Hello everyone! My week in Los Angeles passed quickly, very quickly. I spent a lot of time simply relaxing in and around the apartment in Venice Beach. I enjoyed the horizontal feel to the place, the friendliness of many of the strangers passing me on the street. I indulged in tasty Mexican food, prepared by real Mexicans who had settled north of the border, searching for a more stable, better life. I took sun-drenched strolls along the boardwalk, a pedestrian p...

Hello everyone! I am sat writing this latest entry from a calm, collected library in the middle of the main campus at Stanford University. The computer is very limited and will not even allow me to write an inverted exclamation mark; thus have I been coerced into greeting you all in English for the first time on this blog... that is America I suppose. Let us not dwell: although I have safely journeyed north from los Angeles to San Francisco, it is time to return...

¡Hola a todos!The airplane flight from Panama City to Los Angeles was highly uneventful, bar sporadic episodes of cold sweats, the likes of which I am increasingly accustomed to experiencing while departed from solid ground: I have never been a confident flier and although I seem to be mellowing with age and repeated experience, nonetheless I grow alarmed even now at the slightest change in the sounds emanating from the plane's engines; the slightest dip in alti...

¡Hola a todos!A quick note: this is the third and final blog detailing my experiences in Panama and I have uploaded all of them within the past tens minutes: my apologies; once again there was something of a backlog!I returned from the islands of San Blas feeling peaceful and refreshed. I asked the 4x4 driver to drop me off outside a backpackers' hostel in Casco Viejo, the 'old town' district of Panama City. The area was originally settled shortly after Captain ...

¡Hola a todos!It was an early wake-up call indeed the morning of my journey to the San Blas islands. I gathered my day-pack and boarded a fearsome-looking 4x4, driven by Alex who sported an assured American twang whenever he spoke in English. We hurtled through the near-deserted 5am streets of the down-town area as I rubbed sleep from my eyes and grew a little more accustomed to the sight of a quiet city centre. Our route out of town took us past Panama Viejo, t...