally super vigilant anyway, but in Quito we intended to be even more so, which is why my phone lives in my bra, alongside large notes and our credit cards if we have them with us to visit the ATM. On a bright night in Quito we were on the way to a restaurant recommended on Trip Advisor that was a little tricky to find. For this reason James had his phone in his pocket to he could refer to the app whilst en route. On the main road two little boys maybe about 8 years old approached us, one trying to sell us roses, and the other a large gift bag (what?! There is surely zero demand for these). As usual, we politely told them both ‘No gracias’ but they were weirdly persistent. After a few more ‘no gracias’ they were still walking next to us trying to make a sale. I did think at the time that this was odd, as usually they would just leave and go to the next person in the street, but the reason for their persistence became quickly evident. The little boy selling the roses was tapping James on his left, and the boy selling the bag was on his right. The next thing I saw was James smack the gift bag out of the boy’s hand onto the floor and shout ‘No’ and the little boy promptly hissed at James. I was astounded and promptly shouted at James for being so callous and throwing this boy’s only way of earning money onto the floor. James quickly jumped in telling me that the boy had placed the gift bag strategically over James’s pocked and tried to slip his tiny hand into the pocket to grab his phone. Luckily James had caught him in time before he managed to get hold of his phone.

This obviously left us with a sour taste in our mouths, and the Tripadvisor dinner was definitely not as tasty as it should have been. Still pretty upset at the situation that little kids are forced into theft, we called it a night and made our way home. Low and behold, the little boys were still on the same street, and as we walked past them, it was now obvious for us to see that they weren’t looking at the person’s face, they were eye-line with people’s pockets and that is how they were selecting their targets. This meant that when they try to acost James again they hadn’t looked to see it was him. James caused a scene in the street, telling the boy that he knows what he is trying to do, and that made the other tourists present keep a wide berth. So for that night, our phones were safe.    

We met some lovely Aussies on the Death Road in La Paz, who had recommended the Blue House Hostel in Quito and to do the Jungle trip that the hostel offers. We normally seem to be the backpackers giving the advice so we were really excited to be following a recommendation. Sadly though, Blue House didn’t have any free beds for our first night in Quito, so we had booked the Discovery Hostel, that was literally behind Blue House for our first night to just catch up on sleep before we moved to Blue House and booked the jungle.

We are always excited when the dorm room we have booked isn’t full, meaning there is a higher chance of us getting a full night’s sleep. We were therefore very excited in Discovery Hostel to see it was just James and I and a random Ecuadorian guy. However, when I was in the shower, he told James he made metal trinkets and asked if would like to buy this orange dreamcatcher for 5 USD. James being James, he just said “No thanks.” I came out the shower and James went in, and before I knew about his sales pitch, he came over to my bunk bed and knelt down by my side as if he was proposing (well, at least someone’s doing it!) and presented me with an orange dreamcatcher. He told me that the colour meant sexual desire, and it matched the orange top I was wearing. In his broken English, he told me he had “sexual desire to me” and wanted me to have it. He proceeded to tell me I was beautiful, all the while edging a little closer. If James was a normal man he would have been out the shower by now, but sadly in showering we swap gender roles, and he loves to spend a good ten minutes in there. A good 30 seconds will do me fine. I knew James wouldn’t be out any time soon so I just had to be really harsh to this guy about not wanting his dream catcher, and I practically pushed him away while I stood up and organised my bed. Later I told James about my encounter… the only thing that bothered him about my story was that I could get a dreamcatcher for free whilst he would have had to pay 5 USD!

We booked a 4 night 5 day trip to the Amazon jungle, to the area of Cuyabeno, one of the largest nature reserves in Ecuador. Going to the Amazon jungle was always on the list from the start, and as it was only 30 USD to add a the fourth night onto our trip we jumped at the chance to make our elongate our time in the jungle. After a very long bus ride through the night, a few hours wait in a cafe, another bus and a 2 hour motorboat ride, we were finally at the Dolphin Lodge. We had our own little jungle hut complete with en suite and an extra bed for James to pack and repack the bags, so we were both very happy.

The first three days consisted of jungle walks and boat rides. Just by being on the boat to get to the walk we could see so many different animals. Our guide was amazing and would stop at each animal and tell us more about it. We saw so many different types of monkeys, but not for long as they were always on the move. We saw a sloth high up in the tree, and each day that we passed the tree on the boat it was still there - apparently they only move once a week, and that’s to poop.

We had a boat ride to a famous lagoon where our driver stopped the boat and we waited in silence. Low and behold, we heard an exhale from a blowhole and a dolphin came up out of the water! Cuyabeno is famous for having pink dolphins, and we were so fortunate to be able to see them - and they really are pink! The dolphin turns pink when it does exercise (a bit like my face after running!), so when we visited they must have been a bit lazy as we could just see a light shade of pink. We then took a walk to see a huge anaconda, which had taken to hiding in a cave, which was great for the guides as they knew where it was so could bring groups easily.

We took a boat ride and jungle walk to visit the local Shaman, which is a local spiritual doctor. In short, people visit him and tell them of their health problems, he then drinks this drink called ayahuasca which is made up of hallucinogenic plant material. Whilst high he has visions on how to cure the illness. When he has come down he makes the medicine using plants from the jungle which the patient then ingests and should then be cured. It was a fascinating visit and he told us of ailments that he has cured, one of them was that he cured deafness. I have never been one to believe in this sort of thing, but curing deafness did pique my interest. Shortly after, however, we saw him in action and my interest was quick to dissolve. He tried to cure one of our group’s back pain by smacking them on the back with stinging nettles. Whilst performing this ritual he accidentally stung himself on the hand, and then he was promptly bitten by a mosquito. He then asked our group if any of us had any bite and sting relief he could use...  

One night we went on a night walk, which really is as scary as it sounds. Our guide decided to tell us that there were so many more eyes on us than we could actually see - thanks dude. We saw so many different types of spiders - and even saw a wolf spider eating a tailless whip scorpion. It was horrible yet fascinating at the same time. The only thing positive about this situation is that I discovered that if you say tailless whip scorpion fast it sounds like you’re saying Taylor Swift scorpion, which I found really exciting, of course, James did not. As soon as we had returned back to our lodge from the night walk I jumped in the shower - I had no idea what creepie crawlies were on me, and after seeing so many more species than I ever thought possible during the night walk, I wasn’t going to take any chances!

When the 3 days were over, all but three of us in our group left the Dolphin Lodge and started the loooong journey back to Quito. Myself, James and our dutch friend Anika were put in a boat with a paddle and we canoed down the river. It was so peaceful and beautiful, not to mention exceedingly hot - it would be hot if we just sat in the boat, but we actually had to put effort in and canoe - queue face sweat. We were able to go down little tributaries that we couldn’t go down on the motorboat so we saw a completely different side to the jungle. Our guide navigated us to a lagoon, where we were told to sit and wait. In less than a minute we saw our first camen lazing about in the water. Within 5 minutes we must have seen up to 20 camen, which was about 19 more than we had seen on our previous camen searches on the motorboat! Just as our time in the lagoon couldn’t get any more exciting, our guide gave us a fishing rod and told us we needed to catch a piranha for lunch! Piranha fishing was so much more fun than I thought it would be and both James and I were successful in catching them! However, they were apparently too small for lunch so we released them back into the river, which I was not sad about!

One the boat back to the lodge we saw about 50 different monkeys swinging through the trees making their way through the jungle. It was at this time that I experienced my first ever wasp sting. My sister Iona is allergic to wasp stings, so it was a little bit scary for the first couple of minutes. You would think by how much it hurt that I was allergic to them too, but apparently that’s just what a wasp sting feels like. I’m just surprised that I still live to tell the tale.

Once we were back in Quito we visited the Middle of the World, locally known as The Ciudad Mitad del Mundo. Trying to save on costs we took the local bus, which obviously meant we got lost. There are two sites of the equator, one that was mapped in 1736, and one designed for tourists. Even though it was the second time we had crossed the equator (the first was on the Galapagos) we had a really fab day.

Quito was always going to be our final stop in Ecuador, as the common tourist trail is to go from here into Colombia. The instructions from our hostel on how to get from Quito to Colombia read something like this:

“To get to Colombia get on the earliest possible bus, you should not be on any bus after dark as there is a high possibility it will be hijacked”

If there was ever a sentence to get you excited for an upcoming day’s travel, that would be it!


Colombia - Colonial buildings, coffee and cocaine

2017-09-25 to 2017-10-18

Colombia was never on our itinerary. Mainly because of time - it was going by so fast and we wanted to save some to enjoy Central America with. However, every single backpacker that we spoke to (you can take my word for it that by now it was in the hundreds) had told us we were making a terrible mistake, and missing out their favourite country. With this in mind, we booked a flight from Colombia to Panama for three weeks’ time, which, we reasoned, should give us enough time to explore this unofficial backpacker favourite.

Our journey into Colombia was a lot less scary than our hostel had advised, but it was good that we were on high alert at all times, as we have heard many first hand horror stories this year so far, and you never know when it might happen to you!

Our first stop was Pasto, a town not too far from the border, as we were warned not to travel during the dark and this was the furthest place we could travel to in the daytime. The first thing we noticed was just how cheap things were, a burger and chips at a place next to our hostel cost just £2! We felt so rich we even treated ourselves to a coke to go with it!

Popayan

The next morning we were on the road again to a town called Popayan, famous for its beautiful colonial buildings, and it did not disappoint. As soon as we arrived our dorm mates invited us to a salsa lesson that evening. Wanting to enjoy all the colombian culture, I agreed, but James, after our disastrous tango lesson in Buenos Aires refused to participate, so he just sat in the shadows drinking a beer and watching the class. Although I wouldn’t normally want to be associated with a creep, I wished I could have joined him as the class just really wasn’t for me. As it was, I endured the hour’s session, then joined James for a beer to plan the rest of our Colombian adventure.

It was here in Popayan that we experienced one of our favourite free walking tours - and this was because they took us to a restaurant part way through the tour and we had the opportunity to try some really cheap local food, which of course we are always keen to do! We extended our stay here as each month they close off some of the streets to have a festival, and Friday was the lucky day. Together with our new pal Sian (a fellow northerner) we walked through the vibrant streets and enjoyed some local food and beers, and some crazy wafer dessert, complete with strawberry sauce… and grated cheese.

Cali

Our next stop was Cali - the home of salsa dancing. James and I might have been the only backpackers to ever visit Cali and not want to do some salsa dancing, so we kept that to ourselves and used Cali as a place to relax and to catch up on a spot of blog writing. We were keen to get to our next stop, Salento.

Salento

Known as Colombia’s coffee region, and travelling with someone who can’t function without it, there was no way we could miss Salento off from our itinerary. It’s a very quaint little town surrounded by coffee plantations, and home to the Cocora Valley, which has the largest wax palm trees in the world.

We did the trek to the Cocora Valley on the first sunny day, taking with us a packed lunch to enjoy alongside a scenic view at the top. It was really misty, which prevented us from seeing the palm trees from the top, but we were able to walk among them and sit under them waiting for the clouds to pass, if only for a second so we could get a good view. They were really cool.

Feeling pretty stiff from the hike we headed out to a coffee plantation the following day. We were told the hike to the coffee farm would take nearly 2 hours due to the fact that it was constant uphill-downhill all the way there. What we were not told was that there was a shuttle going there right from outside our hostel…

Two long hours later we arrived sweaty and grumpy, just in time for the 2pm tour. The rest of our tour group arrived fresh faced and bone dry out of the tuk tuk.

The tour was so much better than it sounded. First of all they gave ua an introduction into what makes a good coffee bean and how to identify them, then they gave us a basket each and told us to go off and pick some beans. It was a race against time, and after 10 minutes when he called us back my basket was about a third full. James with the keen eye for everything had his basket half full and had collected the most in the group! They showed us the whole process and all the machinery that went with it. James asked an interesting question - why does he like Colombian coffee in England but in Colombia it tastes horrible? The answer is because they ship out all of the good coffee that they brand first class coffee. They keep the second class coffee for trade within the country, and that is the same for coffee production all over the world. Some of the beans we had picked were put into the second class pile if the bean was a bit damaged or wasn’t the correct colour.

At the end of the tour we each had a cup of coffee to taste. I have never liked coffee (I don’t want it to stunt my growth), but I did give it a try. I asked him if he had any sugar, and he gave me the look of death. Apparently if a coffee is good enough you should never need sugar. James enjoyed finishing my cup for me, and then we both enjoyed a 5 minute tuk tuk ride back to our hostel.


 

Bogota

We headed on to the much awaited capital city Bogota, which held the most promise for us. My mum visited there many, many years ago and has spoken fondly of it to me many a time. The horror stories that behold it were at the forefront of our minds as we arrived in what was once the most dangerous city in the world. After a couple of hours of wondering around, we realised the notoriety of this beautiful city was certainly a thing of the past. As a standard, James and I signed up to do the free walking tour the following morning, and at the time of writing this it was the best one we have experienced so far. Not just because they gave us a free hot chocolate and a free stamped coin from the Mint, but also because the guide was fantastic and loved his city. He told us of tales from Bogota’s gangster past and the story of its reparation. He then took us to try a local delicacy - hot chocolate with cheese. It really is a thing, and if I’m going to be completely honest: it’s gross. We both tried a cup each, but promptly had to fish out the then melting cheese to be able to finish the drink. From now on my rule is that if hot chocolate comes with anything other than marshmallows (like every hot chocolate should, really) then I will politely decline.

The walking tour gave us a wrist band to wear, which entitled us to a lot of cool discounts within the city, one of them being a free coffee in the Gold Museum, so James enjoyed two hits of coffee, whilst I just enjoyed being on a comfy sofa, it had been a long while! It also gave us a free introduction to emeralds at one of the licenced emerald shops, complete with a free rough emerald each. It was absolutely remarkable, just learning about such a beautiful stone and the process it goes through before it ends up on beautiful jewellry. They also taught us how to spot fakes - if it is a real emerald it should come with imperfections, as opposed to the cheaper ones which are glossy and ‘perfect’.

Having loved the tour so much, and because we both love food, we signed up to the free food tour they offered for the following morning. We had bagged ourselves a real cheap double room in our hostel (it was new so I think they just wanted to boost their ratings), and I was looking forward to an undisturbed early night after our recent sleepless night bus. However, a couple in the room below us had other plans, and I was awoken at about 1am to them have ridiculously loud sex. I tried to shout to them to keep it down, but this only made things worse as they clearly didn’t hear, and I woke James up in the process. There is only one thing worse than a grumpy James; a tired, grumpy James. The couple (actually it was only the woman) seemed to be getting louder, so James got up, went downstairs, knocked on their door and said “Have sex, that’s fine, just don’t wake the whole hostel up doing it.” Looking back on it, I’m not sure that was the cool, youthful thing to do. Perhaps we should have turned a blind eye, and the following morning gone and congratulated him - I think that’s what most other backpackers would have done. Maybe it’s because we are a bit older than most others here that when we saw them emerge from their room the following morning we shot them evils. Yep, we are old and boring, just not mature.

The food tour the following day was even better than we could have hoped for. They took us to 10 different places, each for a specific dish. The tour was completely free (if you didn’t know already, we *love* free stuff!), you just paid for the dishes that you ate, and a tip for the guide at the end. We both tried everything going, and most of it was delicious - James finished anything that I thought wasn’t. The tour ended at a coffee house, with James enjoying some of Colombia’s finest beans. Apparently it was really tasty.

It was our final night in Bogota, and I was really excited for our flight the following morning, not because we were moving on to Cartagena in northern Colombia, but because our flight was leaving out of El Dorado airport, which is the most drug-trafficked airport in the world. I have seen every border security TV programme and documentary going, and more recently I had stumbled on ones specifically about El Dorado and the way in which people smuggle drugs out of the capital to the rest of the world. As James was packing our bags (as you know, that’s his forte, I was busy planning our next hostel and movements for Cartagena, definitely not watching more border security programmes…) when he checked in the dressing table in our room, and pulled out a very small see-through bag with a white substance inside it. I couldn’t believe my eyes, it was a real life bag of cocaine, in the cocaine capital of the world, and it was in our possession. James gave it to me for further inspection because I actually thought he was just playing a bit of a joke on me. I’m not sure what happened, perhaps it was my excitement, or just my fat fingers, but the bag dropped onto our laptop, and some of the ‘white substance’ spilled out.

In one episode of these drug smuggling documentaries, someone adapts their laptop to have a hidden layer of cocaine inside it, but the sniffer dogs detect it and the drugs team cut open their laptop to reveal a few kgs of the good stuff. Now we have become to hate our laptop, who for security reasons has been nicknamed Stella. Stella is a b*tch, and often doesn’t connect to wifi or let James upload blog pictures quickly, both will result in upset travellers. But this does not mean I want some guy to slice her open, to be faced with no drugs, and we would be left with no laptop. Therefore James and I vigorously wiped her down with baby wipes (a backpacker's essential) to get rid of any trace evidence. Whilst we now had a clean laptop, we also had a bag of cocaine. We were therefore faced with four options: leave it there, but then risk the hostel thinking it was ours upon checkout, hand it in to reception and be incredibly sensible, go to the streets to make a quick sale to increase our travel budget, or do a line… I’ll leave which option we took to your imagination.

El Dorado was everything I had dreamed it would be. There were men with big guns parading, men with big guns just people watching, and my favourite: sniffer dogs. If this was a movie we would have been apprehended by a sniffer dog taking particular interest in me and taken off to a room with a one-way glass window and been ruthlessly searched and questioned, before being allowed to finish our trip. But alas, it’s just the Year of Fun, and not one dog or man with a big gun took any interest in me.

Cartagena

The heat hit us off the plane like a wet fish to the face. It’s the kind of heat we had in Hong Kong, where you’re sweating from your eyelids and your hair looks like you’ve gone for a 1980s perm (think Diana Ross). I think this is the one time the whole year that I’ve heard James say he isn’t sad to have a shaved head.

The original plan was to head to Santa Marta, home of Ciudad Perdida - the Lost City, a 4 day trek through the Sierra Nevada mountains. Apparently it would be even hotter in Santa Marta, so when I wasn’t well and we made the collective decision to miss out Santa Marta we were both secretly relieved.

An old port town built with a wall around the old city, Cartagena was beautiful. As like every new place, we did the walking tour. However it was on this tour that the tour guide said “When the British invaded the Falklands in 1982” Without saying anything to me first, James just put his hand up and said “Yea, that’s not right. That’s not what happened. We had the Falklands and Argentina invaded and tried to reclaim it.” Queue the most awkward silence throughout the whole tour group, and then the guide just laughed it off and quickly changed topic. You can take the boy out of Great Britain, but you can’t take Great Britain out of the boy. Not solely because of the gigantic historical inaccuracy, but this was one of the worst walking tours, if not the worst walking tour we had been on, as the guide was quite uninspiring. The only positive to come out of a boring walking tour is that we only had to give a really small tip. Winner!

Because we have had many encounters with people trying to scam us, rip us off and even befriend us so we buy their product or service, we have become dubious when people randomly try to help us or are even just pleasant to us. We were trying to get a taxi from our hostel to the bus terminal in Cartagena and were having absolutely no luck. All taxi drivers were happy to pull over and speak to us, thinking we were wanting to go to the airport, but when they found out we wanted to go to the bus station they would just drive on. We were at wits’ end and becoming increasingly anxious that we would miss our night bus out of there. However, one local guy got out a taxi as a passenger and asked us where we were heading. We reluctantly spoke to him and he said he would help us. We thought that would mean that he would call his Aunty’s brother’s wife’s uncle to pick us up, but he actually stood with us on the street helping us to flag down a taxi, and then he spoke Spanish to the driver to negotiate for us. Third time lucky saw a taxi driver agree to take us, and that was it, the local guy didn’t want anything for it, there was no hidden agenda, he was just trying to help us. It was incredible - genuinely kind people are few and far between and afterwards we agreed to try and help more lost and lonely travellers to help pass on his kindness.

We finally made it to the bus terminal to board a bus to our final destination in Colombia: Medellin. Depending on your South American knowledge, you might know that Medellin was home to Pablo Escobar’s drug cartel, so I was very excited to hit up the walking tour and find out more information. However, the tour guide (quite rightly) said that the tour would only cover a little bit of info on ‘he who should not be named’ - they literally can’t mention him in the street during the tour in case locals think that the guides are glorifying him because they can’t understand the English that the tour guide is speaking. The reason being is that they have moved on from the drugs era and want to show that there is much more to Medellin than its notorious drug-related history. And it was true, he lead us round the city and we enjoyed the tour and all his facts, but I could have done with a few more drug related details to make this walking tour in my top 3 of the year.

We met a couple of Aussies in our dorm who told us they were going to a football match in Medellin’s stadium. Not wanting to miss a cultural opportunity, we gatecrashed their afternoon. We had some really delicious local food and beer before entering the stadium, but could only enjoy popcorn and coke once inside as they ban beer to avoid riots. Despite there being no beer, there were still some riots. The police on horses even had tear gas to control the crowd, but thankfully they didn’t have to use it. The seats we were allocated were cracking and we had a great view, which was great for the first half an hour because Medellin was winning 1-0. That soon changed and Deportivo Cali ended up winning 2-1. Losing definitely put a downer on Medellin’s side of the stadium, but it didn’t stop us going for a few beers after the match and some more delicious, local street food.

It was when we were exploring Medellin in all its glory that James’s flip flop broke, leaving him no option but to walk down a crowded street barefoot with his broken flip flop in tow. I was walking behind him and it was absolutely hilarious, so much so that I just had to take a sneaky video of it (it’s on Facebook if you want to check it out!). James wasn’t that impressed when he turned and saw me filming, but this was mainly to do with the fact that this was not the first time his flip flops have broken whilst he was wearing them about town. The same thing happened in Bangkok, when he went for a wonder and they broke miles away from his hostel. Sadly I was not there to witness this, but as James said, it was probably for the best.

We boarded a flight in Medellin to take us to our next country and continent: Panama in Central America. Unfortunately there is no land crossing through the Darien Gap (though some tourists have tried, if you’re interested watch a National Geographic documentary called ‘Banged Up Abroad: Panama’ on YouTube to find out how that worked out…) which meant we either had to shell out $500 (US) each on a cruise - granted, it does go through the San Blas islands which are meant to be beautiful - or $60 (US) each on a flight.

We have mixed emotions about moving on to Central, there are so many great things we want to stay on in South America and do, such as climb the Rainbow Mountain in Peru or see the Nazca Lines, but we have thoroughly enjoyed our time in South America, and as my sister Kirsty always says about going home on a night out: always leave on a high. And going by that rule alone, it is definitely time to leave South America!


Panama and its magnificent canal

2017-10-18 to 2017-10-27

We landed in Panama City after a rocky start - I had my phone on the flight, and then when I landed and disembarked, I didn’t. The staff were so unhelpful and wouldn’t let me back on the plane to get it, despite it being less than 50m away. They apparently checked my seat and didn’t find it, meaning my lovely trusty phone was now in the hands of someone else.

Despite reading that there was a bus from the airport to the centre of town they told us at the airport that a taxi was our only option. We now know this to be a lie, the bus was just on the other side of the building. By this point it was 11pm and we were hoping that tomorrow would be a new day and bring positive things (who am I kidding, I was hoping this, James was telling me that it tomorrow would probably just be worse). We tried to get a police report for my stolen phone, but because it happened at an airport in ‘international waters’ the police could not issue me with one. “Don’t worry” said the guy on the phone at my insurance company, “just write down a detailed note of what happened and you’ll be fine… oh wait, actually, you’re not covered for electrical items.” Despite the fact that we had purchased the ‘premium’ insurance, we must have overlooked that.

Needless to say, our spirits were pretty low. Only to get even lower when we popped out for a spot of lunch and we discovered that we would either have to take out a loan just to stay in Panama for a couple of weeks, or we had to leave pretty quickly. We decided on the latter, and the following day headed out to see the famous Panama Canal in all its glory.

Back in college I had to write 3 different articles on the Panama Canal each aimed at different audiences for my English Language A-Level. Having done so much reading up on it for this, I have always wanted to visit, however I didn’t realise just how much. When we arrived at the museum I actually welled up - I couldn’t believe I was there! The museum was great and very easy to follow (it felt like it was in keeping with the article I wrote aimed at children!), and once we had finished we went out onto the viewing balcony to stand and wait for the ships. The canal runs 12 hours one way and 12 hours the other, therefore giving it about 4 hours in the afternoon where no ships cross in either direction. There are now two lanes, the second one which is furthest aw


Costa Rica (which we renamed Costa Lot)

2017-10-28 to 2017-11-03

Our first stop in Costa Rica was the well known tourist destination Puerto Viejo. We had been recommended a hostel on the beach in which we could choose from two bunks in a dorm for $10 each or a double room for $20… winner! There’s no doubt about it, the clear sea and warm sand made Puerto Viejo really beautiful, but as we thought Panama was expensive, PV gave us a nasty surprise when we hit up the local shops and restaurants. We therefore decided to do what we came to do on itinerary and head on to cheaper pastures new.

The main attraction in Puerto Viejo is Cahuita National Park. Our hostel recommended we splashed out on a guide for $20 each so that he could point out all the animals that as tourists we wouldn’t naturally spot. We took the local bus to the park and waited where our hostel told us to wait, and discovered no one was there. We used the wifi from a restaurant at the beginning of the park and messaged the guide, who told us that he had left already because we were ‘late’. What we later discovered was that the lake in the park had flooded so visitors could only walk 2k into the park and turn back at the lake, rather than hike all of the 10k trail. We reckon our guide knew that we wouldn’t want to shell out $40 for a 2k hike so just didn’t bother. If that was what he was thinking he was correct. During the 4k round trip we were able to see sloths (the main attraction, it’s what the park is famous for) racoons, lots of crabs and beautiful birds. It was a lovely, albeit short hike, and we were very happy that we didn’t pay a penny for it. There isn’t an entrance fee for the park, you just have to give a donation. Apparently if you give an amount they are happy with they give you a free map of the park. Despite giving what Lonely Planet recommends as a donation we sadly were not offered a map.

The next day, along with our new Spanish friends we hit up a fruit farm. It was like it was out of The Secret Garden, the garden was awesome in itself, even cooler when we stopped and looked at all the different fruits on the trees. They also grow cocoa beans and make their own chocolate and we were allowed a free sample! This sounded so much better than it was, as they gave us 100% chocolate, which was rancid and I had to spit out. Having adult taste buds, James loved it.

During dinner on our final night in Puerto Viejo we were joined by a family of howler monkeys in a tree above us. If you’ve never heard these guys before, definitely give it a Google, it’s pretty intense. We bought some beers from the shop and sat on the beach building our own little damn, stopping water from the town going into the sea. It was a great idea at the time, but the next morning when we were a little more sober we were relieved to see that the whole town hadn’t flooded because of us!

To get to our next and final destination in Costa Rica we needed to get a bus from Puerto Viejo, from the same bus stop that we got the bus to Cahuita National Park from. When we bought our bus tickets to the park, I noticed that the chap had given us a 100 coin, instead of a 500 coin. I had to triple check my maths, and then even get a calculator out to make sure I was right, and then go back in to the office and tell him he had made a mistake. At first he didn’t believe me, so I had to show him all the money in my hand and tell him that I hadn’t put anything back in my wallet since I got his change, so in short: he had short-changed me. We gave him the benefit of the doubt though, as in his defense the coins looked awfully similar, despite the fact he was a local and clearly been using this money all his life. When we went back into the bus station (a bit of an over description, if such a thing exists it was merely a small office with one chap behind a glass screen selling tickets) to buy the bus tickets to our next destination La Fortuna in northern Costa Rica it was a different chap behind the counter. We asked for our tickets, handed over the money and got a shed load of coins and notes in change. On a hunch, I counted everything and realised that the same ‘mistake’ had happened again - but this time we were missing a lot more cash! I sent James in who had to tell the guy he wasn’t leaving the office until he gave us the rest of the money. He was successful, but of course this didn’t really sit well with us and we left Puerto Viejo with rather a sour taste in our mouths.

We had great hopes for our next stop La Fortuna, home of the Arenal Volcano, which is described as ‘magical’ by the Lonely Planet (the backpackers’ gospel). We tried not to be put off the area when we arrived at our hostel and discovered we were the only ones staying there. We tried to stay happy when we went to town for dinner and were greeted with food stalls selling things for around $8 (US) each, and we tried to remain upbeat when we heard that tourists were unable to climb the volcano themselves and had to go on a tour group… but when we discovered that the cheapest tour we could get would be for $65 per person, we lost our fake smiles. It was a big decision, as $130  is a lot of cash for the two of us for just one day. But, we reasoned that that’s the reason we were in La Fortuna for, and after all, it was supposed to be magical.

The guy who sold us the tickets told us it would be an ‘extreme hike’, which excited us a great deal, as we do love a good hike. We went out shopping that night to stock up on granola bars, energy drinks and fruit to keep up our sugar intake during our tough day of hiking. We bought 3 litres of water each, filling up James’s Camel Back to so we could easily keep hydrated whilst powering through each step. We each packed our day bags with our food, water, extra layers and waterproof ponchos. The following morning we donned our hiking gear, including hiking socks, walking boots, sports tops and sports bra (me only, of course). Our last step of extreme hike preparation was to have an over-priced cooked breakfast at a local cafe so that we would be able to hike for longer. With all the gear, packed bags and full stomachs, we were extreme-hike ready.

We were the first to board the mini bus in the centre of town, before it went to different hostels and hotels picking up more hikers. The next people to get on the bus didn’t have a backpack with them, and we smugly whispered to each other that they did not get the memo about the extreme hike! In the next group of people getting on our bus was a chap with just a 500ml bottle of Coke. Again, we quietly joked that he was going to struggle, he definitely missed the extreme hike info! It wasn’t until the next person walked on the bus wearing just sandals on her feet that our laughter stopped… did all these people miss out on the extreme hike brief? Were we just the lucky ones that had been graced with this information?

Obviously, this story doesn’t have a happy ending; you can probably guess what happend…

The hike was as easy as popping to the corner shop in your slippers.

Needless to say, we weren’t the happiest we had been. The ‘magical’ volcano just looked like a hill (thanks for that one, Lonely Planet), and the best part was that you weren’t allowed to climb it as too many tourists had died on it, so we could just look at it from afar. On a positive note, they day did come with a free lunch, and it also ended with us in a natural hot spring, which was actually pretty fun; it wasn’t as hot as ones we had been in Chile and Bolivia so we could actually sit in the water comfortably and enjoy a free glass of rum and Coke.

Back at our hostel we looked in to visiting a natural park that does a night hike, specifically so you can see tree frogs that James was really keen on seeing. Once we learned that the experience would cost us $45 for 45 minutes instead of booking the hike we just booked our bus out of there. We left the following morning on a bus to Nicaragua, hoping that our experiences of Central America so far had just been unlucky. We were fully relying on Nicaragua to put the ‘fun’ back into our year, which it was momentarily lacking.


Nicaragua - hiking, volcano boarding & releasing baby turtles

2017-11-02 to 2017-11-12

Our first stop In Nicaragua was Ometepe, an island formed by two volcanoes rising out of Lake Nicaragua. The journey from La Fortuna to Ometepe was a lengthy one, but it was made enjoyable very early on when instant karma hit one of our fellow travellers. We met this group of guys at the bus stop in La Fortuna and as we have done a million times before on this trip, started up a conversation. From the get-go, they were pretty unfriendly, so I just left them be. When there was confusion as to where our next bus went from we helped them out and went to find out, whilst they stayed put helping no body. After being pretty unfriendly, pretty unhelpful and pretty ungrateful, two of them whipped out bananas and started to munch on them. They looked quite unimpressed with their healthy snack, and when we looked a bit closer we realised they were actually eating plantains (a *vegetable*, that you shouldn’t eat raw), thinking they were bananas. It was hilarious, and we couldn’t help but take a video, you can even see his hesitance as he takes another bite! After he had finished, we asked the smug question of “How was your plantain?” They didn’t look very impressed, but laughed it off saying “You’re wrong, it was just a big banana!” Yea course it was mate. And that is why you shouldn’t be a douchebag to other backpackers, you’ll get your just desserts (the unripe, vegetable kind).

We arrived in Ometepe around 4:30pm, exhausted and starving. Ometepe is formed from two volcanoes, Concepcion and Maderas, both of which you can hike. Conception is notoriously harder, and having felt very sad to have missed out on an extreme hike in Costa Rica this is the one we had our heart set on. We met another couple of backpackers at our hostel who had booked a guide through our hostel for the next day, and although we had planned a day of rest before the extreme hike they told us there was only a 20% chance of rain for tomorrow, and 70% chance the following day, so we signed up to do it with them.

By this time we were proficient in preparing for extreme hikes. But as we had to meet our guide at 6am the following morning we knew we had to buy cereal etc for breakfast as no where would be open. Morning came and James went into the kitchen to boil the kettle for his obligatory morning coffee and to get our corn flakes and bananas served with strawberry yoghurt ready.

Now there were two huge issues that became apparent within about 30 seconds of each other. James stormed back into our room and angrily declared: “There is no kettle”

“That’s ok” I responded. “Just boil some water in a pan.”

“The hob doesn’t work”

“Ok, no problem” I responded, really trying to keep upbeat. “I’m sure we will go past plenty of coffee houses on the way to the volcano that we can stop at.”

So a mildly irritated James returned to the kitchen to prepare the corn flakes and strawberry yogurt.

Two minutes later he came back into the room in a rage.

“Come and see what we’ve got for breakfast!”

In the kitchen he proceeds to pour the plastic pouch of strawberry yogurt onto his cornflakes, only for a bright pink liquid to rush out of it. Instead of a pouch of strawberry yogurt that we had purchased countless times throughout this trip, we had purchased strawberry juice. Like a child’s drink. It was disgusting even by my standards.

Half an hour later we had met our guide and were walking to the bus stop, passing every coffee shop along the highstreet that because it was just 6am were closed. James was understandably livid. No sleep, no coffee, no breakfast, *huge* hike.

So we were off to a really bad start, and as luck would have it, this hike was no other than an extreme hike. It was really, really tough. The volcano just kept getting steeper and steeper and on no breakfast (and no coffee for James) we were really struggling. Some groups had turned back down the volcano because the visibility was so bad. Even though we wanted more than anything to be sleeping in bed or even better tucking in to a full English, we also didn’t want to turn back down and be quitters. The rain came, and with it the rocks underfoot became slippery, making the hike even harder. Our guide (who definitely wasn’t a real guide, just some chap our hostel owner knows who fancied a hike and $15 from each person for the pleasure) was becoming lazy and tried to tell us that if we carried on at our speed we wouldn’t be at the summit for another 4 hours. Obviously he was just trying his luck and in actual fact we managed to summit in less than 2 hours from where we were. The view from the top should not be called a view, we couldn’t see anything more than 1 meter away from us. We had a quick breather, made my pal Izelle a ‘Happy birthday’ video from the top, had a photo and promptly began our descent. If possible, the descent was even harder. One wrong foot and you’d be a goner, even worse would that nobody would be able to see where you went. Adrenaline must have got us through and we were elated when we arrived at the bottom. After a hot shower and a cheap chicken dinner, James got his belated coffee, and all was right with the world again. Until of course, the following morning when we looked up at the volcano and the sun was shining and there was 100% visibility…

From Ometepe we made our way to Leon, a city in northern Nicaragua. We made friends with some fellow Brits (the good kind - see the blog entry in Vietnam to see what I’m referring to) and together we formed a team that absolutely smashed it in the ‘Trivia’ night quiz at our hostel and we came second. If only I had remembered that Pussy Galore first appeared in Goldfinger then we would have won, I had a sad feeling that my dad would be very disappointed in me for forgetting it! The prize was a bottle of white rum, which we left for Jess and Joe to enjoy, as we had an early start the following morning.

Leon is famous for Volcano boarding, an activity that both of us were keen to try. In short, you climb Cerro Negro volcano (Black Hill) with what looks like a wooden toboggan, and change into an yellow convict suit. When it’s your turn, you lie on the wooden board and shimmy down with your feet until you are free-falling down the volcano. Our guide told us that if you want to go fast you need to pull on the rope and lie with your head right back, to go slow you have to sit instead of lie. I thought that I would want to go slower and that I would be going down pretty much sitting up. But I couldn’t have been more wrong, I loved it and within seconds I was lying down on the board with my head as far back as I could get it. It was incredible. What was more incredible is that James went down before me and got thrown off his board part way down (I think he was trying to show off and go faster!). He then had to find his board and lie back down for the second part of the ride.

Despite being head to toe in protective gear, we had little black rocks in every orifice possible. This would have been no problem if we were going back to take a shower, but we had teamed the volcano boarding up with a 2 day hike, and it started as soon as we were down the black-sand volcano.

The hike felt like a walk in the park compared to Conception on Ometepe, which suited us well as we were pleased to put our extreme hike days behind us. We pitched our tents next to a crater on the volcano and watched the sunset over the mountains, it was bliss. The best was yet to come, however, as our guides made us a campfire and we sat around it drinking hot chocolate and eating pasta they had prepared. My night was absolutely made when they cracked out a bag of marshmallows for roasting, which is one of my favourite things to do, ever.

We didn’t have the best night’s sleep, but I think that was a given. We awoke early to catch the sunrise, which did not disappoint. The scenic hike down was well worth it, and we ended at a lake which we were able to swim in, in which we very much obliged. The whole two days hike, camping and food cost us no more than $65, but my favourite things on this trip really do seem to be the activities that money can’t buy (such a cliche). Transport back from the volcano to our hostel was included, and that was basically all 8 of us in the group in the back of a pick-up truck. The view was great, the wind was in my hair (I felt sad that James couldn’t also appreciate this ;) ) and the tunes were turned up. It was a great opportunity to reflect on our amazing journey so far and the wonderful places in the world where we have ventured to. I arrived back at our hostel absolutely loving life and ready for the next location and next adventure.

Whilst in Leon, a lovely Aussie, Lucy, recommended we hit up a hostel called Surfing Turtle on the beach, which has an onsite turtle hatchery. In Nicaragua it is legal to poach turtle eggs from the beaches. Surfing Turtle takes nightly walks along the beach and when they greet a poacher they buy the eggs they have just taken from the turtle  - literally as the turtle is laying her eggs into a hole they have just dug, the poacher digs an adjoining hole and lifts each egg out as soon as it has been laid. The hostel pays $3 for 12 eggs. If the hostel didn’t buy the eggs the poachers would sell them to nearby restaurants for $2 for 12, so they prefer to sell to the hostel.

Once purchased, the Marine Biologist working at Surfing Turtle buries them in their hatchery. Approximately 45 days later the eggs will hatch and little baby turtles will automatically try to make their way to the sea. It’s at this point that the Marine Biologist puts the just-hatched turtles into a big box, walks 20 meters along the beach, then gently tips the box over so the turtles are on the sand. It is then that they each make their best efforts to sprint to the sea, to start a 3 day journey to a far-away reef. The whole process is very important for the turtle to go through, as when they are ready to lay their eggs they will come back to this exact beach to do so. Before we left the UK, James and I saw the Attenborough where hatched turtles make a dash to the sea relying on the light of the moon for direction. But they can sometimes get confused and mistake other lights in houses/restaurants for the moon and start walking the wrong way. James and I actually saw how easily this can happen with the little turtles, when one morning Surfing Turtle had 30 turtles hatch. Once on the sand, a few strong, energetic ones absolutely legged it to the sea and were gone within seconds, others were a lot slower, and some even tried going in the wrong direction. But the most stressful thing was when the tide came in and covered our feet, we had to stand deadly still in case we stood on a tiny confused turtle by accident!

The whole experience was amazing, one that people would pay thousands for. We loved the work they were doing in saving the turtles from becoming local delicacies and also that they were released back to their natural habitat when born. However, we did come face to face with what National Geographic would call ‘Animal Tourism’, when some of the hostel guests picked up the baby turtles and posed for selfies with them. The Marine Biologist gave the guests the gloves to do this with, but we did witness one guest put the turtle on the non-gloved hand and stroked it (stroked? A turtle?) with her gloved hand. It only got worse, when one German girl posed for a photo and dropped the turtle on the table because she had her attention on the camera rather than the turtle itself. It was at this point that I said to this so-called Marine Biologist that surely the kindest thing we could do for the turtle right now would be to put it straight on the beach for it to go into the sea. There was definitely a language barrier, as we don’t speak Spanish, and at this point he chose not to speak English. James and I said that surely playing with these minute-old animals wasn’t good for them, but the biologist and others working there were not interested in what we had to say, one even told James that if he didn’t like it then he should leave(!!).

James did take his advice and walked off, leaving me to do the talking. Some drunk Aussie girl told me that because I wasn’t a vegan I didn’t have the right to say they shouldn’t touch the turtles (drunk AND stupid…). Some Canadian guy asked the biologist if touching the turtles harmed them to which he said no. So then he asked me to explain what my problem was. I told him you wouldn’t pick up a baby whale, or a baby dolphin and pose for a picture, and this was therefore no different. Amazingly, after a few seconds of thought he said he agreed with me. Tensions were high, so at this point the biologist collected all the turtles (in this batch there were only 5 that hatched) and put them on the beach for them to embrace their instinct of running to the sea.

After the release I went to find James. Word of our ‘discussion’ had reached the manager, who came out to speak to us to find out what the problem was, expecting to find unreasonable guests. He was very personable, and we explained what had happened and why it wasn’t good for the turtles, and how they should hatch and go straight into the sea, rather than spend their energy on trying to escape selfies. Miraculously, he agreed with us, and apologised profusely. He said he would speak to the biologist and ensure this didn’t happen again. (I think a turning point for him was when we said “You use a National Geographic quote on your advertising about how well they rate this place, yet they would not be saying anything like that if they knew what happened at releases.”)

The following morning, at least 4 others from the group the previous night came to speak to us and said something along the lines of how they agreed with James and I, and how they didn’t feel happy with all the selfies going on. Whilst this really was great to hear, that info would have been a lot more powerful if they had spoken up the night before!

That evening was the release of 30 turtles, and there wasn’t a single selfie or tourist touching in sight, much to our happiness. It meant we could check out the following morning knowing we had done some good to help more baby turtles survive in the wild. We headed back to Leon, before boarding on the most uncomfortable night bus at 1:30am to Honduras, to embark on a 3-day Open Water diving course.


Honduras - Becoming *RESCUE DIVERS*

2017-11-12 to 2017-12-28

Other than the border crossing, stopping at a Burger King for breakfast, a Wendy’s for lunch (we never said we were going to come back slim) and disembarking at a ferry port, we didn’t see any of Honduras mainland. The plan was always to hit up Utila, an island on the Caribbean coast of Honduras, famous for its beautiful reef and therefore famous for scuba diving. It is, apparently, the cheapest place in the world to do your Open Water certificate, which suited us very well, as 10 months into the trip meant that money was tight with a capital T. We visited Captain Morgan’s Dive Shop (named after the pirate, not the whisky), and after we had been shown around and given a free beer for doing so, we were sold. We signed up for the 3 day Open Water and were given a lovely double room complete with en suite.

Like the Galapagos, it’s very difficult to put our time in Utila in words. We had the most amazing time there and saw some beautiful sea life. The reef looked picture perfect, and just the fake reefs you can buy for your fish tank at Pets at Home, but much, much bigger, obviously. It was like being in a whole new world, so after our 3 day course we were hooked. This obviously meant that we just had to sign up for the next course - Advanced Open Water. This course had no ‘skills’ in it (being able to clear your mask of water under the sea etc) which meant that it was just 3 days of fun. The course consisted of 5 dives. The first dive was navigation - using a compass and understanding directions under water (I absolutely sucked at this). The second one was a deep dive, where we went down to 30m (on Open Water you went down to 18m). At 30m divers can experience narcosis. We played games under water at 20m and then again at 30m and it’s hilarious to see how much slower and worse people were at 30m! Our instructor Toby held up a certain number of fingers and you had to mirror the same amount using a different combination of fingers. When it came to James’s turn, Toby held up 6 fingers, and James responded holding up 7 fingers. I thought this was hysterical, but then quickly learned that being in hysterics under water doesn’t really work out too well!

The third dive was a buoyancy dive, testing how well you could control your buoyancy by using your breathing - inhaling to go up and letting air out to go down. It is a lot harder than it sounds, and Toby had hoops underwater for us to navigate ourselves through using just our breathing techniques, and again, I really sucked at this. James was pretty good though, of course.

Our fourth dive was a wreck dive, where we dived down to a shipwreck at 30m. It was phenomenal, and the whole thing just didn’t seem real. The final dive was a night dive, which as the name suggests, done at night. Each diver had a torch and we all followed Toby very closely so we didn’t get lost, or spooked! Life underwater in the dark was really cool. When we all turned off our torches we could see the fluorescent plankton! For me, the scariest part was when we all turned our torches off and then I could feel fish at my neck but not see what they were - grim.

The Open Water and Advanced Open Water courses came with 2 free fun dives each, which again as the name suggests are just for fun. But it was during these dives that we saw a turtle, a stingray and a moray, the latter was absolutely disgusting and I would be very satisfied if I went through life never seeing one again.

On the boat on the way to one of our dives the captain spotted some dolphins! We quickly put on our flippers and grabbed our masks and jumped into the ocean to swim with them. Words cannot explain how amazing it was to be snorkelling above about 20 dolphins, all swimming in a large pod After that dive and on our way to the second five spot, he saw them again! This time the water wasn’t as clear and there wasn’t as many dolphins, but they were really close to us. It was all over in seconds as they swam away into the blue, but it was incredible all the same and we were just so fortunate to have had such an incredible experience!

We were a mixed bag of emotions at the end of our Advanced course - we had had the best time ever diving with Toby and were sad that it was all over. The best solution for this, of course, was for us to book on a third course: PADI Rescue course, which once you pass the practical and theory tests for, you are a certified rescue diver for life.

This course was a lot of fun, but also incredibly difficult. One of the hardest exercises we had to do was to rescue a diver from the bottom of the sea, bring them slowly to the surface, then administer rescue breaths whilst simultaneously towing them to the boat. When there, you then had to heave them out of the water and onto the boat. It was that tough that when I managed to pull James out of the water to safety, I had an asthma attack! It was only a small one, and once James had helped me through it and I had recovered I did joke that that was just part of his test on the rescue course - a joke that he did not appreciate (and it definitely wasn’t a test!).

After two weeks of diving and three courses under our belts it really was time to leave and continue with the rest of our trip. Our prolonged diving session did mean that we had to skip El Salvador and Belize, but we reasoned that travelling is just one constant string of prioritising activities, food and money, and if we really felt we missed out we could always come back another time to finish them off.

Life on Utila was great, it certainly had the Caribbean vibe, and everything was relaxed and laid back. However, on our final days there there was an election in Honduras, which resulted in both parties thinking they had won and both parties delivering victory speeches (awkward!). Because of this controversy there were riots and fighting on the mainland. This made our journey off Utila very difficult - our ferry was cancelled and we had to reschedule for the following day. The political situation there turned from bad to worse and the whole country was put under a curfew, but thankfully we were out of there by this time. However, our bus did go through San Pedro, a notoriously dangerous town on the mainland. Our bus stopped and we all got off to stretch our legs, whilst other passengers had to change buses. Our driver had to take these passengers to their next bus, but before doing so he told us all to get back in the bus, do the windows up, lock the door and don’t talk to anyone. He sounded pretty serious, but rather than being scared we all found it pretty amusing! And of course, everything was fine and he was back on the bus before we knew it. Next stop is Guatemala, and we are in high spirits as we have learned that it is home to the largest Taco Bell in the world, when in Guatemala and all that!


Guatemala - watching an active volcano and Tikal Ruins

2017-11-29 to 2017-12-05

For Guatemala we had two priorities:

  1. Climb Acatenango, a volcano that you can camp on and watch its neighbouring volcano frequently erupt.

  2. Dine at the world’s largest Taco Bell in Guatemala City

We arrived on our bus from Utila to Antigua around 10pm, checked in to a hostel and went straight to sleep. The next day we vowed to get an early night as the day after we had booked a trip to climb Acatenango. But of course, as we have learned many times on this trip, if you have a plan, you won’t stick to it. This was true of our second night in Antigua, because our hostel was doing a beer pong tournament, and we just had to sign ourselves up.

We have played this a couple of times over the year, and if we are honest, we are not very good. But the rule is that the more you drink, the better you play. And we didn’t want to suck. A few beers later and we were smashing it up, and we won more games than we lost (that’s a first for us!). Sadly we didn’t win the tournament and therefore missed out on the $200 (US) cash reward, but we had a great time, and hot-footed it to bed soon after for our early and slightly hazy start the following morning.

After a free breakfast of pancakes and fruit on a terrace at another hostel, we were driven to the start of the hike. We went with a company called Tropicana, because these guys have a private trail start and also a private campsite at the top, meaning it’s just our group who get this exclusive view of the volcano. If you read our Costa Rica blog entry you’ll know we like the idea of an extreme hike and get disappointed when we don’t get one. If you read our blog entry on Nicaragua you’ll also know that we absolutely suck at extreme hikes. Hiking Acatenango was no different. In real life I would consider James and I to be fitter than the average person - a quote my sister Morag created when we all cycled to Paris together and we have all mocked her for it eversince. However, despite having spent the year hiking, wondering, exploring and of course spending a lot of our time on free walking tours, our fitness levels have really decreased. I also suffer from asthma, and was I wasn’t able to be prescribed 12 months of my steroid inhaler I obviously haven’t been taking it as regularly as I should be. This combination put us at the back of the group (luckily there was only 5 of us so I didn’t feel that bad) as I had to stop every 30 seconds to get my breath back. It is a notoriously difficult hike, and at times it was really steep. However we made it to ‘base camp’ by mid afternoon and got straight into our thermals, it was freezing. We sat by a campfire our guide had started and ate some delicious spaghetti that he prepared for us, alongside a very-welcome hot chocolate. All the while the volcano next to ours, cleverly named Fuego (fire) kept making booming sounds and erupting big clouds of ash and lava. But the real magic only started when the darkness came, as that’s when you could actually see the red hot lava explode out of the top and tumble down the side of the volcano. It was so spectacular, and I may even go as far as saying it was a life high-light. James’s favourite bit was just before it got dark and we were trying to have a nap in the tent, Fuego erupted and then seconds later small rocks fell on our tent! He picked them up and they were warm, straight from inside Fuego - it was so cool (and I’m very glad that it was just the tent it fell on, not our heads..!).

We watched Fuego for a couple of hours, marvelling at each eruption. Light travelling faster than sound really was evident here, as we would see the eruption, and then seconds later hear a massive bang. Knowing we had to be awake and hike-ready by 4am we reluctantly said our good-nights around 8ish.

Seconds later, it was 3:30am and our guide was waking us up. We donned our warmest gear and took just some water and biscuits and made a slow ascent to the summit. Again it was a private trail so it was just us when we reached the top for sunrise. My level of appreciation for sunrise was definitely shadowed by how cold it was, and James and I sat huddled together staring out at Fuego patiently waiting for the sun and its promise of warmth. At the summit we were higher than Fuego and it was a great experience seeing a lot more detail than we could see from where we camped, but it did not compare to our experience of the eruptions from the previous night, as once the sun had risen the most you could see what just the ash cloud again.

In terms of the hike itself, our descent was definitely our favourite part! We were back down by 10am and driven back to Tropicana hostel, still buzzing from the night before. As with every great experience we have, we told anyone who said they were yet to climb it how amazing it was, and recommended Tropicana and their private viewing points.

The following day was the day we wanted to leave Antigua and head to Flores, a town in Northern Guatemala. The bus that would drive us there would take us to Guatemala City first and we would wait at the bus station for the bus to Flores. Now as you know, James and I fell in love with Taco Bell back in Panama City, it was the most delicious food we had tasted in a long while. When in Panama, we discovered that the biggest Taco Bell was in Guatemala City, and ever since that moment it was put on our itinerary (no joke - I have an Excel spreadsheet). I was all ready to catch the early bus to Guatemala City, then a taxi to the largest amazing Taco place ever and then get a taxi back to the bus station. James is a bit more of a bore (the line he goes for is a ‘realist’) and after some extensive Googling, he discovered that there was actually nothing special about the building or the tacos, it was just a huge restaurant. One of the local guys working in our hostel told us that it was in Zone 14 - an infamously dodgy area, and warned us to get the taxi right up to the door of the restaurant and to do the same going back to Zone 1, where the bus station was. James made the executive decision that we shouldn’t go, and as a compromise we went to the Taco Bell in Antigua - on the street next to our hostel, which he promised would be equally delicious.

The night bus from Guatemala City arrived in Flores at 5:30am and we headed straight for our hostel. The night guard said we couldn’t check in, so we set up camp in Reception. Tourists go to Flores primarily to take a day trip to Tikal - the remains of an ancient Mayan city dating back to the first century. Not wanting to waste any time, we discovered that our hostel’s next trip there would leave at 8am (just 2.5 hours time) and signed up. After a free breakfast and 4 cups of coffee for James we were on the bus to Tikal.

I’m more of an animal girl than a ruins girl, but even I thought they were pretty impressive. We had a tour guide who walked us through the main ruins and gave us the whole history behind them. I had great hopes that we would stay all day and watch the sunset over the ruins, but as James predicted, by the time our tour finished we were absolutely exhausted from the lack of sleep and were ready for the 1:30 bus (which didn’t actually come, so we were on the 2:30 bus!). That evening we enjoyed some local food from the market and hung out with some friends that we originally met back in Leon. We enjoyed a well-deserved early night in preparation for our long day of travel the following morning.

Our bus from Flores took us across the Guatemala/Belize border and dropped us off in Belize City. Belize was on our original plan, but our lengthy time at Captain Morgan’s becoming Rescue Divers meant I changed the font to red on my spreadsheet and we didn’t have time to go. However, we did have to pay an exit tax when crossing the Belize/Mexico border even though we were just transiting through, so because of this, we are counting it as one of the countries we have visited this year. In our defence, we did stop and eat lunch here, which was super-over priced. James left me in the cafe to check that the bus driver had put our bags in the bus as it had now started to rain, and on his way there he experienced actual real-life racism. Some guy in the street had approached him and said “What are you looking at, white boy?” When James relayed this to me back at the cafe he was genuinely very pissed off about it. We have experienced indirect racism in many countries during this trip in as far as people assume we have money as we are white, and therefore try and charge us well over the real price. But that is as far as it has gone. We were only in Belize for a matter of hours so it’s not really a fair judge of country, but other backpackers have raved about going diving with sharks and rays in Caye Caulker, so it is potentially a country we want to come back to another time.

After paying the $17 (US) exit tax at the Belize side of the border, we got in the bus and drove 2 minutes to the Mexico entry. This 2 minute drive is probably the longest ‘no-man’s land’ we have experienced at a border as normally the exit and entry desks are within meters of each other. This drive only added to the expense of entering Mexico, but our happiness was definitely dampened when we told the border lady we would stay for 8 days, and she responded that because we were staying for over a week we had to pay $25 (US) each. If we had arrived a day later, it would have been free. The only reason we were saddened by this was because we then had $50 less to spend on Mexican food, which is without a doubt the real reason we were visiting Mexico.

Mexico is our final stop on our Year of Fun, and it just hasn’t sunken in yet that it’s almost over. Whilst I am really trying hard to hold back the tears (sometimes I succeed) I am comforted by the fact that James and I are going through the same thing and we are both pretty devastated that we have just 8 days of youthful freedom left. It just means that these 8 days are going to have to be the most awesome ones yet, which is a huge challenge in itself.