We have finally managed to get up to date with all of our photos (hoorah!) and we are slowly cracking away at our backlog of posts.

Today we will be leaving Singapore for the Malayasian part of Borneo.

The Goonies.

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!

After a nice time in Salta, we went off to Mendoza which was a 15 hour journey. We finally got to the main bus terminal where we grabbed a taxi to our hostel. This soon turned out to be one of the most costly rides yet…

So, we arrived at our hostel and it wasn´t until the taxi raced away that Chris realised he left his little rucksack in the taxi along with a bag of gift wrapped Christmas presents. Fortuneatly, there was a second cab following which Chris managed to get in and attempt to chase the runaway taxi. But luck wasn´t on our side and the taxi was no where to be seen.

After a whole day, hanging around the bus terminal and a tough time speaking Spanglish at the police station, we gave in considered the bag lost forvever.

We lost a lot in that bag which included the following items.

1. Laptop, power adapter and black wallet with screen cleaner
2. Tripod, Canon Ixus 860 Camera, 4GB Crucial Memory Card and wrist strap for camera
3. 160Gb Hard Drive with just under 40Gb used (which works out to be 3 months worth of photos/videos)
4. Tupperware Box with pasta, toothpicks, camera case, money belt (with drivers license, $20)
5. 80GB iPod, case and headphones + all the music + Chris´s high Klondike score
6. Flight Tickets, £10, Insurance Certificate, Yellow Fever Vaccination certificate, 2 Malaria pills, Vaccination history
7. Pack of mini playing cards
8. Various coinage from Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru
9. Diploma for egg balancing on the equator in Ecuador
10. Postcards from all the places we have been so far and notebook of suggestions for places to visit next
11. Christmas presents Chris had wrapped the day before (with the exception of one)
12. Travel Adaptor
13. North Face Daypack - Ios 20 (Rubbish)
14. Along Came a Spider book, already read by Kev, John and Chris
15. Various free Pen’s from most dangerous road, Mariel hotel (Lima)

As you can see, we haven’t updated the blog for a while but we had lots of posts about to be posted, but all that was lost as it was stored on the laptop.

Anyway, there´s no need to worry about us as we have replacement equipment coming our way and we are still working on the posts to catch up.

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.