We arrived in Cartagena on the Caribbean coast in the north of Colombia on Monday having taken 3 flights and travelled for 21 hours from Buenos Aires, remarkably with our bags also making it although they got a direct flight where as we had to go via Sao Paulo.

The first thing we thought on arriving in colombia was boy it´s hot, Buenos Aires was fairly cool and actually cold on some days. We´re now north, but not that far, of the equator and it was sweltering. The second thing I thought was glad I bought those vests - the armpit ventilation has been invaluable again. After the relative Europeanness of Buenos Aires arriving in Colombia was a little bit of a jolt to the system, lots of hustle and bustle and noise which added to the heat made it a bit hectic on the night of arrival. We´ve spent the last two days wandering around what is an old colonial town which was made extremely rich as a centre for the exporting of gold and the importing of slaves, it´s retained the buildings etc but lost the wealth in the most part.

Tomorrow we are heading up the Caribbean coast (that sounds odd given where we were last week) for at least a few days beach time, although it´s the rainy season so we may be out of luck.

Hope everyone is well and most importantly hope everyone is on their way to vote/has voted! We were going to vote but we were disenfranchised by a volcano and a slightly archaic electoral registration system so none of you have any excuses not to cast your vote.

Adios amigos.