We arrived in Rurrenbaque after a bumpy ride on the 9 seater aeroplane as we passed over the mountain ranges. As we were descending towards the grass runway we could begin to feel the heat and humidity building up, then as we disembarked the effects became stronger to the point we were sweating whilst standing still.

We were up bright and early the next day to get to the office for the start of our tour we booked yesterday with Indegina tours. After the Toyota Landcruiser was packed up we jumped in and met the other 3 members of the group and our guide Juan-Carlos. We started the 3 hour journey along the dusty and bumpy roads towards the Yacuma river where we would continue our journey in a long boat. Time flew by as our driver entertained us with the only music he had, The best of The Beatles and by stopping the jeep suddenly forcing everybody forward in there seats, something which was worse for the people in the back on the bench seats. At once our driver jumped out and started pointing at one of the trees. He had spotted a Two-Toed Sloth, which was slowly moving it’s way down the tree and moving out of sight of our cameras.

We ventured into the Mididi National Park to continue on the long boat where we had a scenic tour seeing lots of Capibara along the river banks and in the water, lots of Alligators including one which nearly rammed into the boat before performing a death roll and sinking beneath the water.

We sat for some tea and biscuits, whilst there JC came a told us this evenings activities (croc spotting with only a torch) would be postponed until another night when hopefully the weather would be better. Instead we relaxed in our hammocks beer in hand. Later in the evening after dinner another group also in our hut, four irish girls came a joined us on the table introducing us to some new drinking games…

The following day was Anaconda and Cobra hunting day! which started well when our guide JC found a poisonous snake by the boat, he grabbed a bit of wood to kill it and offered it to Mike to perform the killing, he declined graciously. After stabbing it in the water he dragged it up on to the bank to finish it off, performance over we headed to the Indegina camp site for the cobras. Along the way we saw more stunning wildlife, some Capuchin monkeys in the tree, storks, more cayman alligators and lots of turtles hanging on to tree stumps.

We joined up with the other group from our hut and started our walked across the fields, we thought we were going to be out of luck until one of the guides found an anaconda sleeping in the hollow of a tree and decided to pull it out to show us, after poking it with a stick from the other side to lure it out. At first it was very angry and a lunging at me and some of the other people in the group as we held it by the tail besides us, understandable if it had just been poked and pulled from it’s home, it slowly grew more tired as we were holding it. It’s skin felt slimy and you could feel the muscles in it’s body shifting around as it moved in our hands when we held it by the tail with it’s head a good distance from our ankles. The guide put the Anaconda back in its home and continued on our hunt. Later we came across a sleeping Aligator hiding in the bushes it’s eyes wild open and another Anaconda but no Cobras on this occasion.

After a spot of lunch we went Piranha fishing! The first to catch anything was Nina followed by Kev and by the end we had caught enough to have piranha for dinner, plus something else because there isn’t alot of meat on a piranha. After the fishing we waited for darkness to fall to see the aligators eyes at night, whilst we waited we grabbed a beer at the Sunset bar and someone suggested a game of bare foot football to which we obliged with a game of England v International’s after running around the pitch beer in hand we fought for a reasonable 1-0 win.

As we travelled along the river in Pitch Black the guide must know the route so well to drive it in the dark, as we shone our torches their eyes glowed red and then the guide pulled the boat to the side and shouted go grab that aligator to which we replied with a shock what how, so I jumped out and went to get it not having any idea how to handle it the guide got it behind the head and tail. it was so small and felt so fragile I could have snapped it whilst holding it, though it was nice to know whilst holding it if it had bitten my finger the pressure it applied when have taken it almost clean off.

We arrived back to our evening meal which included the Piranha we had caught earlier. Though the catfish we caught never emerged only the Piranha which didn’t have a lot of meat on the them arrived fresh from a frying.

We continued our evening by buying more beer from the bar and continuing drinking games from the day before, after running of beer we sent Mike and Masha to wake up the barman in the early hours of the morning for more beer. We finished our drinking games at 3 in the morning ready for our early start the following day.

The following day we were heading home, but not before we try to go swimming for dolphins and also get up and close to Pedro, the Aligator who whilst quite old and missing a few teeth still looked deadly. There weren’t any dolphins in the first spot so we headed back to get out stuff together and jump back on our long boat to the real world away from the Pampas. On the way back we had the opportunity to swim again, this time we were more successful with the dolphins baiting us as we swam closer to them they would move behind us. The rest of the journey was fairly relaxed Mike made some panpipes out of reeds and we sat drying out in the wind and getting sunburnt, we reached the shore jumped in the jeep the next 3 hours whizzed by as we drove the bumpy and dusty path back to Rurrenbaque.

Our trip back to la paz would not be as luxurious as the plane journey here - we decided to go for the significantly cheaper and longer, 18 hours instead of 45 minutes bus journey over the dusty and bumpy road, back along the most dangerous road into la paz. Though lucky for us our ride was a night which made it harder to see over the edge to where the bus could fall. However, after riding the bikes down not along ago we still had memories of what it looked like.

We landed in Cuzco where we were met by minibus and a crazy guy taking our pictures as we walked across the tarmac with our bags. We headed to our hotel, the Hotel Marina where we was introduced to Ally, our guide for the trip.

After our introduction to the group and a brief walkaround Cuzco taking in the sprawling plaza’s and the inca sun temple at Coricancha . We spent the evening carefully packing our duffel bags to be within the 6kg allowed, so not to overload our porters who would be carrying them along the trail.

We left the luxury of the hotel to jump on the mini bus where we met our second tour guide Enrique (kekay) and to head for a our first stop. We arrived in an Andean Mountain town to be greeted by some friendly llama and to see how various goods are woven and to compare the thread used including wool from sheep, llama and alpaca.

One of the group, Nina, got to try her hand at weaving one of the local products after first being dressed up to look like a local. Upon leaving the town Ally told us that G.A.P. help support the village by employing people as porters and by bringing us to see them.

Our next stop was Pisac a peruvian village which is still used today for markets. Whilst there we were given some history of The Temple of the Sun, an example of the Inca brickwork where all the stones are fitted very tightly interlocking with one another and to lean inwards in such a way that no fixing material was required, it is was because of this construction the walls have survived earthquakes in the past. The Temple of the Sun was used by the Incas during solstice which could be observed from key windows in the temple. We also saw all the terraces (steps) in the valley formed by the Incas, they were used for agricultural purposes on flat land instead of on the steep sides of the valley.

After Pisac, we stopped for a view of Sacsayhuaman from a distance to see the size of the area, unfortunately due to the restricted time we had on the tour we didn’t get to go up and close to see the ruins and we head off for our next stop.

After an exhausting morning we stopped at a local spot for a buffet lunch, music to the Goonies ears, we certainly like our buffets however we had to refrain from getting `buffet full` as we had a hike to do later that afternoon.

On the way to the next set of ruins it was decided unanmously to leave walking around the ruins until the next morning leaving us time for the buffet to settle down and to avoid the crowds.

We arrived in Ollantaytambo, a small local town with cobble roads and lots of small local shops. Which Mike later made us of to purchase himself a conservative new hat. Later in the evening our group had to keep with tradition and give ourselves a name, Ally left us with a decision on what our group should be called, after extensive discussions and negotations Pozzie’s seemed like a good choice as we were a mixture of Pomms and Ozzies.

The following day before we left for Kilometre 82 we visited the ruins in Ollantaytambo we missed the day before, it was very wise decision of Ally’s as we were the only ones there that morning which made the views that little bit more spectacular.

From there we left for Kilometer 82, the start of the Inca Trail.

On our final day before we start our accent of Cotopaxi we visited Otavalo market on a Saturday which is the best day for Gringos. We boarded the bus from the terminal and had to pay our departure fee, after leaving the terminal we found everyone else gets on just outside to avoid the fee. We though we would have a quick journey but the bus stopped alot in pretty much any place someone wanted to get on or off, there didn’t seem to be any bus stops on this route.

The market was huge covering so many streets, I’ve not seen anything quite like it before, it was split up into a food/veg section, a restaurant section and many stalls selling knitted and wooden products. We were disappointed we couldn’t find Guinea Pig but we still had plenty of time to find it.

The next day we picked up our washed and folded washing that had cost 40cents per kilo and tasted our delicious free breakfast of 2 slices of cold half cooked toast, chemically enhanced pineapple juice with froth on top straight from their washing up bowl and cafe con leche which was nasty black and after adding milk found it was nasty white as well. That was it for Quito which means hi ho hi ho it’s up Cotopaxi we go…

Our next day started at 7am for our 77km bike ride from Papallacha, where we met Simon who had also had an encounter with the pick pockets only on a more severe scale, he had had his backpack slashed at the bottom when he had it in front of him on the bus, he didn’t have anything taken luckily (Incident count 3). We met with our guide, Fernando in a well used Toyota Land Cruiser.

We picked up our bikes on route to Papallacha and started our crazy journey up the mountain. On the way up there were some risky overtaking manouvres including overtaking 2 lorries and another car on a blind bend and driving very close to the cliff edge, for the rest journey some of us avoiding looking out the front window again.

We reached the start of our decent, slightly higher than normal, 4100m because our guide said we were very lucky with the weather given the season. We could see the snow capped tops of the Andean mountain range including Cotopaxi, Chimborazo which would be climbing in the next few days in the distance.

He was so suprised by the weather he began taking pictures himself. Because it was such a beautiful day our guide suggested going further up the mountain for more off-road mountain biking however this distracted him which led him to forget the bag of helmets and knee/elbow pads which he didn’t realise until the end of the day when were giving our equipment back.

The start was on an off-road section containing lots of uneven ground and loose gravel surfaces, it gave us the opportunity to put the well used bikes (with no suspension) through their paces, there were a few close calls mostly involving going around the uneven corners to fast.

After we had travelled the first 42km of the off-road section we stopped at some very relaxing hot springs (and some very cold), we were only given 1 hour in the springs which I can see why, any longer and I’m not sure we would want to get back on our bikes for the next 35km downhill ride back to Quito.

Unfortunately our fantastic day couldn’t be left that way due to a minor problem in the room next door. Kev was fast a sleep, I was listening to music and Mike was using the laptop - John came into the room and asked why there was water on the floor around John’s bag. News to us, so we began to investigate initially we thought it was from my hydration pocket in my rucksack, John’s had leaked when we were hiking in the Canyons. Nope it wasn’t that - John moved his bag and within 10-15 minutes the whole floor was covered in water.

Went down to reception to report it, they might mop it up though it looked like it was coming from the room next door. The toilet had overflowed there was poo all over the floor and was what had leaked into our room, at 11.30 we commence moving to another room not too far away luckily.

Our third day we visited the equator in Mitel del Mundo (Middle of the World) where we jumped on a local bus to try and find our way there. After the stories we heard from other people Kev experienced his first attempt at being pick-pocketed from the pocket hanging from his fleece he had around his waist, luckily in our strong team of 4 I twarted the attempt by pushing the guy away from Kev who then turned around with a beaming smile on his face, it startled Kev a little and entrigued Mike and John as to why I was so keen to get on the bus. The first bus we caught was a bargain but we got of in a small town leaving us with little idea of how to go the rest of the way, were it not for a bus on the other side of the road with a massive sign saying “Mitel Del Mundo” on the windscreen.

We first visited the equator located 50m away from the real equator, on the equator was a monument containing additional Inca history for Ecuador similar to what we had already seen in the Museum in Quito. It also provided the perfect opportunity for plenty of pictures involving the line.

After visiting the wrong equator we went to the real one 50m away and first impressions it was alot less grand with a rickety wooden gate however we were approached to take a tour with a guide something not offered in the other museum.

Part of the tour involved a demonstration of water circling down a plug hole in the northern, southern hemispheres and on the equator line. We also had the opportunity to balance an egg on the head of nail which we all did successfully and earnt ourselves a diploma to prove it.

The final tests involved walking along the equator line with our eyes closed not as easy as first thought and testing our body strength on the line and away from the line by seeing how easy we could pull someones thumb away from their hand and pushing their arms down whilst being held up. We also had the opportunity to try a blow pipe firing at a dartboard rather than a real moving animal.

Of the two equators, I think the real one was much better value for money it provided a much more fun and interactive tour but did lack some of the local Inca history present in the monument located on the fake equator.

In the evening over a few cheap beers in the hostel we discovered our next incident. We hear a story from another traveller who experienced having her rucksack stolen by someone who appeared to be associated to the coach she was getting on, he showed her to her seat told her about the journey, ask her to put he bag in the storage above her seat - she refused and put it by her feet. The guy must have distracted her whilst and accomplice took the bag from in front or behind her. He got off the bus and she realised they had taken her bag as he casually walked out of the station with it on his back - she went after him jumped on his back where he luckily returned the bag without putting up a fight.

After travelling through North and South America for the past four and half months we have looked forward to a different christmas… one in the sun, on the beach with a BBQ, instead of indoors in the warm sheltering from the cold weather, wind and rain.

We had initial reservations after a few spells of rain and thunderstorms we thought we could be back in the UK were it not for us being by the beach and still walking around in shorts and thongs. This bit of bad weather didn’t last long, we woke up on christmas day to see bright sunshine coming through the window and on to our christmas tree.

The goonies wish you all a Merry Christmas from sunny Coogee, Sydney.

Edit: After a slow start the sun came out and we spent the rest of the day on the scorching hot beach!

Hola,

You may have read updates from our road trip around the National Parks and we’d just like to explain we finished the road trip back on 19th September and have since visited San Francisco, driven the Pacific Coast Highway, partied in LA and wizzed through Miami before we ended our North America leg and began our South America in Quito, Ecuador and are about to start the Inca Trail. However, due to our packed itinary we’ve neglected posting what we’ve done in each location, whoops!

We are slowly catching up on our previous posts each day, if you miss any check the archive on the left hand side for all of our previous posts.

In the mean time you can check out the latest pictures in the gallery, which are up to date!

Bye for now,

The Goonies.

We left Ventura our last stop on the Pacific Coast Highway before we get to Los Angeles after filling ourselves up and our bags on a free and full breakfast, we raced (obeying the speed limits) along the interstate to drop our bags off at the USA hostal bang in the centre of Hollywood and drop Sheila Number 2 off at LAX.

We left dropping the car off to Mike and Kev leaving them a couple of hours to return the car whilst we explored in and around the hostel. Before we left hostel Kev came racing back into our the room completely out of breath, almost collapsing with exhaustion to say the car wouldn’t start and the key was stuck in the ignition in a petrol station and we needed to call Avis to let them know. As I got downstairs to make the call Mike came racing in saying the car was working and the reason it wouldn’t start was because the gear shift wasn’t in Park (rookie mistake). They rushed off once again to give back the car, returning later to let us know the little detour had made them 8 minutes late and cost us $60 for another hour.

Another expense added to the PCH, another lesson learnt we started to explore Hollywood! beginning with Hollywood walk of fame towards the Hollywood & Highland Center home to the Kodak theatre where the Oscars are held and one of the places you can see the Hollywood sign from (albeit not the best view, see below), then further along to the Grauman’s Chinese Theatre to compare our hand and footprints with some of the famous names of hollywood past and present.

After enjoying a relaxing strole we were given tickets to a free movie screening at the Mann Chinese 6 Theatre. Although we wasn’t told what it was, we began thinking that maybe we would be part of the audience to a unreleased film and we might influence what scenes are chopped in this good or bad film. We took a gamble and started to get in the queue about 2 hours before the film started to ensure we got a place. We were in luck, it was Ghost Town, Ricky Gervais’ first showing on the big screen. It didn’t disappoint with Gervais being his usual entertaining self and with a more serious tone halfway through. After we watched the film and got money off vouchers to a future film we established we were Guinea Pigs for the adverts before the films rather than the film itself, slightly disappointed with didn’t get to leave our creative flare on the flim but an expected outcome given the film was already available to watch in the cinema.

In the evening we arrived late to the open mic night held in the bar inside the hostel to enjoy some free entertainment and cheap beer, where all the up and coming stars perform.

The following day we decided to head out to Universal Studios where we enjoyed a day of fun after initially waiting in the ticket queue  for what seemed like forever. Though it was definitely worth the wait to get to go on the rides inside, a few we had a go on were:

- The Simpsons Ride, is a simulator that replaced the Back to the Future ride. Before we did it there were reservations it was going to be like the 3D simulator you might get at a fairground. Far from it! It was an  action packed 10-20 minutes that did an excellent job of giving the impression you were on a real rollercoaster with more, it wasn’t surprising this was the ride we had to wait the longest for.

- Waterworld, the most popular show at the park and after seeing it I can see why. From the moment we sat down the actors were there entertaining the audience and really making those people who had sat in the “wet” seats regret that decision. The show was pretty spectacular too with lots of fire effects and a surprising arrival halfway through (I won’t say what because it would spoil the surprise).

- The Universal Studio Tour, gave a nice exposure to some of the sets including Desperate Housewives and Jaws though a little too staged for my liking. The behind the scenes tour would have been more impression but that gives us something to come back for

- Revenge of the Mummy, this ride imursed you in total darkness and put you in a really fast rollercoaster that could go backwards and forwards allowing for some nasty surprises and an interesting ride picture, sorry that one’s not in the gallery!

After arriving back we arrived in time to endure enjoy the free comedy night by the hostel, it was a tough crowd for the comedians - there weren’t many laughs in the house but it was a nice end to the day and allowed to relax with one or two beers.

We couldn’t come to LA without experiencing ‘Muscle Beach’ first hand, so on Jingkei’s final day we headed off to the beach. The gym section wasn’t quite what we were expecting since it was all enclosed and a fair distance away from the sandy beach, plus we must have picked the wrong time of the day/week because it was empty. Further along there was a gymnastic area where there were a few people (including Kev and John who couldn’t resist having a go).

We spent the remainder of the morning sitting around on the beach followed by a walk from Venice Beach to Santa Monica beach in seach of a place to stop for lunch, after which we continued with the tanning process - which was still enough time for Jingkei to get burnt whilst trying and get rid of those T-Shirt tan lines before he headed home from his stint with the Goonies On Tour.

As it was Jingkei’s last day we splashed out on a nasty equivalent of KFC to wish Jingkei bon voyage and once we had waved him off we mourned the loss of our temporary goonie with lots of beer and free shots from the bar staff.

On our final day in LA with spent our time exploring more of the area, heading in the general direction of the RockWalk on the Sunset Strip where you can find more hand and foot prints only this time of famous Rock Stars and Guitar Heros as well as  a shop with some very expensive electric and acoustic guitars. Kev and John looked longingly at some of the ones on show, possibly wishing they could bring one along for the rest of the trip, personally I think I’d prefer my iPod. We ended our final day with a strole back along the Hollywood Boulevard though the very posh looking neighbourhoods all with private security protecting the houses, with streets lined with palm trees and the gardener trimming the hedges continuing onto where the Walk of Fame begins.

On to Miami the last leg of our North America trip.

Our first full day in South America we explored the new city part of Quito starting with a visit to the Museum del Banco a huge museum over multiple floors covering the history of Ecuador back to precolumbian times, art paintings and contempoary art on the top floor. We worked our way through the new city and into the old city and in the afternoon we walked up Panecillo Hill to see Virgin de Quito Statue which offers a good view point to see Quito from above.

We later read in the guide book it is STRONGLY suggested we get a taxi to the top - we made it up and down ok and back down through he old city to find somewhere for dinner, though not without some minor scrapes with several angry looking stray dogs along the way.

The following day we investigated the local tour operators to book some crazy reason, we decided to go with Gringo Tours they seemed the most professional agent we could trust our money with. We booked up a tour to Papallcha where we would be cycling 77km though the mountains and back to quito and after our brief time at altitude decided to book a climb up Cotopaxi which takes us up to 5900m!

After spending a huge chunk of cash on tours we went to Telefreqico, a newly built cable car that takes you up 4050m to the summit of Cruz Loma which provides you with a spectacular view over Quito, the weather was quite overcast which made the visibility quite poor. After our trek up the hill we could have continued on foot further up the mountain but decided not too due to the weather, in those conditions I prefer bubble lifts that allow you to snowboard back down the hill.

At the foot of the lift was a small fairground with Go Karts $5 for 5 minutes which we couldn’t resist. The karts were average and the it turned out to be a close race between Mike, Kev and me with all of us nose to tail around each bend. The track was too narrow to overtake on the straights, which just left waiting for a mistake to be made in one of the corners which Kev found when he barged Mike into the tyres with a move that would have landed him a 10 second penalty if there we’re any marshalls. The race finished. Kev, Me, Mike, John.  John lagged behind for the whole race which we thought was due to a problem with the car, after the race we found he wasn’t using full power around all the corners.

My opinion so far of Quito is it is a nice place to base yourself if you intend to do activities around it and it does have some nice areas, but overall it is a very dirty place where you have to watch you back. The rest of our time in Quito will only be to us it as a base whilst we visit Papachalla, Mitel del Mundo and Otovalo market then leave for our trek to Cotopaxi.

After a day of travelling from Philidelphia through New York, our arrival in Boston was met with pouring rain, something we weren’t familar with given the 40 degree heats from the previous destinations. The address of our booking took us too a luxurious hotel, we thought we were in for treat given the price we paid. Not so, we checked in and found out they were taking us to their overflow accomodation, which upon arrival looked like an old hospital, suspicions confirmed when one of the rooms still had the old bed curtains up.

Kev had already been to Boston so we left him to cover the USS Constitution and Bunker hill whilst we took a guided tour of the first half of the Freedom Trail. Before starting though after lots of walking in Washington and Phili in aleady warn out shoes I treated myself to some new trainers, the difference was immediately apparaent when we began our walking.

In the afternoon, we still had a large amount of the trail to follow, containing the USS Constitution and Bunker Hill. We planned to meet Kev later so instead We decided to go for a guided tour of MIT, which would have been good except we were visiting on the weekend when tours do not run. That didn’t stop us having a snoop around the grounds and investigating some of the lecture theatres, we left our mark in one of the rooms, at least until the next lecturer comes and rubs it off.

On our way back we met Kev, standing outside the Cheers! bar, what luck. We thought it was only fair on ourselves after so much walking we deserved a beer or two and at the same time got more ideas for Miami from some other people in the bar.

The next day we left Kev relaxing in the hostel whilst we went to drop off our bags at left luggage and to used the rest of day to see the USS Constition and Bunker Hill Monument.

We wait for a guided tour of the boat so we could go below deck allowing us to see more than just the top deck and gain a more detailed account of the boats history.

We then walked to the Bunker Hill Monument, 294 steps, no lift, boiling heat. Nice. But worth it for the views from the top of the monument. To get out the heat we went into the Bunker Hill museum, which turned out to be a good choice as it was full of history and a reconstruction, which Mike started and managed to make the other people in the museum jump out of their skin.

Next stop, Montreal (never mind Kev…)