Our trip in Venezuela took a rather unexpected turn when we found out that we were in fact illegal immigrants, according to our guide in Los Llanos, because we had not been given a special tourist card crossing the border. He derived a certain pleasure (I recon) on seing our faces when he described how the last gringo to be caught without one was deported after being in the country 3 days! So after getting back we had some serious thinking to do about how to out...

From San Cristobal we caught a bus further up into the Andes to visit Merida. A painless journey up until the point the front of the bus caught fire and everyone had to flee the vehicle... still no one died! We decided from Merida we would like to do a trip to Los Llanos, the huge flood plains in the centre of Venezuela. There are loads of tour groups operating out of Merida and so we picked the most honest looking one and got set to leave the next day. Unfortun...

This is the second time we've tried to write this blog. Alice did the first one which was apparently comic genius but unfortunately it didn't survive the internet connection out here and so you're getting the Jack version - sorry!. Anyway this last week has been mostly filled with near death experiences, or bus rides as they are more generally known, winding through the Andes up to the city of San Cristobal. We left Zip and took a bus to Tunja before getting a ...