In Bogota we were once again welcomed with open arms by friends - something which has been so lovely on this part of the trip, we didn't have nearly the same number of family or friends to bump into in Asia! We had met our new Colombian friends Sara and her fiancé Carlos, through my step-sister Paulina, when they come over to Guatemala for her wedding, and Sara's parents are also good friends of my dad and step mum, so we had a whole host of people looking afte...

I don't know if it was the relief of being on dry land or the excitement about being in Colombia - somewhere we had both really wanted to visit - but we were buzzing with happiness about being in Cartagena, and fell pretty quickly under its magic spell. It took a couple of days to get rid of our sealegs and to stop walking as if drunk (apart from when we had had too much rum), but that didn't stop us soaking up all that Cartagena had to offer. During colonia...

WARNING: the following blog post and pictures may make you sick… Our cushy time in Panama City came to an end with David dropping us off at the bus terminal, where we said goodbye and then stocked up on some onward travel essentials (money, anti-seasickness pills and snacks) in preparation for our sailing trip to Colombia. Our next stop was Puerto Lindo, a sleepy little fishing village on the Caribbean coast and where we would spend a couple of nights be...

January - February 2014 Our entry into Panama was a memorable one, mostly for the fact that the border crossing from Costa Rica involved walking over a very old and rickety railway bridge into Panama, and then with time on our hands while waiting in the customs queue, we also realised that Panama was to be our 21st country visited on this trip - happy 21st country to us! Our first port-of-call in Panama was the Bocas del Toro archipelago, and specifically I...

January 2014 So here we were, our backpacks dusted off for Stage 2 of our travels, 8 months to the day since we had left the UK. With my dad waving us off from the bus station in Guatemala City, we felt like we were embarking on a whole new trip…probably because the last two months had been so different to the rest of our time away, and the concept of backpacking again felt rather alien: "what, we now have to do our own washing / buy our own food / travel by ...