From Cuzco we caught a bus to the city of Puno which is on the shores of Lake Titicaca. You may have learnt in geography at school that this lake is the highest navigable lake in the world at 3,820 metres. It is also the largest lake in South America and home to the unique Uros people who live on floating islands. On the bus trip from Cuzco to Puno we rose well above 4,000 metres. The day after arriving we took a full day boat trip from 7.00am to 6.00 pm on t...

The Panama Canal! What a feat of engineering - but Panama City has its own charm too.Our arrival in Panama City was not without dramas. First we were unfortunate to get an immigration officer who spoke no English. As Australians we did not have to buy a tourist card (entry permit) but some countries did. We could not get the message across. A kind traveller interpreted but our immigration officer still insisted we go back and buy the cards. The interpreter shrug...

If we thought flying into St. Maartin (see previous story) was difficult we had a real mess up flying out! We boarded our American Airlines flight to San Juan which was one of 3 flights we were to take that day to get us to Panama City. The plane taxied out to the tarmac and taxied and taxied and taxied..... it seemed that the pilot was testing the brakes. Eventually we stopped and a mechanic was called and after an hour we were deplaned and the flight was cancel...

Flying into St. Maartin from Jamaica was a rather difficult task. First when we arrived at the airport we found that our first flight (to Kingston,Jamaicia) had been cancelled and we would be bussed to a different airport. Then when we arrived in Kingston, deja vu, we had to be bussed again as it was a different airport to our next flight. Eventually we caught our flight and arrived on the Dutch side of St. Maarten island which is rather unique in that although ...

We needed to get out of Montego Bay! On our return from our day trip we decided that if we were to salvage any enjoyment from our Jamaican stay, we would move to the resort strip at Negril. We took one of the hassling taxis to the bus park - on discovering it was the same company as the day trip man we complained about our treatment. He quite happily advised the brochure we showed him (that we had been shown to sell the trip) was from another company and we sho...