From 26May

The fact is I am  simply loving travelling here, especially with beer at $1 a pint, hotel rooms at $8 night and decent meals for less than $5.
The scenery is fantastic and my fellow travellers excellent.
I find it hard to believe that I will ever visit The Flying Pig in Cambridge again with beer over 3 pound a pint.
I’ve been using Picasa to store my pictures (it works better than flickr at autobacking up on the computer). My pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/geofones

Some of my trails can be found at Everytrail

Some action videos are on Youtube

Of course I twitter when I can.and if you are lucky you can catch me on Skype.

Now its a question of convincing Sally to get the travel bug

A quick bike ride to the airport,then about 12 steps from parking the bike to the AeroGal office followed by about 10 clicks on her computer and the job was done, no charge, no fuss. Airports and booking as it should be

I then decided to cycle up the extinct volcano to see the El Junco crater lake, after  a few hundred yards a local taxi driver in his Toyota pick up suggested a lift up the 1000ft ascent for $10, since it was in the thirties I thought it was a grand idea (sorry Andrew you are 19 and I’m 62!). A lovely walk around the lake watching the birds washing the salt of their wings then back to the bike and the mainly descent to the La Galapguera de Cello Colorado Tortoise breeding station and then onto the white sand and beach at Puerto Chino.

On the way back the taxi carrying my 2 new American friends, who I met on the beach, stopped to give me a quick lift up the worst incline, I learned from him that you can rent an apartment for $150 a MONTH here, interestingly his girlfriend hs just arrived after his 3 months away

The trip with pics is here.



San Cristobal, Galapagos cycle/walk/taxi

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Tomorrow I’m boating over to Isabela via Santa Cruz for $55 a 4 hour ride. co

This afternoon I did a little walk by the cultural centre which is full of profoundly depressing stuff about the slaughter of the local tortoises to provide oil for lamps and the maltreatment of prisoners ( it was a prison colony for a while) plus the introduction of non native animals oh dear we homo sapiens are a stupid lot!

Here is a map and some pictures of the walk.



San Cristobal, Galapagos

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Now the debate in my head is how long to stay, I’m booked out on a flight on Friday but I think that will be changed

My problem is that I do really love travelling just hanging out in cafes listening to other folks and the ocean…

Maybe I can turn Sally into a traveller too, sounds s though she is getting fed up living where she is at the minute …….

First stop was Calderon where they specialise in making highly coloured figurines from bread dough or masapan. Reasonably interesting and I guess where Oxfam gets some of its clutter from. A little factoid garnered was that apparently Gap clothes now makes its buttons from nuts, so called wood ivory (see the image)

We then moved onto Otavalo market which must be famous for its tiny people anyone who is 5 foot tall would look big here! Brilliant array of stuff , although how you get to carry hammocks and carpets home is a problem that clearly needs resolving!.

Then onto Cotacachi which is a village devoted to making leather goods all very reasonably priced if you like walking around in dead animal skins, apparently it has been hard hit by the new purchase tax regime.

Finally after lunch we visited Ibarra apparently renowned for its wood carving, they seem to specialize in concave breasts and statues of a mother holding a baby above her head plus various other religious themes.

The images are here:-

and no I didn’t buy anything, as all I could imagine was more trips to the charity shops in a few months time….

Armed with my Garmin GPS we took the public transport buses, 50 cents for a 30km journey, to Mitad del Mundo where the Equator was determined in 1736 and the nearby Museo Inti-Nan which claims to be on the actual equator as determined by someones GPS. However , my Garmin told a different story! Here are the traces for the day:-

The lower trace is Mitad del Mundo, the centre one is museo inti-Nan and the one at zero is my Garmin…
Wikipedia has more on the subject here

Before we did the Equator we visited the rim of the old Pululahua crater which was interesting to see a community sitting on top of a volcano, like Yellowstone National Park in the USA!

The photographs of the day are on Picasa.

B

By the way the trick of showing the water going down the plughole in opposite directions in each hemisphere is revealed in some detail here

Its now the end of the dry season so the river was running a bit low but still plenty to have fun over the rapids and also to get some swimming in between.

All my photos are on Picasa at:-

White water rafting the Rio Pacuare

and a map of the route (including breaks in the GPS where I went swimming) is up on Everytrail:-



White water rafting the Rio Pacuare

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We also went to visit a local indigenous community and their new school and sewage digestor. They hope to make it into a tourist attraction

Its a pleasant half day and a good introduction to canyoning and zip wiring.

My pictures are at Picasa:-

and there is a short video of Kerstin in action on YouTube

and the trip is also on everytrail too

I’m afraid the new Flickr uploader is proving very unreliable and Everytrail cannot import from Picasa as yet.

Tomorrow its a 2 day rafting trip with a night in the jungle and yep Kerstin gets to do that for free too

The bus ride from Samara to San Jose certainly made a good start in that direction it was a 6 hour 240km trip along a horrendous road, reminder to self, NEVER sit on driver side of bus! The sight of huge trucks hurtling towards you and virtually scraping the window whilst the driver is nochantly on the phone is well, terrifying and good value at 3350 colones!.

The bus to Turrialba leaves at the opposite end of San Jose, very close to the costaricabackpackers hotel so a nice walk with my over filled rucksac. I made the 4.30 direct bus and arrived at 6.30 after much cursing and horn blasting from the driver!

So a total of over 300km and 10hours of travelling for less than £6.

A very kind tico showed me to the Interamericamo where I have a double room for $11 a night. Tomorrow will book my canyoning and whitewater rafting trips plus maybe a hike up the volcano, which apparently is getting active again,

Now to tuck in at The Feria restaurant enjoying the wifi from the petrol station opposite!

What have I learnt? Mainly that I’m a slow learner like I was at school when I was a kid. An interesting life observation is that to succeed at school you need a good short term memory preferably with sufficient capacity to absorb several hours of stuff. In life memory is not rated that highly, thats why we have books & the internet, retrieval of information is most highly rated either by employing the right person to do it or been adept at doing it yourself.

I will maybe go to more classes in Ecuador or maybe in  Cusco with Sally for a couple of hours each day .

Tomorrow I’m heading off to Turrialba to try and get some more white water rafting experience or canyoning. Then its off to Ecuador to have some fun standing on the Equator, apparently there are loads of tricks and funny things you can do there.

I’ve enjoyed my stay here, especially Nuria’s cooking and her sister Ilsen who taught me at the school, Nelson my first teacher was great as well but the rest of the class was way to speedy for me….

Managed to get some DIY in by replacing Nuria’s kitchen sink taps and the loo seat.I really enjoy going to foreign builders merchants to see the real world in action

Well off for  final visit to Samara beach…

After the exam it was straight in the minibus with 9 others for the 200km+ ride to Arenal to visit Volcán Arenal y Monteverde a $165 weekend exursion.

Tonight I’m sharing a deluxe room with Michael from Switzerland at the deluxe hotel. We’ve just returned from the amazing Baldi hot springs oasis of 25 thermal outdoor pools ranging from 67deg to 32deg. The star attraction was the humungous slide where you reach 30mph in an enclosed tunnel exiting in a huge splash into a thermal pool. Unbelievable only did it once though as I thought the old back might suffer.

Now it’s off for dinner then the others have threatened to take me to the disco….

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