BootsnAll Travel Network



Varadero

September 25th, 2007

Cuba hadn’t originally been a place we had intended to visit, but once I’d had an email from an old school, Spanish, penfriend (Amaia) to say that her and her family were moving out there for two years it seemed silly not to ‘pop’ in on our way past! Read the rest of this entry »

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Tulum and around

September 13th, 2007

Tulum is supposed to be one of the places to visit in Yucatan, but not entirely sure why! The town is a bit of a dump, one long street of restaurants, souvenir shops and internet places, and is 5km from the beach. You can stay on the beach (in cabañas) instead, but people we spoke to said that you were then pretty much stuck where you were staying. Anyway, it made a useful base for us. Read the rest of this entry »

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Valladolid and around

September 9th, 2007

Valladolid is another colonial town, not as big as Merida, but quite pleasant nonetheless. Its pretty quiet for most of the day, but is mobbed around 4pm when the tour buses are heading back to Cancun and Playa del Carmen from Chichen Itza. Read the rest of this entry »

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Merida and around

September 8th, 2007

We treated ourselves to an internal flight to Merida – one and a half hours seemed better than 20 hours on the bus, particularly as the end of the trip feels like it is approaching far too quickly! Merida is a pleasant colonial town, with lots of attractive buildings, lots of old VW beetles and plenty of things to do nearby. Read the rest of this entry »

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Mexico City

September 8th, 2007

After getting up at an ungodly hour to catch our flight to Lima (planning to then spend the day in Lima before flying to Mexico that night) and even getting as far as checking in the flight was cancelled. Appeared not to be an unusual event, apparently there was too much cloud about. Didn’t look that much to us, but it is probably a landing by sight airport. We were moved onto the evening flight, which all being well would connect with the mexico flight, and then had an unplanned day in Piura. Not necessarily where you would choose to spend another day, but a better place to get stuck than Pomabamba which is where we were when we had our last transport failure. Read the rest of this entry »

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Isabela

September 1st, 2007

It was a very bumpy 3 hour boat ride, in what felt like a very small boat in amongst the very large waves.  Wouldn’t call it relaxing, more a case of cling on to, what felt like a plank, and hope!  However, we arrived in Isabela (Puerto Villamil) safely and without being ill, which was fortunate.

Straight away Isabela felt very different to Santa Cruz, sandy streets and laid back, much more desert island.  Read the rest of this entry »

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Into the blue

September 1st, 2007

One of the main things we wanted to do on arrival in the Galapagos was to dive.  For a while it was looking as though it would only be me going, but luckily Nick recovered from the nasty cold he’d been suffering from the week before.  So on arrival in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz one of our first jobs was to seek out a couple of dive companies and arrange two days of diving.

In the end we went with Scuba Iguana, they seemed to be the most professional of the companies we talked to – the only people to ask how many dives we had, when the last time we had dived was etc.  Kind of key questions, I think.  They also limited the number of divers to one dive master to 4 which was appealing. Read the rest of this entry »

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Santa Cruz and around

September 1st, 2007

Having decided not to go on a cruise around the islands we based ourselves in Puerto Ayora, Santa Cruz for five nights and also spent four nights on Isabela.  We dived on two days and occupied ourselves on various walks and tours for the other three days. Read the rest of this entry »

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Quito and around

August 31st, 2007

OK so I’m being fairly liberal in my definition of around as it encompasses Baños and Riobamba both of which are about 4 hours drive from Quito…but tough!

After our snowy attempt of Cotopaxi we decided to head to Baños gringo-ville.  Unfortunately luck was still not on our side, either weather-wise or health-wise.  Arrive to pouring rain and Nick had devloped a nasty cold overnight. Read the rest of this entry »

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Cotopaxi and around

August 13th, 2007

After an exciting night bus, which broke down and so we had to wait for three hours for a replacement, we finally found ourselves in Latacunga, which is near Cotopaxi National Park.

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