It’s time to hit to road again. As Leah mentioned in the previous post, we kept ourselves reasonably busy in Palermo, but as we kept saying to each-other –we are on holiday so we can do whatever we want. If we stay in for a few days and watch terrible films and drink wine, that’s exactly what we’re going to do – without guilt. Which we did loads of.
However after our two months were up, we were both itching to dive back into the backpacking culture. For our last week in Buenos Aires we were joined by a good friend who was celebrating his birthday – it was a big one – with a zero at the end. Much more wine and steak was had and we ticked all the tourist attractions off the list that we had held back on until his arrival.
All the Photo’s of our time in Argentina are now up in the gallery.
So, what next? We have crossed Venezuela off the list for the time being. Our plans to travel up from the Amazon into Venezuela and then over the border into Columbia not only would have put us into some particularly dodgy regions –time wise we need to start balancing what we see with how much we have to spend. The good news is that we have managed to get ourselves onto a fantastic volunteer program in Ecuador. For the whole of October we shall be staying in the Ecuadorian jungle together with another six or so volunteers and a couple of vets looking after injured and previously captive Amazonian animals. Feeding the animals, cleaning cages and releasing the critters back into the wild as well as building new and maintaining existing reserve buildings are all on the job list. It will not be a comfortable month I’m sure, there is no electricity and the showers we are told are freezing. This is something I’ve always wanted to do, and never thought I would, but now I am. Very excited, proper ‘Gorillas in the Mist’ stuff. Solar charger has been bought though, so I can keep at least some of my gadgets alive.
So, here is the plan.
From Buenos Aires we travel up to Salta at the foothills of the Andes, for a few days with our friend Alexis touring the region (we were going to go to Mendoza but it looked cold and snow actually fell there whilst in Salta). From Salta we will head over the Andes to the Atacama desert and over to the Pacific coast with dreams of surfing lessons. Nipping over the border into Peru, then over to Lake Titicaca before heading to Cusco to start the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu. After the trek we will potter around Peru for a while before heading further north into Ecuador, darting around the country until October when we start out rainforest duties. If we survive it’s over to the Ecuadorian coast for some beach before heading to Colombia where we will spend a month splitting our time between beaches, cities and maybe even a bit of countryside. If we time things right, it’s then a short trip over the border into Panama in the dry season where we will spend our last 2-3 months making our way overland to Mexico via Costa Rica, Nicaragua, Honduras, El Salvador, Guatemala and Belize.
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If anybody is wondering what the strange dots are above this post, it’s a little widget I wrote (the idea heavily borrowed). Hovering your mouse over the dots will show all the blogs we have written over time, the map will also update to show where we wrote it! Clever stuff these computers. Simply click to read.
Also over on the right I’ve introduced our Twitter feed with live updates. I can write these on the road with our Kindle and will be short random comments on whatever we are up to!
Please feel free to write to say hi, in the comments section or send us an email letters@beachesandbedbugs.com. We know people are reading, but do not have a clue who!
Richard and Leah
