i´m in Colombia at the moment. My observations so far are as follows: - You can get cappuccinos here (this is good).- I've seen less guerrillas than I had imagined.- There is no pervasive smell of petrol as in Venezuela (which I enjoyed).- Almost every single commercial establishment sells coffee. If you ask if they sell it you usually get a "Claro!" (which means of course) in a slightly insulted tone of voice.- You don't necessarily get instantane...

Due to a lack of viable interweb, time and inclination it has been quite a while since I´ve updated the blog. This is particularly badly timed as the last 3 weeks or so have been pretty good and as such there is a rather imposing volume of stuff to potentially write about. The orange truck trip continued on from Manaus in Brazil, the scene of the last blog post back at the beginning of the month. We lost a few from the last group and gained a few new´n...

A couple of weeks back now my tour continued on into the vast swamp area called the Pantanal that is shared by Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay. Contrary to my last blog it isn't a swamp half the size of france, it is the full size of france. Naturally with only 3 days to play with we weren't going to see all of it so we drove as far as we could in our truck and acquired the services of a couple of local guides to spot the wildlife for us. The guidebook suggest...

I left Rio on the 7th with the tour group I joined up with after carnival and am definitely back in traveller mode again as I have absolutely no idea what day of the week it is. We have moved our way north and west to Brasil's interior slowly (underpowered truck) via numerous places which I will talk briefly about in a minute but first I thought it would be good to give you a run down on my fellow travellers on this tour: England 1. M, 27, good at football, write...

Well I'm still in Rio, but only just. Carrying round 20 Reais in my front pocket to give to potential muggers, leaving my camera in the flat, jogs around the lake and along the beach, going into C&A in Copacabana to cool off on hot days (the iciest air con in Rio), portuguese lessons, and actually having a daily routine will all shortly be things of the past. I'll also be leaving behind in Rio my excellent host 'family' Teresa. Although my portuguese has impr...