Cartagena´s Independence Day dawned bright and hot, VERY hot. Most of us in the hostel stealed ourselves for the festivities ahead with a quiet day enjoying the coolness of the hostel, but 3pm rolled around and is was time for the parade. It was like Mardi Gras meets Latino America with plenty of vibrant costumes, gay men enjoying parading in lycra and make up, sequins, dancing and a very amusing character dressed up in a joke suit waving around a zip lock...

They say pride comes before a fall and I´ve got to admit, they have a point. I spent my 3rd morning in Cartagena doing the sights.It´s a beautiful colonial colourful city and they´ve going to great efforts to smarten it up and restore the buildings with dark wooden balustrade fronts on the windows and repainting them with fabulous vivid traditional colours. Mornings are cruise tour time and I kept bumping into bunches of octogenarian Americans crow...

I went to the hairdressers the day before I left and asked for a style that would be easty to manage when travelling. (perhaps Paddington wasn´t quite the right place to make that request). I walked out with a chin length bob, shorter at the back ala Posh. Now girls I´m sure you´ll agree with me that without naturally straight hair a short bob is possibly the least low maintenance haircut in existance. Also of course no self respecting Latina wo...

Welcome, to the first of my entries, only just over 24 hours from landing and already so much to tell! Firstly I hope everyone´s well. My journey was LONG, anyone familiar with geography will know that flying Sydney (12.5 hours), Los Angeles, (12.5) Santiago (Chile) (5.5) then Bogota makes no sense whatsoever and add in check in times, 8 hours in LA, 5 hours in Santiago, added up to around 48 hours and for me delirium as I tried to cope with 3 time chang...