http://geoffjones.com Personal blog of Geoff Jones. Tue, 26 May 2009 23:56:51 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Sorry to my regular readers about the lack of updates :-( It is simply due to me enjoying myself so much and having an active social life. From 26MayThe fact is I am  simply loving travelling here, especially with beer at $1 a pint, hotel rooms at $8 night and decent ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/05/27/quick-travelling-update/ After 12 hours here in The Galapagos I decided to extend my stay for another week! 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. ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/05/06/getting-around-cristobal/ Finally, about 50 years after Stan and I marvelled at huge tortoises, I've arrived at The Galapagos islands interestingly at the same place that Darwin landed t 200 years ago! I guess better late than never :-) This afternoon I did a little walk by the cultural centre which is full ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/05/05/arrival-90degrees-from-cambridge/ Today I tagged along with Margaret and her driver for an all day shopping trip up north from Quito. 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 ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/05/03/250km-shopping-trip/ Today I ventured out of Quito with Margaret (who I met in Samara in my first language class) to find The Equator. 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 ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/05/02/where-is-the-equator/ Just back from an excellent white water rafting experience with Explornatura. The trip was good value at $220 including an overnight stay at the remote and beautiful campsite by the river. Its now the end of the dry season so the river was running a bit low but still plenty to ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/04/29/rio-pacuare-rafting/ Today was canyoning day, originally it was going to be real canyoning . However, Ronald of Exploratura managed to convince me to go on their simpler local trip that incorporates zip wires and a hanging bridge. Mainly I suspect because he was going to be doing it anyway to show ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/04/26/turrialba-canyoning/ Today I skipped my final lesson and Graduation Ceremony at Intercultura so that I could get away for some adrenalin experiences. 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, ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/04/25/long-distance-bus-travel/ Finally decided to leave the Intercultura language school here in Costa Rica. I've had about 35 hours of classes solely in Spanish plus a few hours of homework. What have I learnt? Mainly that I'm a slow learner like I was at school when I was a kid. An interesting life ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/04/23/school-days-are-happy-days/ Today I completed my first week of Spanish school and if the results of my first test are anything to go by it's been a bit of a flop :-) we had to write 100 words describing a family from 3 cartoon pictures - couldn't even begin to make ... http://geoffjones.com/2009/04/18/first-week/