Ruby the Landy
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This is one small step for man...........Final days in Galveston..............ciao, adios we`re done!

5/19/2018

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We spent a day in San Antonio, Texas and really enjoyed exploring the famous Alamo. In December 1835, during Texas’ war for independence from Mexico, a group of Texan volunteer soldiers occupied the Alamo, a former Franciscan mission located near the present-day city of San Antonio. On February 23, 1836, a Mexican force numbering in the thousands and led by General Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna began a siege of the fort. Though vastly outnumbered, the Alamo’s 200 defenders–commanded by James Bowie and William Travis and including the famed frontiersman Davy Crockett–held out courageously for 13 days before the Mexican invaders finally overpowered them. For Texans, the Battle of the Alamo became an enduring symbol of their heroic resistance to oppression and their struggle for independence, which they won later that year. We also wandered along the river walk-located one story below the street, and lined by restaurants, shops, nature and public artwork.

With 2 weeks left before we head home-it was time to slowly make our way towards Galveston, where Ruby will be leaving first, on her ship to Southampton. We spent a few days outside Houston, sorting out all our stuff.

 We treated ourselves to a day at the NASA space centre and it was absolutely fantastic! We were there from the moment it opened to almost the moment it closed. Part of the day included a 90 minute tram tour which took us around significant points of interest in the Johnson space centre. The space centre presently serves as the home of mission control, NASA’s lead for International Space Station operations and missions, home to the Orion Multi-purpose crew vehicle, and numerous advanced human exploration projects. The centre also plays an important role in NASA’s Commercial Crew programmes.

The first stop took us into the room which overlooked the historic mission control, which managed, amongst many things, all of the lunar landings. As the world watched the outcome of Apollo 11, the first attempted lunar landing, employees in the NASA Mission Control Center held their breaths during the entire descent. Everyone anxiously awaited the confirmation of a safe arrival from its Apollo crew. At approximately 3:18 p.m. on July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong’s famous words were forever ingrained in history: “Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed.” Once word was received from the lunar module, capsule communicator (CAPCOM) Charlie Duke responded to Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. He expressed the feelings of relief and excitement that were felt in Mission Control and around the world:“Roger, Tranquility. We copy you on the ground. You’ve got a bunch of guys about to turn blue. We’re breathing again. Thanks a lot.”

In fact, from this room, the NASA team exercised full mission control of Apollo 11 from launch and liftoff at the Kennedy Space Center to splashdown in the Pacific Ocean. You can feel the history in the room from the monitors to the rotary dial phones.
 It was so interesting and we saw the small speaker where the first and last words from the moon were broadcast and also the infamous line "Houston we have a problem"-which we learnt were not the exact words that were used! The exact words were "Okay, Houston, we've had a problem here" We learnt that 12 people have set foot on the moon, and there have been 12 manned (only men so far) landings (all by the USA). In those days-there was only one computer used with one as back up-its computer power was only the size of a phone app that we use nowadays! The success depended on 10 per cent technology and 90 per cent brain power-the staff using slide rules (there were no calculators!) to land man on the moon! Incredible! The room we were sitting in was the one used by the families of the astronauts, to see their loved ones in space. They had an open invitation to attend.

We visited the space vehicle mock up facility and astronaut training centre-where all astronauts have trained since 1980. There have been several types of mockups within the facility and each served a different function for astronauts and engineers. Initially, the facility housed space shuttle training modules such as the full fuselage trainer and two crew compartment trainers. The building is home to exploration rover prototypes and other robotics projects such as Valkyrie, NASA’s next generation of humanoid robot also known as R5. International Space Station modules help astronauts become familiarized with the space station in preparation for their mission. Orion, NASA’s crewed space vehicle, is being evaluated and tested by astronauts in Building 9 as engineers finalize Orion’s design. Orion is the space vehicle that will eventually take humans (hopefully including a female) to land on Mars.

We explored Rocket Park, where one of only three of the remaining actual Saturn V rockets is displayed, along with other rockets that propelled space exploration.  The Saturn V rocket at NASA Johnson Space Center is the tallest, heaviest and most powerful rocket ever flown. NASA used the colossal Saturn V rockets primarily during the Apollo programme to send Americans to the moon. There are only three Saturn V rockets on display in the world. The three segments, called stages, contain the powerful engines needed to lift off, entering orbit to reach the moon. In total, 13 Saturn V rockets launched into space. The Saturn V rocket stands 363 feet tall and has dazzled viewers since its first un-crewed takeoff, the Apollo 4 mission in 1967. When fueled and ready for launch, the rocket can weigh 6.2 million pounds (2.8 kg). That is almost the same weight as 39 space shuttle orbiters.

Flown from 1967 to 1973, the rocket launched 27 astronauts into space with six successful missions landing men on the moon. Saturn V also launched Skylab, America’s first space station, into orbit in its final mission. Astronauts could immediately feel the impressive power of Saturn V propelling them through Earth’s atmosphere into orbit. It was, as the American`s would say, awesome!

There was plenty more to see. We visited a shuttle replica Independence, mounted on top of the historic and original NASA 905 shuttle carrier aircraft, and then explored the giant plane. It is the world’s only shuttle mounted on an shuttle carrier aircraft and the only one allowing the public to enter both. We learnt about the planned missions to Mars, we saw how astronauts live in space and we listened to a talk by an astronaut who described his favourite moment in space as seeing the earth for the first time and how emotional that was.

We then made our way to Galveston for our last few days. It was Ruby`s turn first and we took her to the port, ready for shipping. We had to pay for an escort to take us into the port-as you cannot drive in by yourself. A lovely man called Gary from Galveston was our escort-he met us at the port and took us to where we needed to go. Someone came and checked Ruby`s VIN and wrote a series of numbers on her window (I guess to identify which ship she will be going on). Next, I took the dock receipt to be stamped. Gary showed us where to park Ruby. And that was that. We left the old girl there ready to be shipped by roll on roll off (instead of a container, she will be driven on and off). We will be reunited with her again around the end of June.

 It was a strange feeling leaving her there. Ruby has been our home, our transport and our life for the last 2 years (other than hotels and airbnbs!) and has done us proud. She has been fantastic. Whilst we have had a number of mechanical issues-none have been too serious and she has kept going mile after mile after mile. People love Ruby-she has had countless photos taken and has been pulled over many times by the police and military, so they could have a good look at her. She has been an integral part of the trip and through her we have met some wonderful people-such as Francis and Elsa in Portland, Graham and Joyce in Belize, all the landy guys in Colombia and the wonderful Jorge in Argentina. It has also bought us into contact with the lovely Mike Trott from the Landy paper. Thank you and safe travels Rubes-see you back in Blighty!

Next we headed to customs, handed in our paperwork and were given clearance to export her home. Heading back to the airbnb, emotion must have overcome me, as I fell flat on my face! I looked up to see Gav peering at me, looking all concerned, however I was fine!

We spent our last morning on a wonderful fishing trip from Galveston port. It was the day of the royal wedding so I had got up at 4.30am to watch it live! (I loved it-as did all the Americans we have spoken to!) We went on a large boat with about 80 other people, out into the bay. We had a lovely few hours-with dolphins following the boat- and Gav  caught and released 3 catfish. We also sailed past Ruby-patiently waiting for her boat! She must have thought "look at those buggers, still enjoying themselves, whilst my trip is over"!

So that`s it folks. We`re done. Tomorrow we fly back from Houston, almost exactly 2 years to the day we flew from the UK to New York, to start the trip. We have had a wonderful time and seen some of the most incredible things. We have set foot on the most remote continent on earth and felt we were part of a David Attenborough documentary! We have met some brilliant people-with whom we shall stay in touch, We have been welcomed by lovely people in all of the different countries  and places, and have felt humbled by the tremendous amount of human kindness everywhere we have been. We have never felt unsafe and have always found someone to help us, when we needed it. The world is largely a safe place and people are generally kind people. We need to build connections and bridges, not walls and barriers. We have never taken our tremendous privileges for granted and have felt so lucky to be able to do this trip.

Life is not a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well preserved body,but rather to skid in broadside, thoroughly used up, totally worn out and loudly proclaiming "WOW-what a ride!"
 
Somebody said that it couldn’t be done
      But he with a chuckle replied
That “maybe it couldn’t,” but he would be one
      Who wouldn’t say so till he’d tried.
So he buckled right in with the trace of a grin
      On his face. If he worried he hid it.
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
      That couldn’t be done, and he did it!
 
Somebody scoffed: “Oh, you’ll never do that;
      At least no one ever has done it;”
But he took off his coat and he took off his hat
      And the first thing we knew he’d begun it.
With a lift of his chin and a bit of a grin,
      Without any doubting or quiddit,
He started to sing as he tackled the thing
      That couldn’t be done, and he did it.
 
There are thousands to tell you it cannot be done,
      There are thousands to prophesy failure,
There are thousands to point out to you one by one,
      The dangers that wait to assail you.
But just buckle in with a bit of a grin,
      Just take off your coat and go to it;
Just start in to sing as you tackle the thing
      That “cannot be done,” and you’ll do it.
 
WOW-What a RIDE!
 
 
 

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Pretty Puebla...................loving Lucha libre..................Adios Mexico!

5/14/2018

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We arrived in the beautiful city of Puebla, Mexico`s fourth largest City and just 67 miles from Mexico City. We spent a couple of days wandering around the gorgeous buildings and learning a little about the City`s history. Puebla suffered quite badly in the September 2017 earthquake, however a lot of work had been done to restore the historic buildings. We also visited a photography exhibition featuring the legendary Mexican artist , Frida Kahlo. Frida is an icon in Mexico and her image is everywhere. I (Jen) have become a little bit obsessed with her and her life story and have already bought numerous (tacky!) Frida souvenirs to take home! Poor Gav has become used to me brandishing a cheap shopping bag or fridge magnet, bearing Frida`s face, with delight! More on Frida`s story later!

We left Puebla and headed to Teotihuacan, 25 miles outside Mexico City, where we left Ruby for 6 days whilst we travelled into Mexico city and stayed in a lovely hotel in the old central district. There are complicated rules governing when you are allowed to drive in Mexico City and most of Mexico state, due to pollution, and the police are hot on stopping and fining you, if you get it wrong. We decided to leave Ruby at the campsite, as the easier option!

We really enjoyed our time in Mexico City, the most populous city in North America. Mexico City is one of the most important cultural and financial centres in the Americas. It is located in the Valley of Mexico a large valley in the high plateaus in the centre of Mexico, at an altitude of 2,240 metres (7,350 ft). It is the largest Spanish speaking city in the world. We visited the wonderful main plaza and its cathedral; the supreme Court of Justice which contained absolutely amazing murals about justice and injustice, the national palace  with its Diego Rivera (married to Frida!!) murals and the Templo Mayor-ruins in the middle of the city which was the main temple of the Aztecs in their capital city. We also visited the public education building which was Diego Rivera`s first large scale mural project.

We had a couple of days on the hop on hop off tourist bus-visiting the important monuments in the City and Chapultepec park. The park was fabulous and we spent most of a day there, visiting the wonderful anthropology museum which was world class. It took us through the entire history of Mexico and contained wonderful artifacts. We also visited the botanic gardens and the castle of Chapultepec.

We visited the districts of Roma and Condesa-hunting out great street art and of course, we had to visit the Frida Kahlo museum in Coyoacan. I found this museum-housed in Frida`s childhood home and where she lived for a time with Diego and where she died-mesmerizing!  The museum contains a collection of artwork by Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera, and other artists along with the couple’s Mexican folk art, pre-Hispanic artifacts, photographs, memorabilia, personal items, and more. The collection is displayed in the rooms of the house which remains much as it was in the 1950s. It is the most popular museum in Coyoacán and one of the most visited in Mexico City.

The Mexican artist Frida Kahlo (1907–1954) is now regarded as one of the most significant artists of the twentieth  Century. Severely injured in a bus crash in her youth, Frida Kahlo took up painting when confined to her bed. Her life was changed forever by the accident and the portrayal of her body, wracked with pain, is a recurring theme in her paintings. Frida said that there were two accidents in her life –  the second was her tempestuous relationship with the renowned Mexican muralist Diego Rivera. It is in her iconic self portraits, unrivalled in their poignant beauty, that Kahlo depicts both her isolation and also her indomitable spirit and sense of self. The exhibition also reveals the less well-known aspects of her work; her powerful political insights about national identity, the plight of the poor, the march of technology and Mexico's relationship with its neighbour the USA.

The museum consists of ten rooms. On the ground floor is a room that contains some of Frida`s  mostly minor works. This room originally was the formal living room, where Frida and Diego entertained notable Mexican and international visitors and friends. The second and third rooms are dedicated to personal effects and mementos and to some of Diego Rivera’s works. The second room is filled with everyday items Frida used, letters, photographs, and notes. On the walls are pre-Hispanic necklaces and folk dresses, especially the Tehuana style ones that were Frida’s trademark. The sixth and seventh rooms are the kitchen and dining room. Both are in classic Mexican style, with blue and yellow tiles and a long yellow table, where Frida's sister Ruth stated that Frida spent much of her time. The two rooms are filled with large earthenware pots, plates, utensils, glassware, and more which came from different parts of Mexico. Decorative features include papier-mâché Judas skeletons hanging from its ceiling, and walls with tiny pots spelling the names of Frida and Diego next to a pair of doves tying a lovers’ knot.

Off the dining room was Rivera’s bedroom, with his hat, jacket, and work clothes still hanging from a wall rack. Next to this is a stairwell that leads from the courtyard area to the upper floor. This area also contains a large number of folk art items and includes about 2,000 votive paintings from the colonial period to the 20th century, other colonial era work, and more Judas figures.

The two rooms of the upper floor which are open to the public contain Frida’s final bedroom and studio area. This is located in the wing that Rivera had built. The original furniture is still there. In one corner, her ashes are on display in an urn (she died aged only 47), which is surrounded by a funeral mask, some personal items, and mirrors on the ceiling. On her bed is a painted plaster corset she was forced to wear to support her damaged spine, and under the canopy is a mirror facing down which she used to paint her many self-portraits. The pillow is embroidered with the words "Do not forget me, my love." Her wheelchair is drawn up to an unfinished portrait of Stalin, on an easel which is said was given to her by Nelson Rockefeller. Stalin became a hero to Frida Kahlo after the Red Army victory over Nazi Germany  in World War 2.

The tour of the museum ends at the large courtyard garden which is completely enclosed by the four sides or wings of the structure. The courtyard area is divided by a stepped pyramid, a fountain, and a reflection pool. These were built in the 1940s when Rivera first moved into the house and built the fourth wing enclosing the house. This wing’s walls which face the courtyard are decorated with marine shells and mirrors. There are also sculptures by Mexican artist Mardonio Magaña. One side of the courtyard contains the inscription "Frida y Diego / vivieron en / esta casa / 1929-1954" (Frida and Diego lived in this house – 1929-1954).

I loved it and spent a good 2 hours or so listening to an audio tour and even going back and repeating some of the rooms, whilst Gav whizzed around in less than an hour! He waited patiently for me outside and gave a little smile as I appeared with a big smile on my face and clutching-you`ve guessed it-more Frida souvenirs!!

We visited the colourful museum of popular  art that promotes and preserves Mexican handicrafts and folk art. The museum has a collection which includes textiles, pottery, glass, furniture and much more.

Friday night came and we headed for our first ever Lucha libre experience. Lucha libre means free style or literally translated as "free fight" and is the term used in Mexico for professional wrestling. Since its introduction to the country in the early 20th century, it has developed into a unique form of the genre, characterized by colourful masks, rapid sequences of holds and manoeuvres, as well as  high flying manoeuvres, some of which have been adopted in the USA and elsewhere. The wearing of masks has developed special significance, and matches are sometimes contested in which the loser must permanently remove his mask, which is a wager with a high degree of weight attached. Tag team wrestling is especially prevalent in lucha libre, particularly matches with three-member teams, called trios.

We had been looking forward to this all week and it did not disappoint! We purchased 2 colourful lucha libre masks and I (Jen) had mine on within minutes, even though it was incredibly hot inside it! We had front row seats and within a few minutes, were being interviewed for Mexican TV-although we had to speak Spanish!

Once the fights started we threw ourselves into it alongside the rest of the crowd. For the first 2 rounds I kept my mask on whilst shouting, hollering and screaming, and nearly suffocated! It had to come off so I could breathe. I got into it so much that when the fighter came out of the ring next to us, I leapt up and was shouting and gesticulating so much, that security came rushing over and told me to sit down! What a great night`s entertainment-a must do when visiting Mexico City.

We left Mexico city and headed back to collect Ruby from Teotihuacan. Before we headed off, we visited The holy city of Teotihuacan ('the place where the gods were created'). Built between the 1st and 7th centuries A.D., it is characterized by the vast size of its monuments – in particular, the Temple of Quetzalcoatl and the Pyramids of the Sun and the Moon, laid out on geometric and symbolic principles. As one of the most powerful cultural centres in Mesoamerica, Teotihuacan extended its cultural and artistic influence throughout the region, and even beyond. We climbed the huge pyramids of the sun and moon and enjoyed wandering around the ruins for a couple of hours.

Next stop was to San Miguel de Allende and a reunion with our friends Fi and Ken, who we last saw a few months ago. We enjoyed the pretty city of San Miguel but the highlight was spending time with Fi and Ken and taking up where we left off with our card games and teasing Ken for his Americanisms! Their plans were flexible and they had decided to head back into the USA, before shipping to Colombia. We decided to travel together for a few days and we made a couple of camping spots together (at Matehuala and Monterey) before crossing the USA border at Laredo. The border crossing into the US was easier than our first into Seattle last year-however we somehow managed to miss Mexican immigration to get stamped out! We gave in our temporary vehicle permit for Ruby and will receive the deposit we paid when we first entered Mexico within a few days. We had to answer a few questions about our plans in the USA, then wait a short while to get our visas stamped. Car insurance for foreign vehicles, particularly old ones like Ruby, is incredibly expensive in the USA. I had managed to find a Mexican agent who insured us at a reasonable price for our final 2 weeks in Texas, which was a relief.

We spent 2 final nights with Fi and Ken-at a state park in Laredo and at a hotel in Cotulla. These 2 have become very dear friends and we know we will see them again someday.

We have absolutely loved our time in Mexico-it is a diverse, beautiful country with friendly and helpful people. It has a bad press because of cartel violence, however, like most people we met, we never felt unsafe. It had my favourite food of the trip-food being very cheap and incredibly tasty. We spent about 4 months here in total and would love to return one day.
 
 
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Rambling around ruins.........swimming in cenotes...........dodging dodgy cops!

4/18/2018

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Our first stop back in Mexico after crossing the border from Belize was Tulum, a town on the Caribbean coastline of Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. Tulum is known for its beaches and well-preserved ruins of an ancient Mayan port city. We stayed in a small hotel in the centre-planning to stay a few nights to visit the ruins and cenotes. The hotel was lovely. Until 7pm that evening when ridiculously loud music began belting out of the bar next door and went on and on! We have grown used to loud music over the last 2 years, however this was something else and it even made the headboard on our bed vibrate!! At 11.30pm I (Jen) went to the hotel reception in my PJ`s and asked how long the music was likely to go on for. At least until 4am-they said! The hotel staff had a box of earplugs they were dishing out-clearly a common occurrence around here! I took the earplugs and we did get some sleep. We decided to cut our stay short and head to the next destination, visiting the Tulum ruins before we left. The ruins were the only Mayan ruins to be built on the coast-and the location was stunning. We spent just over an hour here, as it was very crowded due to the Easter holidays.

We left the craziness of Tulum and drove the short distance to Coba, much less touristy than Tulum. We really enjoyed Coba and visited its magnificent ruins. Coba’s claim to fame is the largest network of stone causeways in the ancient Mayan world, called sacbes (white roads). Over 50 of these roads have been discovered at the site, with 16 of them open to the public. The largest pyramid at Coba is called Ixmoja, part of the Nohoch Mul group of buildings. The pyramid is 42 meters (138 feet) tall and was the heart of the city. It was a steep climb to the top-but totally worth it as we gazed over the greenery of the jungle stretching in all directions. We were also there just after opening time (8am) and almost had the place to ourselves, which was refreshing after the huge crowds at Tulum.

We visited the cenote at Choo-Ha. The Yucatán Peninsula is home to a unique group of underwater habitats that look like circular swimming pools. These beautiful formations are known as cenotes, meaning “natural well” in Spanish. Formed through the gradual wearing away of the limestone walls by freshwater river systems, cenotes offer an opportunity to enjoy swimming in the depths of the underwater cenote world. Cenotes are a result of the constant, and widening flow of underground rivers through limestone caverns. Freshwater moves through the caverns eventually widening them to a point where the ground above can no longer be supported and falls in.

Choo-Ha is a shallow water cenote with crystal blue water and many stalagmites hanging from the ceiling. It was beautiful and we were the only ones there. The cenote was underground and full of bats! I really enjoyed a quick dip in the water whilst Gav took pictures.

Our next stop was Valladolid. On the way, we visited the stunning cenote of Suyton-it was incredible. Cenote Suytun is an underground cavern containing many stalactites, and clear shallow water where you can see the freshwater fish. The sun`s rays shone in though a small opening at the top of the cave-making a natural spotlight on the water below.
We really enjoyed Valladolid-using it as a base to visit a few places. We went to the Maya ruins of Chichen Itza, hugely popular and declared one of the wonders of the modern world. We went really early before the crowds and really enjoyed its imposing structures, particularly the massive step pyramid called El Castillo.

 We also visited the ruins at Ek Balam-much less touristy than Chichen Itza. When the Mayas abandoned the site, it went undercover, literally, as the dense low-lying jungle of Yucatán engulfed it. As with all of the Maya pyramids, these were discovered when archaeologists and adventurers saw a group of hills with trees and brush growing out of them. Digging in the mounds, they uncovered treasures of buildings and artifacts hidden for hundreds of years.
At Ek Balam, restoration has been ongoing since 1997. The Acropolis is the largest restored building, measuring 480 feet across, 180 feet wide and 96 feet tall. This palace has six levels where the governors and higher echelons of the city’s population lived. We climbed this imposing structure, and from the top saw all the other structures at Ek Balam, as well as two large hills which are two unrestored buildings.

We visited the centre of Valladolid and really enjoyed an hour`s tour around a private home, Casa de los Venados, containing over 5,000 items of Mexican folk art. it was a beautiful home with so many beautiful things to see such as art, ornaments, and sculptures etc.

We had a day visiting 3 nearby cenotes-San Lorenzo Hacienda Oxman cenote; Xkeken and Samula. Oxman was amazing. Deep underground-we had to access it by a stone staircase. The water was clear and there is a large opening at the top of the cenote where tree roots and vines dip down to the fresh water and you can swim up to them. Xkeken and Samula were close to each other-both located completely underground with a small opening at the top of the rock ceiling, allowing the sun’s rays to shine down to the water below, with tree roots hanging through the opening. There were stalactites hanging from the rock ceiling, and interesting rock formations, bats flying above your head and little black catfish swimming in the water with you!
Next, we headed to Merida, the largest city and capital of the state of Yucatan. Much of Mérida's architecture from the colonial period through the 18th century and 19th century is still standing in the historic centre of the city. We spent a very hot day wandering around the city, before meeting our old friends Roque and Sharon, who we first met in Death Valley, for dinner. It was great to catch up with them again and share stories. It is the last time we will see them this trip although hope to see them again one day when they visit Europe!

Next was Campeche, a colonial-era harbour city with baroque Spanish architecture, colourful houses, cobblestone streets and a walled historic district. Its preserved fortifications contained museums and a small botanic garden. We enjoyed wandering around the walled city and visited some of the museums and forts.

On our way to Veracruz we encountered our first "dodgy "police officer of the trip. The police in Mexico are very poorly paid and some try and supplement their income by other means. He pulled us over at a check point and told us (in Spanish) there had been an infraction! He said we had been speeding (we hadn`t) but he had no equipment to verify this. He took Gav`s driving licence and I gave him only copies of our other documents, as I realised we might have some issues getting them back without paying. He kept saying "infraction" and then typed it into his phone on google translate! I spotted my opportunity and swiped Gav`s driving licence from his hand, leaving him with the worthless copies of the other documents. We stayed calm and just kept telling him we did not understand. He gave up pretty quickly and told us it was an infraction but he would let us off and shook our hands before waving us on our way! We even got the copies of our documents back. I must mention that, before this incident, we have been stopped by countless police and military over the last 2 years. They have all been wonderful-curious, helpful and courteous. I have learnt to say in Spanish "Hello-the police/military in your country are wonderful-so friendly-unlike the police in England who are miserable (this bit is untrue of course!)"  We then have lots of handshakes and smiles and get waved on our way!

We are heading next to Puebla and Mexico City, where we have booked tickets for the front row to see Lucha Libre-the famous Mexican wrestling!
 

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Best snorkeling ever in Caye Caulker..Brits and boxing in Belize...wildlife and ruins galore

3/30/2018

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We wanted a few jobs done on Ruby and get her checked out for the last leg of her trip, so we found a Land Rover garage in Central Farm near San Ignacio. The plan was to leave her there for a few days whilst we headed to Belize City to catch a water taxi to the island of Caye Caulker. We found the land rover garage and were greeted by a wonderful Liverpool accent-this was Joyce, who owns the garage with her husband Graham. Graham is a wonderful character from Wales-he has so many stories to tell, about so many things! From the small former drugs plane that is parked outside their garage to the landy he owns that transported Princess Margaret when she visited Belize! Joyce also runs a British shop which she showed us. It was beautifully decorated with all things British and most importantly stocks a variety of goodies we have not seen for a long time such as-YORKSHIRE TEA BAGS (!) , mint sauce, crumpets, Eccles cakes, Flakes, baked beans and many more delights! We went around the shop oooohing and ahhhing and stroking things much to Joyce's amusement!

Graham and Joyce kindly took us for lunch and dropped us off at the bus stop in San Ignacio. We caught the local chicken bus to Belize city, however after a few miles into the journey-the engine started to belch out a load of smoke! "EVACUATE" shouted the driver-so everybody hurried off the bus and stood a safe distance away! A passing taxi driver drove slowly past and in his wonderful Belizean accent shouted "Mon look-the bus is on fire" whilst laughing his head off! Good business for taxis I guess!
Eventually another bus came and everyone piled on. We got to Belize City without further problems and caught a taxi to our hotel for the night. The following day we went down to the marina and caught a small water taxi to Caye Caulker which took about 45 minutes. The sea was beautiful-aqua green and very clear. As we approached the island-some dolphins swam ahead of the boat. Caye Caulker is a small limestone coral island off the coat of Belize, in the Caribbean sea.

The island was wonderful. The motto, which is painted everywhere, is "Go slow"! We did not need telling twice! We sauntered up the street to our small guesthouse and checked in for 3 nights. We could see the sea from the hotel and it was possible to walk around the island in a hour or so as it is tiny. We went to visit Caveman tour company-as we had booked a snorkeling trip for the following day. We met Gerald-the owner`s brother-in -law, who was in charge that day. We started chatting to him and before we knew it-he had bought us a Belkin beer (Belizean beer)! He told us about his long career in the police force, which he was in the process of retiring from. We bought him a beer back and so the story went on for another couple of hours! We then went in search of food-there was so much choice. We settled on the sports bar-overlooking the sea and with our toes in the sand. we had high hopes for the singer, Tsunami Nick, however we left after a few songs as, in our opinion, he did not live up to his name!

The next day we returned to Caveman tours for our all day snorkeling trip. We said hi to our new friend Gerald and met our captain and guides-Harry and George! We love the Belizean names! This was the best snorkeling trip we have ever done. We were a small group of 10 on a medium boat with our 2 guides. We had so many snorkeling stops I lost count-at least 6 or 7! We stopped at the Hol Chan Marine reserve; Shark Ray Alley; Coral gardens and more! Each stop was different from the previous one and so memorable. In Shark Ray alley we swam with tens of nurse sharks who surrounded our boat. Nurse Sharks are OK, they’re slow-moving bottom-dwellers, and usually harmless to humans. However, they can be huge – up to 14 feet (4.3 meters). Plus they have strong jaws filled with thousands of tiny, serrated teeth and they will bite defensively if stepped on or overly bothered! We didn`t bother them and gave them sufficient space!

 We saw various species of sting rays at a number of places. Most stingrays have one or more barbed stingers on the tail, which are used exclusively in self-defence. The stinger may reach a length of around 35 cm (14 in), and its underside has two grooves with venom glands. All I (Jen) could think about when I saw them floating beneath me was the sad end of Steve Irwin-so I had a quick look at them and then swam away quickly!

 We saw the most beautiful coral and colourful fish-our guide took us on a hour and a quarter snorkeling tour of the reef, where we swam after him and he dived down and pointed things out to us. We also saw a massive leatherback  sea turtle-the largest of all turtles. Adults can measure up to 7 feet in total length and weigh up to 1.540lbs in weight! He was splendid. We snorkeled over the shipwreck of a huge barge-admiring the fish and coral which had grown on it.

Another highlight for us was swimming with 3 huge manatees as we have never seen them before. Manatees are large, fully aquatic, mostly herbivorous marine mammals sometimes known as sea cows. They measure up to 4.0 metres (13.1 ft) long, weigh as much as 590 kilograms (1,300 lb), and have paddle-like flippers. Manatees are occasionally called sea cows, as they are slow plant-eaters, peaceful and similar to cows on land. They often graze on water plants in tropical seas. It was wonderful to watch them whilst they grazed and occasionally came up for air!

We finished with a trip to see some sea horses and to feed the Tarpons-massive fish-which can make spectacular leaps into the air! We had to hold a small sardine between our fingers and the tarpon would make an unexpected leap and grab it! I tried 3 times-however dropped the fish in each time in nervous anticipation of the fish leaping out at me!

 We dragged ourselves away from Caye Caulker and returned to San Ignacio to collect Ruby. Graham and his boys had given her a full service, replaced the hub seal and replaced the clutch master cylinder. We took Graham and Joyce for lunch as a thank you and they invited us to a boxing event in the town the following evening! The event was a charity event but had professional boxers there as well as amateurs. Well what a great night! We had the best seats in the house-eye to eye with the boxers in the ring, on the front row. We loved the local crowd who really got into it-particularly when a Belizean was fighting! There were boxers from Mexico, Guatemala and Belize fighting-they were all tough wiry little things who gave it their all! My favourite fighters were the Mexicans who just did not give up. One fight, between 2 professional boxers-a Mexican and Belizean went the full 4 rounds. The Belizean boxer kept backing away and the Mexican boxer was doing all the work. We were shouting and hollering and generally supported the tough little Mexican boxer (the rest of the crowd the Belizean boxer!). It was pretty obvious to us all that the Mexican had won on points BUT the judges declared it a draw! Well, that was not fair. Even the Belizeans were laughing in disbelief! I leapt out of my seat and began to boo VERY LOUDLY and gave the thumbs down sign to the referee and chanted "Mexico Mexico"!Gav worriedly said "Jen-remember the crowd are Belizeans". "But it is not fair" I yelled between my boos!

Before we left San Ignacio we visited some more Mayan ruins of  Cahal Pech-the site was a palatial, hilltop home for an elite Maya family. We spent an hour or so admiring the structures and the views from the hill top.

We left San Ignacio ,first saying goodbye to our new friends Graham and Joyce at the garage, and made a stop at the Belize zoo-the slogan for which is "welcome to the best little zoo in the world"! The Belize Zoo was started in 1983, as a last ditch effort to provide a home for a collection of wild animals which had been used in making documentary films about tropical forests. Shortly after the backyard "zoo" began, it was quickly realized that its Belizean visitors were unfamiliar with the different species of wildlife which shared their country. This very aspect fomented the commitment to develop the little zoo into a dynamic wildlife education center. Today, The Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre exhibits over 175 animals, representing over 45 native species. The Zoo keeps animals which were orphaned, rescued, born at the zoo, rehabilitated animals, or sent to The Belize Zoo as donations from other zoological institutions. The Belize Zoo and Tropical Education Centre believes that by bringing the people of Belize closer to the animals which are their natural heritage, they will feel proud of these special resources, and want to protect them for future generations.

 We loved it here. The zoo was beautifully laid out in the jungle and it was possible to see the animals up close. The signs for each of the animal enclosures were charming, funny and informative. We saw 5 species of wild cats including the jaguar, Ocelot and puma; Belize`s national animal-the Tapir; monkeys and wonderful birds including toucans, parrot and eagles.

However, the animal encounters had not finished for the day. We drove to the community monkey sanctuary, where we were going to camp for the night. As we pulled up, a tour of only 2 others were about to set off around part of the sanctuary so we joined then. This was a wonderful experience. The guide told us all about the protection of the wild monkeys and then he called them down. We got the chance to feed two of them, including a mother. We held some small pieces of banana in our hands and they climbed down, took hold of our hand with their tiny fingers and gently ate the banana from our hand. We did this individually to each monkey. It was amazing to feel their tiny soft hands and watch them as they literally stared into your eyes before eating the banana.  Gav said they recognised a kindred spirit in me! Haha! We also saw iguanas in the trees and a crocodile floating down the river! What an excellent day for wildlife! We camped at the sanctuary overnight and were a mixture of amused and scared the next morning as the camp site owners rushed to check the toilet for snakes before we used them!

Our final stop in Belize was Orange Walk, near to the Maya site of Lamanai. We camped for 2 nights at a fab place on the banks of a river, full of crocodiles! We were parked literally on the edge of the river and we loved looking out for wildlife, and from the roof tent. Mr P was the owner, a great man, who does a lot for the community-which is very poor. He told us about the crocs, the boa constrictors and other delights that frequent the waters and his lodge! He got some raw chicken and threw it on the edge of the water by the bank. We watched in awe as up to 3 crocodiles, circled and eventually came for the food. Gav and I were sitting right next to the bank tentatively watching a croc as it inched its way towards the food. Suddenly there was a huge commotion and splash. I thought it was making a dash for us, as we have lots more meat on us than chicken(!) and I legged it to the lodge where others were watching. In hot pursuit was Gav! We gave them a good laugh and we think the crocs had actually spooked themselves and the splashing was them going back under the water.

We took a boat for the 38 mile journey down the river to the Maya ruins at Lamanai. This was our first land based group tour and with hindsight, we wished we had driven it ourselves as there were too many people on the boat and for the tour of the ruins. We enjoyed the boat ride through the jungle-spotting a baby croc, some birds and bats. Lamanai was once a major City of the Maya civilization and was renowned for its exceptionally long occupation spanning 3 millenia. The vast majority of the site remained unexcavated until the mid-1970s. Archaeological work has concentrated on the investigation and restoration of the larger structures, most notably the Mask Temple, Jaguar Temple and High Temple.The summit of this latter structure gave us a wonderful view across the surrounding jungle to a nearby lagoon. The guide was excellent, even though we were a  huge group, and he took us around the main temples and sites.

Our time in Belize sadly came to an end.  We must start our journey North, back through Mexico, with a shipping date for Ruby in the USA in mind. We both love Belize and would highly recommend it. The scenery is stunning-lush and green. The wildlife is wonderful. The people are just brilliant-kind, funny, charming, helpful- even in the face of huge poverty. We should never forget how very privileged we are to travel in other people`s countries and share their resources. We should always travel with humility, humbleness and humanity. Sadly, some people have forgotten that as they swan around in their big vehicles, judging the wonderful people from the countries we are guests of. You might be able to tell that my cage has been rattled. Maybe more on that another time.

We crossed the border at Corozal into Chetumal. We paid our Belizean exit fee of 40 BZ each, had our passports stamped out of the country, then had Ruby stamped out of the country. We drove into Mexico-filled in our visitor card, paid the fee of about 533 pesos each and went through customs. We already have the temporary import permit for Ruby from last time and it is still valid, so one less task  this time.

We will start in Yucatan and slowly head North, going to places we did not visit on our way South. We have approximately 6 weeks before we need to take Ruby for shipping and 8 weeks before we fly home! Where has the time gone?!

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Rumble in the jungle.....adios Guatemala....you`d better Belize it baby!

3/22/2018

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We spent a night in Coban, before setting off for the mountainous jungle town of Lanquin-then on a further 11km to Semuc Champey. The scenery was spectacular, the lush jungle greenery spread across the mountains, and narrow roads with steep drops. Semuc is described as one of the most difficult places to get to in Guatemala and the last 11km from Lanquin were certainly an adventure-with steep ups and downs, off-road, on a single track. Ruby went into low range and handled herself brilliantly-though we were relieved to reach our camp spot at Posada Las Marias- at the bottom of a very steep hill! It was a beautiful location -in the middle of the jungle with a turquoise river flowing in front of it.

Semuc Champey means “where the river hides under the earth” in Q’eqchi’, and  is a natural limestone bridge about 300 meters wide under which passes the Cahabòn River. At the top of the bridge is a series of stepped natural infinity pools filled with turquoise water where locals and visitors can dip in for a relaxing swim. We got up early the next morning and hiked the fairly short steep path through the jungle to the mirador. From here we had our first glimpse of the Semuc pools and they were spectacular. We hiked down to the pools and got straight in as we were hot and sweaty from the heat of the jungle. The water was cool, crystal clear and very refreshing!

We spent about half a day in Semuc and then returned to our camp spot to escape the heat. The following day-we made the challenging, steep climb back to Coban where we were due to spend the night before moving on to Flores. The roads in Guatemala have been pretty poor-with numerous pot holes-some of them massive! 8 miles into the journey-we drove over a pothole and Ruby started to judder! We pulled over and Gav had a look underneath. We had cracked the radius arm axle bracket, so we turned around and slowly headed back towards Coban to look for a garage. We found a small place that did soldering and the young mechanic soldered a piece of metal onto the axle and bracket for a few dollars! There were a few giggly young mechanics there who were drinking beer and watching the work been done on Ruby. One of them soldered a piece of metal for the repair and the sparks were flying everywhere-we had to jump out of the way! No safety equipment here!

 After another night in Coban, we headed to San Miguel, just across the Lake from Flores. Flores is an island on Lago Petén Itzá, and is a pretty colonial town. We had wonderful views of the island from our hostel on the shore of the lake, in San Miguel.
After a couple of nights here, we caught the car ferry across the lake and carried on to the Tikal national park. We camped in the jungle and what a treat that was. We heard all the wonderful noises of the birds and animals-particularly the howler monkeys, as the jungle awoke early in the morning.

Tikal is a large archeological site. During the Classic Period it was one of the largest and most important of the Mayan cities. Today it's one of the most fascinating and enjoyable of the Mayan sites to visit, largely due to its remoteness, but also its jungle setting. Some of the temples are still being uncovered, and you can watch archaeologists busy at work. It was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1971. Many beautiful buildings have been uncovered and many more wait to be discovered. Amongst the many Maya sites in Central America, Tikal is perhaps the most breathtaking because of the scattered impressive buildings which have been restored in an area with many more ruined buildings still enveloped by the jungle. The sight of the temples poking through the canopy is amazing. You can climb to the top of a few of the temples and get panoramic views from above the tree tops.

We got up early and spent a few hours at Tikal in the morning-beating a lot of the crowds. We loved walking through the jungle and hearing the trees rustling-looking up and spotting spider monkeys swinging through the trees. Later we heard the guttural roar of the howler monkeys and spotted them in the trees. As their name suggests, vocal communication forms an important part of their behaviour. Group males generally call at dawn and dusk, as well as interspersed times throughout the day. The main vocals consist of loud, deep guttural growls or "howls". Howler monkeys are widely considered to be the loudest land animal. According to Guinness Book of World Records, their vocalizations can be heard clearly for 3 mi (4.8 km). The function of howling is thought to relate to intergroup spacing and territory protection, as well as possibly to guarding their mates. We also heard their howls very early in the morning from our roof tent, an eerie but amazing sound!

We enjoyed seeing all of the temples-both the restored ones and those still covered by the growth of the jungle. We climbed many of them and by mid day-were exhausted particularly because it was so hot and humid. We returned to camp where we rested for a few hours-before returning to the park late afternoon. By this time-it had cooled a little and most of the crowds had left. This is the first of our Mayan ruins-and we have many more to come!

After one more night camping in the jungle-we headed the short journey to the Guatemala-Belize border (Melchor de Mencos). We have loved our time in Guatemala-it is a colourful, vibrant, incredibly friendly country-in spite of all its hardships and we loved the landscapes and the wonderful people. The crossing into Belize was very straightforward. We went to immigration and were stamped out of Guatemala and then to customs-where we handed in our temporary import sticker for Ruby. Stepping over the border into Belize was like stepping into the Caribbean. As a former British colony, English is the language spoken, and the Queen`s head adorns the money! We received our stamp at immigration and headed across the room to customs. We met a wonderful customs official who told us about Prince Harry`s visit in 2012 (and there is a painted union jack and sign saying "welcome Prince Harry" on the wall). We received our temporary import paperwork for Ruby and headed a few hundred metres away to buy car insurance.

Our first stop for a couple of nights was San Ignacio, on the banks of the Macal river. We were in time for the bustling farmer`s market, selling wonderful juicy produce and we took a wander through town, noticing the relaxed Caribbean vibe! We visited the Mayan ruins at Xunantunich-near the border, by catching a shared taxi, taking a hand cranked ferry across the river and walking about a mile uphill to the site. We really enjoyed a couple of hours here-it is a lot less touristy than Tikal and we shared the site with only a few groups of people.

Our next stop is Caye Caulker, a Caribbean island off the coast of Belize City. We will catch a boat there. Ruby, meanwhile, is booked in for some TLC at a land rover garage near San Ignacio!
 
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Gorgeous Guatemala.......Volcanoes and lakes...........getting a job!

3/9/2018

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We spent a couple of days heading South towards the Mexico-Guatemala border. The night before the border crossing , we stayed in a small hotel in the City of Tapachula, so we could get an early start the next day. We crossed into Guatemala at the Ciudad Hidalgo-Tecan Uman border and it was very straightforward. We did not cancel our temporary vehicle permit because we will be returning through Mexico at a later date. We went to immigration, handed in our tourist cards and were stamped out of Mexico. We paid 17 pesos to drive across a long bridge and then we were on the Guatemalan side. Our passports were stamped at immigration and we filled some paperwork in for Ruby. We headed to customs, paid 160 Quetzals (Guatemalan currency) and were issued a temporary vehicle permit for Guatemala.

Our first stop was Quetzaltenango, a city in Guatemala`s highlands, with a back drop of volcanoes. This was our first experience of Guatemalan roads and it took a few hours to go a short distance due to the potholes and hills! Our first impressions of Guatemala were good-the people were very friendly and it was such a colourful place-particularly the  locals in their wonderful  woven traditional dress. As we climbed higher-the temperature cooled which was a welcome relief after the hot and humid climate on the Pacific coast of  Mexico. We only spent one night in Quetzaltenango so didn`t fully get the chance to explore it, before heading to our next destination-Lake Atitlan.

One of the things we spotted as soon as we entered Guatemala, speeding along the roads and noisily beeping their horns, are the colourful chicken buses. When North American school buses reach the age of ten years or 150,000 miles, they are sold at auction. Many of these buses are bought and driven down through Mexico to Guatemala where they are prepared for their second lives. And wow, what a second life they have! In contrast to their modest first lives as yellow buses carting children to school, their second lives are spent stuffed with people, topped with roof racks full of cargo, and driving at high speeds over mountain passes. The old yellow paint is covered with colourful murals and praises to Jesus. One guide describes them as "dressed like a Vegas showgirl" which sums up these colourful buses perfectly! They are called chicken buses because they squash people into them like chickens and chickens are sometimes taken on to them! With the high-speed of the chicken bus and driving techniques of the driver such as overtaking around a blind corner on a narrow road on the top of a hill, a ride on them can be quite an adventure! They also regularly belch out thick black smoke-not pleasant when you are driving behind them! Ruby loved them-and has decided that she needs a paint job when she gets home so she too, can look like a Vegas showgirl!

The roads to Atitlan were better than the previous day-until we began the long winding descent downhill to Panajachel on the North East shore of Lake Atitlan. We could smell the burning of Ruby`s brakes as we inched our way down, trying not to career out of control! We headed around a steep corner and both shrieked as we saw a car and 2 motorcycles had stopped in the middle of the road. Gav was pressing the real brakes and I was pressing the imaginary brakes as we headed closer to the back of the motorcycles! We stopped with millimetres to spare and both heaved a huge sigh of relief, as Ruby juddered to a halt-as if to say-what`s the problem?!

We based ourselves at Panajachel for 5 days, on the shores of Lake Atitlan. Lake Atitlan is a body of water in a massive volcanic crater in Guatemala’s southwestern highlands. Ringed by steep, verdant hills, it’s known for its Mayan villages and volcanoes with striking pointed cones. It was a beautiful place-particularly the 3 distinctive volcanoes around the lake-Atitlan, Toliman and San Pedro. The busy town of Panajachel, where vendors sell traditional textiles, is a popular gateway to the lake. We really enjoyed our time here. We took a minibus to the nearby Sunday market at Chichicastenango, a charming, traditional and authentic traditional Mayan town, the market being one of the best known in Central America. It was probably our favourite market of the trip so far, locals travel from villages throughout the countryside and gather at this market to sell their beautiful handicrafts, colourful textiles, fresh produce, traditional clothing and more at this bustling and vibrant local market. The market was HUGE and it took over the entire central area of town. The small cobblestone streets had been transformed into narrow aisles and hundreds of vendors lined the streets on both sides, selling a variety of traditional Mayan handicrafts and textiles. The streets also featured colourfully painted colonial buildings. We stumbled upon the Saint Tomas church in the middle of the market-a beautiful white building with many people on the steps outside with incense and flowers-creating a colouful, noisy atmosphere. We were exhausted after half a day's shopping and returned to Panajachal with a few souvenirs!

Atitlan was a beautiful lake, with many small villages surrounding its shores. The best way to travel between them was by small boat. We visited the villages of San Pedro and San Marcos-both in stunning locations, with very touristy parts and then wonderful local parts if you walked out away from the dock. To be honest we found the tourist parts a bit pretentious, though it might just be our age! In San Marcos, there were loads of bare footed Westerners, and people strumming away on their guitars, singing about coffee and chocolate! Not our cup of tea!

We also took one of the wonderful, gaudy chicken buses to the town of Tonala for market day-and enjoyed the short ride up the mountain to a local market, with hardy any tourists. At the high elevation-it had a great view of the lake and one of the volcanoes.

On the day of departure from Atitlan, we set off at 7am from Panajachel, to make the long, steep, windy climb back up the hill. We wanted to avoid the traffic-particularly because various vehicles have a tendency to stop just when you have built up some momentum-and Ruby is a large, heavy lass! (I said Ruby is, not Jen!) We put Ruby into low gear and she slowly but surely chugged her way to the top! Our next destination was Antigua city in the central highlands of Guatemala, famous for its well-preserved Spanish Baroque -influenced architecture as well as a number of ruins of colonial churches. We spent a wonderful few days there. We stayed in a casa on the edge of town. It had a beautiful roof terrace with views of the 3 large volcanoes that dominate the skyline around Antigua-Volcan de Agua, Fuego and Acatenango. Fuego is famous for being almost constantly active at a low level. Steam and gas explode daily from its top, a larger eruption occurred in September 2012. As soon as we went onto the terrace-Fuego put on a show and belched a huge cloud of smoke! We also saw it at night-when you could see the red larva at the tip.

We spent a few days wandering the streets of Antigua-visiting its beautiful churches and ruins. We sat in the main square-Parque Central-and watched the people enjoying life. We also had a proper Sunday roast dinner here at a British pub we found-it was amazing and I had brussels sprouts for the first time in ages!

We went on a day trip to another active volcano-Pacaya. After being dormant for a century, it erupted violently in 1965 and has been erupting continuously since then. We hiked continuously uphill for about an hour and a half--coming out into a clearing where it was possible to see the summit of Pacaya (you are not allowed up to the summit due to the active status) and other lovely views. It was a long slog up, given we have not properly exercised for a  while and have been partaking in far too many tacos! A number of guys on horseback follow you up the hill, making eye contact with you as you slowly make your way red faced, puffing and panting, and say "you want a taxi?"! It was funny at first but by the end, it felt like they were trying to psyche me out! Them-"madam-you need a taxi-last chance" me-"I am determined to walk this bloody hill if it kills me-no gracias"! As I staggered on! We loved the views from the top and seeing steam come out of the crater. We descended a little to a vast area where the floor is made of solidified lava. Here we toasted marshmallows in the rocks-the ground was that hot in parts! We descended very quickly (about 45 minutes) and headed back to Antigua.

I (Jen) had an important date in Guatemala City. A job interview via skype with England! I had been preparing for a few weeks, whenever I got the chance, in the most varied circumstances ever! I prepped through earthquakes in Mexico, with active volcanoes blowing outside the window in Guatemala and through the noise that is Mexico and Central America! We booked into a great business hotel in Guatemala City and paid for a small meeting room and extra good wifi. It was a strange experience being interviewed via skype and giving a presentation, however the good news is-I got the job! I will start when I return home at the end of May and am delighted to be going back to my previous place of work.

Feeling happy, we moved on for the longish drive to Coban, where we will spend a night before the short but tricky drive to Semuc Champey.
 

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Magical Morelia.........millions of monarchs.......Pals in Pazcuaro.......Along the coast to Guatemala

2/17/2018

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We headed 180 miles to Morelia from Guadalajara, making reasonably good time due to the toll roads or cuotas as they are called here.  Whilst we have paid various road tolls throughout South America, nothing quite prepared us for the frequency and price of the toll roads here in Mexico! Jen can often be heard mumbling "daylight robbery" as she pays the toll and smiles sweetly (through slightly gritted teeth) at the toll booth attendant! However, the toll roads are renowned for being safe and the roads are very good-so it is our choice to use them.

The Historic Centre of Morelia is located in central Mexico, at the foot of the Sierra Madre Occidental mountain range and near the agricultural valley of Morelia-Querendaro. Morelia is the capital of the state of Michocoan and it is a registered UNESCO World Heritage site. With a consistent colonial-style throughout, Morelia is one of the most beautiful cities in Mexico. It is not really on the well-trodden path of the leisure tourists and so you can walk around in comfort without bumping into the bermuda shorts and flip flops crowds!

More than 200 historic buildings, all in the region's characteristic pink stone, reflect the town's architectural history. Morelia was the birthplace of several important personalities of independent Mexico and has played a major role in the country's history.  Our favourite building was the stunning pink stone Cathedral in the centre of town, which was so beautifully lit at night. It was just as beautiful inside with a monumental organ, imported from Germany in 1905, which was the largest organ in the Western Hemisphere at the time. It consists of 4600 flutes or pipes!

We did 2 self guided walking tours around the City-visiting the beautiful pink buildings and learning about the history. It was another pair of relics, however, that made our stay in Morelia extra special-the arrival of Fi and Ken, who we had first met in Mazatlan. We just hit it off so well with these two, all 3 of us Brits teasing the American Ken, for his pronunciation of words such as "route" (he says rowt); "leisure" (he says leesure) and so many more! We shared lots of laughs and experiences with Fi and Ken over the next few days.

We decided to take a tour from Morelia to the El Rosario butterfly reserve to see the remarkable sight of the millions of monarch butterflies who arguably, take the title of the world`s greatest travellers. As winter arrives in the United States and Canada millions upon millions of these beautiful orange and black butterflies begin a remarkable migration that sees them fluttering south 2000km to central Mexico where they winter in the dense fir forests that cover the high mountain slopes-(just like loads of Americans and Canadians we have met in Mexico-although  they head to the beaches!) Visiting their Mexican mountain retreat is one of the world’s most astounding wildlife experiences. The migrating butterflies begin their journey in early-October, arriving in the mountains of central Mexico in mid- to late November. Traveling at an average speed of 12 mph (but sometimes going up to 30 mph), the monarchs cover about 80 miles a day. They can fly at heights of up to 2 miles. They travel an average of 1800 miles from the United States and Canada to the forests in Michoacan where they spend the winter before embarking on their return journey. Numbers peak between mid-December and the end of February when, in good years, there can be tens of millions of them present. By mid-March the butterflies are starting to return northwards to the US and Canada.

Adult monarch butterflies live for only around a month so no one butterfly ever makes the entire circular migration from North America to Mexico and back again. Instead, it takes three generations of spring-born butterflies to complete the northern leg of the migration from Mexico back to the US-Canada border. The fourth generation though is a ‘super-generation’, which lives eight to ten times longer than normal. It’s these butterflies which, each autumn, leave the Great Lakes area and fly south to Mexico. We took the tour with Fi and Ken, alongside a lovely Mexican couple and their baby. Our driver was a little eccentric, to say the least-regaling us with tales of UFO`s, healing by light and that aliens are amongst us etc! We were very British and listened politely, smiling and nodding at the appropriate moments!

It took just over 3 hours to get to the reserve and then we walked uphill for 45 minutes to reach the spot where the butterflies congregated. It was truly remarkable to see millions of beautiful butterflies weighing down the branches of trees as they huddled together and almost turning the sky black as they flew in their millions. When everyone was quiet, all you could hear was the gentle flapping of their tiny wings. It can get very cold at the high altitudes and on cold mornings and evenings the butterflies huddle together for warmth, but when the sun filters through the trees and warms the butterflies, they take to the skies in enormous numbers. We stood and watched in awe for almost an hour, before descending and returning back to Morelia.

That evening we went to the Temple and ex-convent of San Francisco, for a light and colour show called mapping. This consists of projecting moving images on real surfaces, in this case on the facade of the San Francisco Temple, to achieve an artistic effect in 3D. These projections are synchronized with music, resulting in a wonderful show. The following day we said farewell (for now) to Fi and Ken. That evening, Gav and I waited patiently in front of the Cathedral with thousands of Mexican families, to watch the brilliant firework show in front of the magnificent cathedral. It was a great atmosphere, with families eagerly awaiting the show and lots of sellers hawking their wares such as candy floss, glow in the dark trinkets and all sorts of other stuff. Whilst only short, it was a great firework display, in time to music.

Morelia was our favourite City so far in Mexico and is up there as one of the favourites of our whole trip. After almost a week there, we packed up and headed to Patzcuaro, another beautiful town sitting on the edge of Lake Patzcuaro. Here we reunited with Fi and Ken and also Roque and Sharon, a wonderful couple from the USA who we met a few months ago in Death Valley. These two have retired and are slowly heading to Panama (where Roque is from) to see if they want to resettle there. They have travelled through the USA, including Alaska, Canada and Mexico for around 13 months with a caravan stuffed full of their possessions for their new life in Panama! We all camped at a ranch on a hill overlooking Patzcuaro and the beautiful lake. There was a variety of animals parading past our camp spot, including horses, turkeys, sheep, dogs, hens and donkeys! We explored Patzcuaro, really enjoying its huge plazas and beautiful buildings. In the evenings-we taught Fi and Ken the 2 cards games we had learnt whilst working on the date farm at China Ranch. We had a great laugh and all particularly enjoyed teasing Ken when he lost with childish signs of "LOSER"!

Moving back to thePacific Coast, we camped for 2 nights at a small campsite on the beach 30 km South of Zihuatanejo. We had been in the mountains for a couple of weeks enjoying warm but bearable temperatures. Back on the coast it was very hot and humid and we spent the day lying on hammocks under a huge palapa, with Fi, Ken, Roque and Sharon.  From our hammocks-we spotted whales although it was almost too hot to fetch our binoculars to take a proper look! After a farewell dinner in the local restaurant which cost us the princely sum of £14 for food and drinks for 6 of us, we all headed our separate ways-hoping to meet up again in a month or so`s time in Yucatan.

Our next stop was Puerto Escondido and we stayed a cabana overlooking Zicatela beach, as we were simply too hot to camp in Ruby! We wandered down to Zicatela beach, which hosts major surfing competitions and down to the Playa Principal-which was our favourite as it was full of local people enjoying the sea and fisherman selling their catch. We had our tea (dinner not a cup of tea!) in a restaurant overlooking the beach and walked slowly back to the cabana via a street market selling all sorts of wonder colourful stuff!

After Escondido, we headed the short distance to Huatulco and the town of Santa Cruz. This region is known for its 9 beautiful bays of white sandy beaches. We headed to Playa Entrega to snorkel, expecting only a few people to be there as it was mid week. As we drove up, there were hundreds of cars and people, bands, police etc. What on earth was going on-was it a public holiday we were not aware of? We asked and were told by a wonderful, smiley restaurant owner "it`s the beach`s birthday"! Hence the crowds, bands etc! We spent a lovely few hours snorkeling and people watching. There was also the obligatory very loud music and competitions for swimming, football and volleyball.

We have also experienced another fairly big earthquake measuring 7.2.We were in an outdoor restaurant when the earth literally starting to shake beneath us and everything started moving around! It did not put Gav and I off our food, however!
After here we are heading for the Guatemalan border-which is about 500 miles away. Central America-here we come!
 
 
 
 

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Making friends in Mazatlan.....Tasting in Tequila.......Gorgeous Guadalajara

1/30/2018

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The ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan took about 13 hours and after disembarking, we headed for our campsite near the beach, just outside of the Centro Historico. Mazatlan is a Mexican resort town along the Pacific, with a 21km malecon (boardwalk) along the sea front-which was full of people walking, and statues and installations for the carnival in February. We spent a day wandering around the central old town district- where we enjoyed the mercado (market) selling wonderful fresh produce and  many local food stalls. The old town was beautiful-with its historic square, cathedral and buildings-which were beautifully lit at night. Wandering down to the sea front-we saw the cliff divers-who dive off  45 foot rocks into shallow water about 5 to 6 feet deep, surrounded by jagged rocks! They wait for a crowd to gather before they dive-and who can blame them for wanting maximum tips for putting their lives in danger each time they dive. They also wait for a large wave to come in before executing the perfect dive, as this makes the water a little deeper.

 We met a wonderful  Englishman called Michael, who invited us to his house in the historical district that evening. We had a great time in his beautiful home-which had 3 levels of outside terrace overlooking the other buildings-drinking margaritas and eating the most wonderful shrimp pasta. Time flew by and before we knew it-we were wandering the streets of Mazatlan looking for a taxi at midnight (that`s really late for us!) When we got back to the campsite-the gates were locked and we had visions of having to scale the walls, until thankfully we managed to rouse the owner who let us in!

We met some great people on the campsite-in particular Marj and Dave (in their late 70s and early 80s) from Vancouver island, who were travelling in a small van with their cat and who had explored Mexico during their Winters for the last 39 years.  Fi and Ken were a Brit and US combo-who had previously travelled extensively by bike, but were now in a ford camper. These two were great fun and we shared a lot of stories and laughs with them. We hope to see them again in Mexico, as we are all heading South. They are looking for somewhere to relocate either in North, Central or South America.

Gav did some checks underneath Ruby and found that  the universal joint (UJ) was worn on the front prop shaft. He took the prop shaft off and we hopped in a taxi to a mechanics who used our spare parts to replace it for us.

After Mazatlan, we headed for the fishing village of San Blas. This was a stopover before heading into the mountains towards Guadalajara, however we also wanted to do a boat tour through the mangrove marshes to see birds, crocodiles and turtles. At the edge of town was a viewing point where tens of crocodiles, large and small, were taking a break and basking in the sunshine. We also found the embarkation point for the boat tours-which we arranged to do at 7am the following day.  We camped beneath some coconut trees, taking care not to position the roof tent directly below the ripe coconuts. However, whilst Gav was cooking, I heard a big "thump "and a big Yorkshire voice say" bloody hell, I was nearly hit by a coconut"! We got up early from our campsite and drove to the meeting point for our boat trip, however no one was there! We waited half an hour and there was no sign of life, so we decided to move on rather than stay another night, particularly as this place was full of jejenes (tiny biting sand flies) which manage to bite you in numerous places, even though you are smothered in repellent!

 It  has been great to drive in Mexico so far, except for the numerous speed bumps (called topes) which are everywhere and range from small to huge. As we approach the topes, I (Jen) starts to yell "TOPES TOPES TOPES" and Gav hopefully slows down. If we don`t see them, as they are not always obvious, we almost take off as we go over them at speed (well the speed of an old landy!)

We stopped for a night in the town of Tequila , known for its production of the famous spirit. Near the foot of the Tequila Volcano, the outskirts of town are dotted with fields of blue agave, the liquor's main ingredient. The production process can be observed at several distilleries in town, all of them  offering tours and tastings. The popularity of the drink and the history behind it has made the town and the area surrounding it a World Heritage site. It was also named a "Pueblo Magico" (Magical Town) in 2003 by the Mexican federal government, because of its culture and historical interest. It was a lovely little town-with an attractive main square dominated by its beautiful stone church, where many people come to sit, eat or listen to music from the street performers. There are many cobblestone side streets and attractive stone buildings.

The Toltex Indians discovered tequila as a drink more than 200 years ago. Agave plants thrive in Tequila, where conditions such as altitude and climate are perfect for its growth. It takes the agave plant 8 to 10 years to mature and be ready for harvesting and distilling. Agave is harvested in the traditional way in a very labour intensive manner. The worker, called a jimador, uses a special tool, like a sharp, pointed shovel to remove the spikes from the agave and extract the heart of the plant. The heart of the plant, with the spines removed resembles a pineapple and is called a piña. To actually make the tequila, the green outer leaves are sliced off, leaving the large agave "pinas" or pineapples to be processed. The average worker can prepare only 200 plants a day because of the intense heat and the difficulty of the procedure. The white creamy core contains the juice necessary for the preparation of tequila. One plant can produce 5 bottles of tequila.

We went on a great tour at the Jose Cuervo distillery, called La Rojena. This is oldest distillery and the tour showed us the agave hearts being chopped up and taken to the ovens, the labs where the tequila is tested to be sure that it meets the factory's strict standards, and the barrels where the spirit is aged; up to one year for reposado tequila, up to five years for añejo and up to eight years for the special product.  It was really interesting and peppered with small samples of various tequilas. We had also booked a private tasting for the end of the tour and headed into the tasting room with our guide. We know nothing about tasting-so were eager to learn, whilst trying desperately not to look out of our depth as we swilled the tequila around the bottom of the glass and sniffed it! We had 3 glasses of tequila to taste and then a special one which was very old and expensive! The 3 glasses contained: white tequila, which spends 15 days in stainless steel tanks before bottling; a rested tequila, left for at least 2 months in wooden barrels and an aged tequila which is left for at least a year in wooden barrels. By the time we got to glass 4-my memory fails me so I guess it was very old and very special!!

Well what a laugh we had! We first had to swish it around the bottom of the glass to see the colour and the body. Then we had to sniff it-both at the top and bottom of the glass. Finally we sipped it-holding it in our mouths for 3 seconds, inhaling, swallowing and then exhaling quickly, for the maximum taste. I (Jen) was trying very hard to appear cultured, so didn`t finish all the tequila in each glass, leaving some in the glass ,before moving on to the next. Very dignified. All was going well, or so I thought, until Gavin told me later that by glass 3 I had my chin in the glass whilst my nose was elsewhere sniffing into the thin air! By glass 4, I had decided not to leave a drop-knocked back the whole glass- before finishing Gavin`s and then going back to the previous 3 glasses and finishing off every drop!

We also saw some cultural dancers called Danza De Los Voladores (Dance of the flyers). The ritual consists of dance and the climbing of a 30-meter pole from which the dancers then launch themselves tied with ropes by their feet, descending to the ground, upside down whilst playing instruments! Brilliant!

Our next stop was Guadalajara, Mexico`s second largest city. We visited  the city’s historic centre and its most obvious attractions, such as the twin-towered cathedral and the labyrinthine Mercado San Juan de Dios, Latin America’s largest indoor market. The stately Hospicio Cabanas,a former orphanage with fiery murals by  Jose Clemente Orozco, is Unesco-listed and we were highly impressed by the artwork on the ceiling and walls. We spent an afternoon in the suburb of Tonala, sampling the delights of its weekly market. On the Sunday, we did a wonderful self guided walking tour which took us past lots of street art and parks, where people were undertaking all sorts of activities such as hula hooping, yoga, acrobatics, cycling, skipping etc. On Sundays, the major streets are closed for a period to cars and there are literally thousands of people cycling, jogging, skating, skateboarding or on scooters along the streets. They call it recreational Sunday and it was brilliant to wander among the local families who were so enjoying their day. We enjoyed a local specialty in Guadalajara -torta ahogada -a sandwich bathed in spicy sauce, filled with deep fried pork and fresh onions) and it was delicious!

Next we are heading towards Morelia and the butterfly sanctuary of El Rosario.
 
 
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Fishing in Cabo.............Releasing baby turtles in Todo.............Adios Baja

1/20/2018

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We spent 5 days in Los Cabos and whilst it was the most touristy place we had  visited in Baja, we had a really good time here. We found two wonderful taco places to eat at, one was at a lovely lady`s tiny shed in her front yard-where she sold the most wonderful variety of meat tacos for about 50 pence each! The other sold delicious fish tacos-possibly the best we have tasted in Baja! We have loved Mexican food so far and I (Jen) have been working my way through the hot sauces and salsas-sometimes at a cost!

We spent a day at our favourite beach-Playa Maria-where we snorkeled and enjoyed watching the procession of small boat tours who anchored near the beach for their clients to snorkel, paddleboard and kayak. We also took our binoculars and saw a number of humpback whales blowing and breaching. It has been common to see whales every day from our beach camp spots, and we never tire of watching them!

We went to the cinema and watched The Greatest Showman, which we really enjoyed in our luxury seats where we were almost lying horizontally! We really enjoy doing normal things, such as the cinema, the longer we have been travelling.

We also hired a small boat (panga) and a captain for 5 hours and did a fishing trip, something that Gavin has been waiting for, for a long time! It did not disappoint! We caught the local bus down to the marina at 6am, meeting our captain, Jose, at 6.30pm. We boarded our boat and first stop was for fuel and for live bait! We were one of many fishing boats heading out from the harbour into the beautiful sunrise, past the iconic land`s end and arch at Cabo San Lucas. The arch is a distinctive rock formation at the southern tip of Cabo San Lucas, which is itself the extreme southern end of Mexico`s Baja Peninsula. Here the Pacific Ocean becomes the Gulf of California.

 We had 4 fishing rods between us, cast out of the boat as we were sailing along and it was not too long before I  noticed a twitch on the rod and yelled" I think we`ve caught a fish". Gav reeled the first one in-a dorado-and it was the smallest of the 8 we caught in total, so we put it back in. A short time later all hell broke loose as 2 of the rods were bending and the reels were whizzing around! It was my turn to reel it in, I stood up to begin the process and nearly toppled overboard! The captain got me a harness which I  put the end of the rod in and I sat down whilst frantically reeling the fish in. It was massive-about 18 pounds worth, and I had to get Gav and the captain to pull it onto the boat. Then a second came in, and a third and a fourth and by the end of the trip we had caught 8! It was really exciting but very tiring and Gav told me at one stage I was so slow reeling it in that I looked comical! On the way back to the marina, we were lucky enough to see a whale breaching (coming right out of the water) fairly close to the boat and the captain waited for a while so we could watch it blowing and swimming.

Jose asked us how many fish we wanted to keep and we said 2, which he filleted for us-so much fish! He was delighted to take the rest and we also gave him a good tip-as he had been captain fantastic! We proudly took our fish to a nearby restaurant and asked them to cook it for us, which they did in 3 ways.It was delicious-one was lightly battered with beer batter, one was in mango sauce and the other with lime. It was truly the best fish we have tasted this trip and made even better by the fact we had caught it about 2 hours previously! We gave away some more fish to the staff in the restaurant as we had so much of it!

After Cabo we headed to Todo Santos,  a small coastal town at the foothills of the Sierra de la Laguna Mountains, on the Pacific coast side of the peninsula. It  is located very near the Tropic of Cancer, which we crossed. Handicraft shops, art galleries featuring landscape paintings of local scenes, upscale restaurants, boutique hotels and restored colonial buildings have contributed to the gentrification and redevelopment of the town.  We camped on the beautiful beach at Las Playitas. We had heard about the daily release of baby turtles by a voluntary organization, who incubated them in a greenhouse on the beach during Winter. Three species of Sea Turtle (Leatherback, Olive Ridley and Black) nest on the beaches of Todos Santos.

Sea Turtle nests rely on the heat of the sand for incubation, and when sand temperatures drop below 26° celcius for any part of the incubation period, malformations and death can occur in the developing turtles.  This is where the Incubation Greenhouse came in!  All nests that are laid after October 16 are relocated into the Incubation Greenhouse where average sand temperatures are 29°celcius. Hatchlings incubated inside the greenhouse are healthy, vigorous, and lack the deformities that are common in fall and winter nests.  The incidence of flipper deformations, crooked beaks, blindness and dwarfism is significantly decreased when fall and winter nests are incubated in the Greenhouse.

The turtles are released at sundown. We all  got a bowl containing half a dozen baby turtles, each about 2-3cm wide. The volunteer drew a line in the sand near the sea, and this was where we were going to release the baby turtles, which had all just been born that day! It was amazing, gently shaking them out of the bowl, which also contained sand, and watching them instinctively head towards the sea. The waves would come in and take some of them off into the sea, whilst some of them immediately swept back onto the beach, before they tried again and again! It was amazing to be part of it.

We settled down for the night on the beach by ourselves and all was quiet. That was until a car pulled up at 1.30am. There was loads of space on the beach but guess where the car decided to park? Yes-right next to us! The music went on, very loudly and a group of youngsters enjoyed themselves until about 3am when they left!

After Todo Santos, we went back to La Paz where we stayed in a gorgeous hotel for a few days, located right on the beach. We relaxed for a few days-with the views of the sea right outside our window. We caught the Baja ferry from La Paz to Mazatlan over night,  leaving Ruby in the hold whilst we had a cabin. We slept like babies and arrived in Mazatlan about 13 hours later.

We have spent a wonderful  5 weeks or so in Baja but are now ready to experience the delights that we know mainland Mexico has to offer!
 
 
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Bungling the border...........beautiful Baja............swimming with whale sharks

1/7/2018

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We spent a couple of days in San Diego, before driving to the border to cross into Mexico, at Tecate. We had heard that this was a much quieter border than the closer one of Tijuana, which is the busiest border crossing in the world. We stopped at the USA customs to inform them  we were leaving the country and they took our USA entry cards which had been stapled into our passports. What we should have done next, was leave Ruby whilst we walked through the border to get our tourist card for Mexico and to sort out our temporary import permit for Ruby. Instead, we drove straight though the border, thinking we could park there, but we got waved through into Mexico. We ended up driving around trying to work out how to get back-but obviously we couldn`t go back into the USA, so we parked in the street and scurried back in case we got stopped as being illegally in Mexico!

The process was then easy. We filled in the paperwork for our tourist cards, went next door to pay the fee, returning with proof of payment in return for the cards. We then got our temporary import permit for Ruby and away we went. Tecate is on the Baja peninsula, the second largest peninsula in the world, and our plan was to drive the whole way down to the South of the peninsula before catching a ferry to the mainland. Our route would take us through both the East and West of Baja, so we would experience both the Pacific coast on the West side and the sea of Cortez on the East.

Our first stop was Ensenada and we found a campsite that overlooked the Pacific ocean for a couple of nights. It was a beautiful spot and we enjoyed watching the sunsets and pods of dolphins swim past. We also had our first fish tacos of the trip and they were delicious-we know we are going to enjoy Mexican food!  We then headed towards Bahia de Los Angeles, stopping for the night by the beach in San Quentin. The drive was beautiful-passing mountains and going through the desert with the numerous huge cacti , until we saw the gorgeous blue water of the bay of Los Angeles. We found an idyllic campsite on the beach and we parked Ruby next to our own palapa ( open side dwelling with palm leaf thatched roof) which are very common on Mexican beaches. We spent a couple of days here, watching the wildlife and walking along the beach-it was wonderful. We met a lovely couple from Germany-Sylvia and Marita and we were to bump into them again soon.

After a night at Guerrero Negro, we drove to Mulege, a pretty oasis town on the shores of the sea of Cortez. We found a great campsite along the palm and mangrove lined Rio Mulege where we had a private spot surrounded by banana trees, palm trees and other fruit trees. Soon after we arrived, Sylvia and Marita rolled up and we had a great time with them here for the next few days. We joined in the daily game of bocci, played by longer term residents at the campsite-Eric, Don and Lee and it was so much fun. It was similar to boules-however here we played it all around the campsite with an obligatory bottle of beer or two in hand! When any of us achieved a direct hit on the target (small white ball) we all had to yell "Bocci............" at high volume! We also had a night with them in town watching the local Frank Sinatra-this was also great fun and we had a good old dance. However, Gav and I had 4 margaritas and struggle to remember the rest of the night!!

After Mulege, we drove to Loreto  via a scenic coastal route along Bahia Concepcion, with its beautiful beaches and then through the mountains. Loreto was a pretty town-with a lovely town square, the oldest mission in Baja and cobbled streets. It also had a lovely malecon to walk along and gaze out to sea.

We headed to La Paz, the capital of Baja Sur, for Gav`s birthday and Christmas. We spent a lovely few days here wandering along the sea front, eating excellent food and going to the cinema! Our highlight was an amazing boat trip, on boxing day, to swim with whale sharks. After Jen eventually got her wetsuit on the right way, we jumped off our small boat with our snorkels on, led by our guide-and suddenly we were face to face with a huge whale shark! Whale sharks are the largest fish species in the world, the largest measured one being nearly 42 foot long!! Our guide estimated the one we saw was about 20 foot long-it was huge! Whale sharks have very large mouths and are filter feeders, which is a feeding mode that occurs in only two other sharks, the megamouth shark and the basking shark. They feed almost exclusively on plankton and are not known to pose a threat to humans.

It was absolutely amazing to watch it feed-looking at its huge mouth and little eyes as it did so (a bit like watching Jen feed!) We also got the chance to swim alongside it and just simply hang out with it for a little while. It was incredible and one of our best experiences on this trip to date. We went with a brilliant company called La Paz VIP tours and our wonderful guide, Anna, got into the water with us and led us to the sharks. We were always meant to be at least 6 feet away from them, but at times, we were a lot closer and Gav and I would start to swim away from it as we thought we were almost touching it-whilst Anna would grab hold of us and push us back closer to it!

After leaving La Paz, we spent a wonderful few days wild camping at El Sergento, where hundreds of kite surfers took to the sea and Punta Arena De La Ventana.  At the latter, we had the beach to ourselves for 2 nights, and we watched the rays swim close to the shore both mornings. Gav  got the chance to fish from the shore here, however it was still chicken for tea both nights!

We camped next to the beach for New Year-at Los Barilles-another stunning beach. We watched a super moon rise  over the horizon on new year`s day-it just appeared over the edge of the sea and was magnificent. The next stop was Cabo Pulmo and another wild camp next to the beach. Cabo Pulmo is a  national marine park and was designated a UNESCO world heritage site on 1995. Bahía Pulmo is home to the oldest of only three coral reefs on the west coast of North America. Estimated to be 20,000 years old, it is the northernmost coral reef in the eastern Pacific Ocean. We took a great snorkelling tour from here-and went out to 5 different places where we jumped in to snorkel.  We saw a variety of amazing fish, swam with a shoal of at least a thousand Mexican look down fish and also with seals. We loved it and also got the chance to snorkel again the following days from the shores of our camp spot at Los Arbolitas and from our camp spot at Playa Maria near Los Cabos. The snorkelling is fantastic here, the water is crystal clear and there are numerous different types of fish swimming close to shore.

So next stop is the tip of Baja, Cabo San Lucas, before we start heading North  on the West Cape towards Todo Santos and eventually La Paz again, where we will take our ferry to mainland Mexico. We have loved Baja so far-it is very relaxing, we have mostly camped next to the beach and the wildlife is superb. a great start to 2018!
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We left our hearts in San Francisco.....loving LA........farewell wonderful  USA

12/4/2017

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After the serenity of China Ranch in the Mojave desert, we headed back to the craziness that is Las Vegas. We spent the night there, before flying to San Francisco. We worked out that it would be cheaper to fly than to drive, so Ruby was left outside a casino in Vegas for a few days! It was a short flight of just over an hour and we headed to the San Remo hotel in the North Beach (Italian) district of San Francisco. We spent a wonderful few days in San Francisco. On the first afternoon, we visited the districts of North Beach and China Town, the largest Chinatown outside of Asia.

 We purchased a 2 days San Francisco City pass which gave us access to a variety of attractions. On day 1, we went to Madame Tussauds-where Jen was in her  element posing for daft pictures with the star waxworks; on a wonderful boat trip past the San Francisco skyline and under the Golden gate and Bay bridges; into a submarine USS Pampanito; to the Aquarium of the Bay and Ripley`s" Believe it or not". We also visited the San Francisco dungeons which was a performance with live actors/actresses as you walked through various scenarios. Now last time we went to a dungeon,  it was the London dungeons with Leona, Gav`s sister. We were so scared, that we kept running back to the beginning to get away from the live (scary) actors. Eventually, one of them said to us that they would not go near us any more, as long as we would JUST LEAVE!!!!  The San Fran dungeons did not disappoint, and we spent a wonderful, scary hour with a small group of other people, being scared witless!
On day 2, we went on a hop on and off city bus to the Museum of modern art (excellent) and to the spectacular museum of science, which included a rainforest, an aquarium and a planetarium.

Our highlight was a visit to Alcatraz. The island offered amazing views of the Golden Gate bridge and downtown San Francisco.  We did the audio tour of the former prison, hearing about some of its infamous inmates, attempted escapes and seeing the cells, dining room and exercise yard amongst other things. We then visited Castro and the GLBT museum; and the street art of Balmy alley in the Mission district. On our final day-we went to the Golden Gate bridge and rode the tram up and down the steep hills. We flew back to Vegas and spent Thanksgiving there, enjoying a lovely turkey dinner!

We left Vegas and spent a night camping in the car park of the wonderful Peggy Sue`s diner! The following day, we headed towards LA where we camped for a couple of nights at the Leo Carrillo state park, near Malibu beach. We walked along the beautiful beach, where films such as Grease were filmed.

We drove along the Pacific highway, admiring the wonderful beach and sea views, through Malibu, where we saw the homes of the rich and famous. We spent a couple of hours at the eclectic Venice beach-where street performers and characters abound and also visited Muscle beach, where Arnie used to work out.

One of our final destinations in the USA, was Los Angeles and we spent a week here. We had a great time! We managed to get audience tickets for the live NBC show "The Voice USA", which was filmed in sound studio 12 at Universal studios. We were transported by trolley bus to the studios, where we queued outside before the show. 3 of the contestants were being filmed outside for the show, so our brief was to shout, cheer and generally go bonkers for them. Jen did not need to be asked twice and whooped, hollered, high fived and told each of the 3 contestants that she had travelled all the way from England to watch them perform!! We were also asked to do an interview for NBC about the Voice and why we were here. Jen again did this with gusto-saying she had come to watch the "best show in the Universe" and how much we love the Voice USA! We had a great time at the show-it was a small venue and we were close to the action. The judges were Jennifer Hudson, Miley Cyrus, Adam Levine (Maroon five) and Blake Shelton-and all of them sang live during the show, which we bopped along to!

Our motel was the Hollywood Downtowner Inn on Hollywood Boulevard-it was perfect for us. We got a 7 days TAP transport card and used the metro to take us all over the City. We booked 2 tours through a wonderful agency called the Real Los Angeles tours, run by a great Brlt called Damien. We went on a heart of Hollywood tour, going back in time to when the name first appeared on maps in the late nineteenth century, learning how and why the movie industry moved to this small town in 1910-11, at which time the town itself didn’t even have a bar or movie-theatre of its own. We also saw all the most iconic buildings on the famous Walk of Fame, including the oldest house in Hollywood (where Charlie Chaplin’s kids went to school), the Capitol Records Building, the Egyptian Theatre and the TCL Chinese Theatre, where your Hollywood tour finishes – in the heart of Hollywood. This was also interspersed with information about modern day Hollywood and the Oscars etc. We also did the historic downtown tour, which was equally as good as the first one. We visited the arts district and took a great street art tour-learning  about the graffiti art all around the area. We saw some great art and learnt about some of the crews and characters behind the artwork.

We spent a wonderful day at Universal studios, going on all of the rides (some 2 or 3 times!) and meeting some of the characters such as Shrek, Marge and Homer and a transformer! Whilst expensive, it is well worth a visit and we were really impressed with the quality of the rides and the shows. Our favourite was the whole Harry Potter Hogwart`s set, and the amazing Harry Potter and the forbidden journey ride. It was literally breathtaking-using movement and technology-so we felt we were soaring after Harry and Ron Weasley on broomsticks. We went on it 3 times! All of the other rides were excellent too and the studio tour, which took us through lots of famous sets and also used technology to recreate floods, crashes, earthquakes etc. We went to 2 of the shows-the special effects show and waterworld-both were brilliant. The grand finale was a Christmas sound and light show-projected onto the Hogwarts castle. It was spectacular and we watched it twice-as it took our breath away.

Our last day was spent at Griffiths park, overlooking the Hollywood sign and doing laundry!

So it`s time to head to San Diego and over the border into Mexico in a couple of days time. The USA was not in our original plans and I wasn`t so keen to visit after their election result. We are so glad that we did, as the curiosity, kindness, and warm heartedness of the people we have met has been overwhelming. It is also an incredibly diverse and beautiful country and we have loved its wonderful wilderness and countryside, from the beauty of Alaska to the stunning Oregon coastline; from the glorious Mount Rainier national park to the massive redwoods; from the greatest earth on show in Utah to the desert of Death Valley and so much more!  We have really enjoyed our workaways at the hostel in Kanab and at the date farm in Death Valley. We have loved it all and spent almost 4 and a half months here. We are likely to return after our time in Central America, as we plan to ship back to England from the US.

So time to brush up on our Spanish again, hasta luego!

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Dates in Death Valley....you don`t have to be mad-but it helps......a wonderful oasis in the desert

11/14/2017

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We had a lovely leaving meal at the Cowboy Bunkhouse in Kanab, and were sad to say goodbye to Joann, Jeff and all the friends we had made there. We planned to spend the night just outside of Las Vegas, on the way to Los Angeles to collect Her Royal Highness Ruby the landy!

On the way, we stopped at the Valley of Fire State park for a few hours. The park derives its name from red sandstone formations, formed from huge shifting sand dunes 150 million years ago. The scenery was incredible and we did some short hikes in the desert heat to various viewpoints and rock formations. The most spectacular for us, was the Firewave-multi coloured stripy rocks in a wave pattern.

We drove through Las Vegas and stayed the night in a casino about 20 miles away. We woke up to the dreadful news of the Las Vegas shootings. In a sombre mood, we drove to Los Angeles where we collected Ruby, who had spent the month at the wonderful British land rover mechanics. She had her rear drive shaft replaced and was ready for action again!

Our next destination was Tecopa in the Mojave Desert, on the Southern edge of Death Valley. Our home for the next 6 weeks was China Ranch Date farm, a wonderful green oasis in the middle of the barren desert. What a unique place and experience this was!   China ranch is a family owned date farm on about 130 acres of land, where around 15 varieties  of dates are grown on the tall and small palm trees. From high, you could see the green oasis stretching along the river, amongst the dry, grey desert mountain landscape. It was a beautiful place and full of history-from native Americans, to those travelling the Spanish trail, to the gold rush and mining and much more.

China Ranch is also available as a location for both film and still photography shoots.  Over the years several national magazine companies as well as movie studios have taken advantage of the fantastic scenery as a back drop for their projects. These have included Harper's Bazaar, Country, National Geographic, Paramount Studios, and several smaller companies. In 2001 Paramount Studios used China Ranch for the desert scenes of their hit movie "The Sum of All Fears", starring Ben Affleck and Morgan Freeman.

 Wildlife was in abundance-there were numerous birds, coyotes (wild dogs) which we saw regularly on the ranch as they like to chew the dates, and insects such as tarantulas, scorpions and black widow spiders. I saw my first "wild" tarantula here, wandering past the sorting room! China Ranch was probably the most isolated place we have spent time so far, on this trip. The main shops and other facilities were around 50 miles away. At night the place was absolutely silent-except for the sound of coyotes (wild dogs) howling or the wind whistling through the dry dirt hills and canyons. We only had to wander for a short time at night to find dark skies illuminated only by the moon and stars. We saw the Milky way almost every night. Brian was the wonderful owner and our boss. He works tirelessly to keep the process of fertilising, growing, harvesting, sorting and selling going and he shared some of his tremendous knowledge with us. He had a great sense of humour and we really enjoyed working with him. We were also really impressed with how he has built the date farm from nothing.

Our home was a large permanent mobile home which we shared with 3 others. We quickly turned into a little close family. Gav and I were the eldest (Gav was the most sensible!), Austin from Indiana, aged 19 ,Arianna (19) and Ellie(18) from Vermont who joined us a week later. We all got on really well and shared a lot of laughs and some great food and BBQs! We also got them addicted to British tea and had regular tea times, in the morning and evening. We grew close to Austin and Arianna, sharing many laughs, great food, Gav`s cooking lessons and games of cards together.

We both really enjoyed the work here so much that we stayed 2 weeks longer than we had originally planned (6 weeks in total). We worked from 7am to 12.00 noon, due to the heat. In Summer temperatures soar to well over 100 degrees most days. We were here in Autumn, so it was in the 90s! And it was HOT with plenty of fruit flies! Our work varied each day and we often worked with different people. We harvested dates-which took two forms: one was with the owner, Brian, who would use his crane lift to reach the high bundles of dates in the tall trees, shake them into buckets, and then pass them down to the worker on the ground to sort into crates and pass him empty buckets. The crates were then stacked in the back of his pickup truck. Brian would also cut down whole large bunches of dates on fronds and we had to strip them all off and into the crates. Sometimes, we had dozens of fronds to strip and it took some fast work to keep up! As Brian moved around the trees on his crane, I had to move his pickup truck to best position it to fill the crates. This was the first time I had ever driven an automatic car and all Brian could hear from his crane was me roaring the engine trying to work out how to drive the damn thing! He lowered himself down laughing and muttering about the crazy English woman trying to drive his truck, and gave me a quick lesson in how to drive an automatic. It was great driving the truck around the ranch, although I still prefer a gear stick! The second way of harvesting was to work on the small palm trees, where you could reach the dates and shake them into buckets or cut the whole bunch down with cutters.

Another major task was sorting through the dates that had been harvested or "running the dates" as it was called in the trade! This was done in the sorting room, where all of the crates of date were stored. We emptied the crates into a large machine, which shook them down a chute, onto a moving conveyer belt. We then had to hand sort though them-separating the ones with mouse or bird bites, the ones that were good and the ones that would go into date paste to bake with.  We also had to separate the ones which had not ripened and put them on a rack. There were 30 different varieties of dates on the ranch, so we had to learn to spot what each variety should look like at its best! I loved seeing the little dates slowly shaking and bouncing down the chute ready to be sorted! When we turned the shaker on, I would perform a little shake myself until the first ones reached us!  The sorted dates fell into large buckets, which we then emptied into 15 pound boxes and stacked in the large walk in fridge. I loved the walk in fridge as I got so hot, so willingly volunteered to stack the boxes in there when needed! We also packed 1 pound boxes to sell in the shop.

We picked up numerous large palm fronds to put on the truck and take them to the burn pile. This could be painful work, as the palm fronds, which had been cut down to help harvest the dates, had massive thorns on them to protect their fruit. These thorns stabbed us all over, quite literally!! We had to wait a few weeks for the splinters to work their way out of our bodies-I still have one in my backside! This was hot and dusty work, and made all the more painful by the huge horse flies which like to bite. Thank goodness, there were only a few as they die off in Autumn.

Another job was to work in the bakery. Yes. Jen working in the bakery! My last baking fiasco was at school over 30 years ago when my bread dough ended up on the ceiling over the light fitting! My task was to make 30 large date loaves, 30 small loaves, cookies and muffins! Thank goodness I was shown and left to it, as I turned the industrial mixture on too fast on my first attempt, leading to some of the mixture flying out of the bowl and splatting around the kitchen! I got a lot better at it, and felt very proud when I wrapped and labelled my loaves, cookies and muffins to sell in the store! I also served customers in the store and made date shakes, which are delicious!

Gav and I also worked on clearing out and renovating an old shack. which will house other volunteers in the future. We named it "the love shack" and the sign hangs proudly outside!

The permanent staff were a wonderfully eccentric, slightly crazy and entertaining bunch of people. Brian explained that the desert attracts such folks and having lived here for 6 weeks, we agree! One lady lost her temper quite often and would threaten to " Effin shoot them in the back"! One lady would holler "hey pretty boy" after the male staff, would shout "Effin customers"  within earshot of the customers, people used  the walk in chiller to moan about each other, talked of conspiracy theories  and there was other stuff that just wouldn`t seem funny in the written form. You just had to be there. Every day something  had happened  to make us laugh, and we returned to our mobile home and swapped stories. The staff all made us very welcome and shared both their eccentricities and patience with us and we enjoyed working with them.

We hosted a few BBQs at Brian`s house and had a few outside our caravan on our mobile fire pit. I bought face paints for Halloween and we had a little walk around the ranch with our faces painted and had our pictures taken with some of the visitors! Jen in particular, really got into the spirit of things and made what she thought were suitable zombie faces and moves! One night we made ourselves stay up until midnight (hard when you are up at 6am) as Jen had read there was going to be a meteor shower from midnight until dawn. We played cards, watched a movie and snoozed, until 10 minutes to midnight when Jen re read her information on the meteor shower. Unfortunately, she had read it wrong and we were 24 hours late! Everyone took in  good spirits and we went out into the desert for a bit to look at the wonderful stars !

On our days off-we drove to Death Valley national park and camped overnight.  Death Valley is the hottest, driest and lowest National park in the US. In this below-sea-level basin, steady drought and record summer heat make Death Valley a land of extremes.  It is a desert valley and is one of the hottest places in the world at the height of summertime along with deserts in Africa and in the Middle East. Death Valley's Badwater Basin is the point of the lowest elevation in North America, at 282 feet (86 m) below sea level.  We explored the dramatic landscape on foot and on some scenic drives. It was a wonderful place to camp with its dark sky and incredible stars.

We also spent a 2 nights in Las Vegas, doing the obligatory tourist visit to the garish casinos on the strip. We also enjoyed visiting the Mob museum, which is dedicated to the artifacts, stories, and history of organised crime in the US,as well as the actions and initiatives by law enforcement to prevent such crimes. The Museum is housed in the former Las Vegas Post Office and Court House and made for an interesting couple of hours. We visited the Neon  Museum  which is dedicated to collecting, preserving, studying and exhibiting iconic Las Vegas signs for educational, historic, arts and cultural enrichment. We did a night tour and it was interesting to see all of the old Vegas signs and hear about their history.

The 6 weeks flew by and it was time to leave.  We hosted a leaving party at Brian`s house with the theme of British night. With Arianna and Austin, we cooked steak and ale pie, chips, cauliflower cheese and mushy peas. For desert, we made a Victoria sandwich cake and date scones with jam and cream. We transported it to Brian`s house in Ruby and had a lovely evening with the Brian, Gina, Grace and David. We even took our own kettle with us, so we could make them tea!

So after 6 weeks of living and working in the Mojave desert, we will head back to Vegas where we will park Ruby for a few days and fly to San Francisco. We will miss the wonderful China Ranch and our new friends, however it is time to move on and we are thinking about heading into Mexico next month.


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Unbelievable Utah .....The greatest earth on show......The Cowboy Bunkhouse

9/28/2017

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We left Ruby in Los Angeles at a wonderful British land rover mechanics, rented an air conditioned car (luxury!) and headed to Kanab in Utah. This would be our home for a month on a workaway placement at a hostel. As we headed into Kanab, we were blown away by the amazing red rock formations and canyons which dominated the landscape. Locals refer to Kanab as "Little Hollywood" due to its history as a filming location for many movies and television series, prominently Westerns such as Stagecoach, The Lone Ranger and Buffalo Bill.

Our home and workplace for the next 4 weeks was the Cowboy Bunkhouse-a large hostel based on a theme of cowboys and cowgirls and owned by JoAnne and Jeff. We started on labour day weekend, which meant that it was very busy, with visitors from all over the world. Our jobs included checking guests in, chatting to them (we were both great at this!), stripping and making beds, laundry, cleaning and serving breakfast. We absolutely loved it and would highly recommend this hostel to anyone visiting the area or wanting a volunteer placement in the area. Jeff and JoAnne were wonderful hosts and have made an excellent job of converting what was once an old hospital into a top class hostel. When we were working an evening shift-we put on an activity for the guests. Jen loved this and we had quizzes, name that tune and the obligatory English tea and scones!

Because of the shift patterns-we had lots of time off to explore Kanab and the surrounding area. Kanab is well located to visit some of the most spectacular national parks and other attractions in Utah-in fact the scenery we saw rivals anything we have experienced on our trip so far. When you cross into Utah a billboard proclaims-"Welcome to Utah-the greatest earth on show" and this is not an exaggeration!

We visited the national parks of Zion and Bryce. Zion is my favourite national park of the trip so far-with its spectacular red sandstone rocks-the world`s tallest- and a dramatic 16 miles river canyon sculpted of multi hued sandstone. We walked some of The Narrows-a walk through the Virgin river in a canyon where the 1,000 foot walls narrowed to just 20 feet across the water in places. We were walking through water thigh deep at times, got absolutely soaking wet but dried off in the desert sunshine afterwards! We did some other small hikes in the park, including Canyon overlook, the weeping wall and the Emerald pools.

Bryce canyon was like nowhere else we had ever visited-with its amphitheatre containing red sandstone hoodoos (spires) of unique shapes and sizes. We hiked down into the amphitheatre and walked among them, marveling at their size, colour and diversity. We also drove around the rim and saw the hoodoos from different vantage points.

We crossed into Arizona and visited the North rim of the Grand Canyon (where only 10% of the canyon`s visitors go)-an awesome (my favourite American word) sight! It is considered one of the seven wonders of the natural world and it is easy to see why. The Grand Canyon is a twisting, 1 mile deep and 277 mile long gorge, formed during some six million years of geological activity and erosion by the Colorado River on the upraised earth's crust. We drove along the north side of the rim, stopping at various places to do short hikes and to see the canyon from different angles.

This area is full of slot canyons which are narrow canyons formed by the wear of water rushing through rock. A slot canyon is significantly deeper than it is wide. Some slot canyons can measure less than 1 metre (3 ft) across at the top but drop more than 30 metres (100 ft) to the floor of the canyon. We visited Buckskin Gulch slot canyon, the longest and deepest slot canyon in the southwest, hiking there through Wire pass. Slot canyons are dangerous during rain-as flash floods quickly rush through them, so we had to keep an eye on the weather at all times. It was exhilarating walking along the river bed through the narrow walls of the canyon. We also hiked through part of Lickwash Canyon, another slot canyon with narrow and wider parts, which was at the end of a scenic drive along gravel roads.

Our favourite slot canyon, in spite of the huge number of tourists there, was Antelope Canyon. We went at mid day when the sunlight hits the canyon at certain spots to create wonderful colours and light displays within the canyon. We have never seen a canyon with such beautiful colours and rock shapes and we passed through it in awe. Antelope Canyon was formed by erosion of Navajo Sandstone, primarily due to flash flooding. Rainwater, especially during monsoon season, runs into the extensive basin above the slot canyon sections, picking up speed and sand as it rushes into the narrow passageways. Over time the passageways eroded away, making the corridors deeper and smoothing hard edges in such a way as to form characteristic "flowing" shapes in the rock.

We did a short hike to the toadstools, layered rock formations in the desert with large rocks balanced on narrow rocks. We visited Lake Powell, the Glen Canyon dam (and had a guided tour of it) and the scenic Horseshoe bend where the Colorado river twists around a sandstone escarpment.

We enjoyed Cedar breaks state park-with scenery similar to Bryce canyon but fewer visitors and hiked part way along the amphitheatre rim. We also visited Kodachrome state park, with 67 monolithic stone spires, called sedimentary pipes, accentuate multihued sandstone layers that reveal 180 million years of geologic time.  The colour and beauty found here prompted a National Geographic Society expedition to name the area Kodachrome, after the popular colour film, in 1948.

We worked some double shifts at the Cowboy Bunkhouse to earn a few days away in Moab. We spent 3 nights in Moab in Eastern Utah, and visited Monument Valley on the way. Monument Valley, meaning valley of the rocks, is a region of the Colorado Plateau characterized by a cluster of vast sandstone buttes, the largest reaching 1,000 ft (300 m) above the valley floor. We drove around Monument valley-stopping at all of the viewpoints for the huge sandstone rock formations. This has been the backdrop to many film and TV productions, particularly Westerns.

From Moab, we visited Arches National Park . It is home to over 2,000 natural sandstone arches, including the world-famous Delicate Arch, in addition to a variety of unique geological resources and formations. It contains the highest density of natural arches in the world. We did a few hikes in beautiful scenery to see a variety of arches and other spectacular scenery. Next stop was Canyonlands National Park and the Island in the Sky section of the park, where the access road passes many breathtaking viewpoints of the deep twisting canyons at either side. We did a few hikes to different viewpoints and were amazed by the beautiful scenery.

On the way back to Kanab, we stopped Capitol Reef national park, The park is filled with brilliantly colored sandstone cliffs, gleaming white domes, and contrasting layers of stone and earth.

We have a few days left at the Cowboy Bunkhouse, before we head back to Los Angeles to collect Ruby and then we head to Death Valley for another workaway placement on a date farm!
 
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America the beautiful.......wild camping at Walmart.......A solar eclipse.........Ruby seeks fame in LA!

8/31/2017

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We purchased a national parks admission pass called America the Beautiful, which allows free access to all the national parks for a year at the cost of $80. This will pay for itself in no time, given the abundance of national parks in the USA.
We started off at Crater Lake National Park in Oregon, a volcano which erupted thousands of years ago and caused the collapse of its tall peak, Mount Mazama. The crater then filled up with water from snow and rain, forming the deepest lake in the USA and perhaps the most pristine lake on earth. Whilst we have seen many beautiful lakes on this trip-we have never seen anything like the deep blue colour of Crater Lake and how clear it is. Due to several unique factors, mainly that the lake has no inlets or tributaries, the waters of Crater Lake are some of the purest in the world because of the absence of pollutants. Two islands are in Crater Lake: Wizard island formed from a cinder cone that erupted after Crater Lake began to fill with water, and the smaller Phantom Ship, which has seven trees living on it.

On day one, we drove around the rim of the crater-stopping at numerous viewpoints along the way and did a couple of short hikes. Everywhere we stopped had a different, stunning perspective of the Lake and its vivid colours. On day two, we hiked to the highest point in the national park, Mount Scott-where we were treated to a panoramic view of the whole Lake. We also hiked down to the Lake and dipped our toes in its cool water.

We then headed towards the Humboldt Redwoods national and state parks, home to the largest remaining old growth redwood forest in the world. On the way, we stopped at Crescent City where we had decided to free camp for the night in Walmart`s car park. Well, what a barrel of laughs that was! We arrived late after having our tea in a scenic lay-by where we met James, a fellow Brit who now lives in California who loves landys! He spotted Ruby and pulled over and we had a great chat about landys, travel etc. When we arrived at Walmart at about 8.30pm, we were followed in by 3 police cars who began searching the bushes next to the car park with flash lights! Shortly afterwards, as we left the store-the security guards were chasing a couple of shop lifters. We hesitantly set up the roof tent and fell asleep. We were only awoken twice in the night-once by a female screaming at a car as it screeched away " don`t leave me here" and another time by another alleged shoplifter shouting at the security guards! Bleary eyed at 6.30 am the next morning-we wound down the roof tent and made us of Walmart`s clean bathrooms and good wifi!

Humboldt state park was simply breathtaking for the sheer size of the trees.  The park is famed for its coast redwoods, many of which grow to over 300 feet (91 m) in height. Over 100 of the 137 known trees over 350 feet (110 m) tall—all coast redwoods—occur in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It is home to the 4th-tallest measured living redwood, Stratosphere Giant, which was measured at 112.94 metres (370.5 ft) in 2004. Stratosphere Giant was the tallest known living redwood until the discovery of three taller trees in Redwood National Park: the tallest, Hyperion, measuring 115.55 metres (379.1 ft) in September 2006.
Before the discovery of Hyperion, the tallest redwood ever measured was the Dyerville Giant, also in Humboldt Redwoods State Park. It was 113.4 metres (372 ft) high when it fell in March 1991. It was estimated to be 1,600 years old. The Dyerville Giant can be seen on Founders Grove Nature Trail, which honors the creators of Save-the-Redwoods League. Also in this grove is Founders Tree, which is 346 feet (105 m) tall with circumference of 40 feet (12 m).  As we headed down to the Redwood National park-we saw all of these trees and did some hikes among them. We visited Fern Canyon, a location for the film Jurassic Park 2:The Lost World, and wandered up the floor of the Canyon. The walls were covered in wet moss and ferns and the canyon contained fallen trees, which we had to clamber over. We drove down the Avenue of Giants- the world famous scenic drive of 31 miles, driving by the most outstanding display of Redwood trees in the world. We stopped many times to take short walks through the forest and gazed upwards in awe at the height and girth of the trees. We had never seen anything like it before and it is one of our favourite places.

We were in Redwood State park for the total eclipse, and shared the 90% coverage with many others, all of us staring at the moon covering the sun, in awe, whilst wearing our protective glasses! This was  great experience surrounded by the majestic trees and watching nature at its very best. We also met a couple of lovely Aussies here-Jen and Pat-who are on vacation on the US.

After free camping at another casino for the night (we had  a little flutter!), we made our way to the famous Yosemite national park, where we camped outside the boundaries for 4 nights. We explored the park over a couple of days. Yosemite is internationally recognized for its granite cliffs, waterfalls, clear streams, giant sequoia groves, lakes, mountains, glaciers, and biological diversity. On day one, we caught the shuttle bus in the park, the length of Yosemite valley, doing some short walks along the way. At El Capitan, a vertical granite rock formation, that is one of the world`s favourite challenges for rock climbers. There are many climbing routes up the sheer granite face, all of them arduous and many requiring 2 or 3 nights sleeping  on the rock. We met a lovely couple of lads from the UK here, Joe and Sam, who were climbing it the next day. We loved meeting them as they were down to earth, funny and inspirational and we resolved to come back and watch them climb it through the telescopes that the park sets up. On night one of their climb, we received a message from them on Facebook about what they were having for tea on the side of a vertical rock face! We went into the park the next day and found them through the telescope, telling everybody at the bottom about them so they could all have a peak! We heard through Joe`s Dad that they reached the top on the 3rd day.

Just a little aside here about the wonderful American people we are meeting on a daily basis. They have such a genuine interest and curiosity about our car and our trip and we are stopped by them at least 3 or 4 times a day, as they ask about the car, our travels etc. This has been the most interest people in any country have shown so far, and we have really enjoyed chatting to people and sharing stories with them.

We left Yosemite to head towards Utah and our next workaway placement. We drove into a heat wave when we stopped in Bakersfield, the temperatures pushing 111 degrees!! We had a very hot night in the rooftent and got up early to head ever closer to Utah. That was until Ruby had other ideas! She decided to stop whilst trying to turn right at traffic lights and we were stranded in the middle of the road! A lovely lady, who must have been at least in her 60s, jumped out of her car and helped us to push the 3 tonnes Ruby to the side of the road!! We were amazed!

To cut a long story short-it is clear that Ruby wishes to seek fame and fortune in Los Angeles, as she has had her head turned by all the interest she has had in her! So we are driving her there to a mechanics tomorrow- and will probably leave her there whilst we do our month in Utah, hiring a car (air conditioned!!) to take us to Utah in time to start our work. Ruby, meanwhile, will be in LA, daaaarling, so watch out as she may be on a screen near you, sometime soon!
 
 
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That`s the sweetest car I ever did see.........ford and pig racing.........does the Queen like Trump?

8/16/2017

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We left Seattle and headed to the Mount Rainier National Park, where we camped for 2 nights. Ascending to 14,410 feet above sea level, Mount Rainier stands as an icon in the Washington landscape. It is an active volcano, and the most glaciated peak in the U.S.A. (outside of Alaska). Subalpine wildflower meadows ring the icy volcano while ancient forest cloaks Mount Rainier’s lower slopes. On day 1 we visited an area of the park called Paradise and it was so beautiful, particularly the superb views of ice clad Mount Rainier and the meadows covered with a variety of colourful subalpine flowers. It was one of the prettiest places we had ever been. We did 2 short hikes here to admire the views and then hiked a short trail nearby called the Grove of the Patriots, where we walked through massive thousand year old trees. The following day we went to Sunrise, another area of the park where we took another couple of short hikes and saw the Mountain from a different angle.

Ruby is quite the attraction in the US, with numerous people approaching us to ask about her, admire her etc. The people have been brilliant-very friendly and curious. We met a lovely lady called Jo (Patti) who was hiking past our camp spot with a friend, we have since received such a kind email from her wishing us well on our trip and sharing some of her own history with us. One man kept walking past for a look at Ruby and when we stopped to talk, he said (in a deep southern drawl, imagine Forest Gump`s accent) " that`s about the sweetest car I ever did see"! Well I could swear that Ruby batted her headlamps at him in delight!

From Rainier, we made our way to Mount St Helens, another active volcano which erupted violently in 1980, with its north side collapsing and triggering a lateral blast that devastated 150 square miles and sent up an eruption column that reached the stratosphere. It also caused the largest landslide ever. We visited the Mount St Helen`s Forest learning centre, which showed a short film about the eruption and had some excellent displays about its impact and the regeneration work that has gone on since. We also visited Johnston ridge observatory, which had spectacular views of the volcano and surrounding area. It was so interesting to see how the once conical volcano, had a gaping space on the side where it blew and how the valleys have been shaped by the eruption.

We decided to head to Portland, the capital of the State of Oregon, as we had read about a land rover mechanics there and Ruby (the sweet thing!) was in need of some TLC, in particular we were leaking oil out of the rear wheel hub. We had met the great family in Alaska (Stacey, Ryun, Paton and Heath) on the cruise who lived in Oregon, so we messaged them and they immediately invited us to stay with them. We had such a great 2 nights with them, playing pool, listening to music and chatting away to them. Whilst we were there they told us about the Tillamook county fair, on the coast, which was due the following weekend. When Gav heard that there was a race at the fair that involved people racing Ford model T cars whilst holding a piglet under their arm, we were destined to go there!

We took Ruby into the wonderful PDX British garage and met Francis, the owner and his wife, Elsa. They showed us such tremendous kindness, taking us out for lunch, having such an interest in our trip and ultimately not charging us for the 4 or so hours of work they did on Ruby. We loved meeting such kind, interesting people and hope to see them some day on the road.

Off we went again, arranging to meet our Oregon family at the weekend. We headed for the Oregon coast and highway 101, one of the most scenic coastal roads in the US. We started out at Cannon beach, where we camped overnight next to the beach, earning us a telling off at 7am the following morning when a ranger pulled up and told us we should not have camped there! Cannon beach was a beautiful sandy beach, with dramatic shoreline rock formations, such as Haystacks, which is home to puffins and other birds. We visited it early in the morning at low tide, where you can walk right up to it and see the birds and the marine life in the rockpools. It was beautiful. We visited Ecola park, which had wonderful views of the beaches and rock formations and hiked into the forest which hugs the coastline. We drove the coastline on the way to the Tillamook cheese factory, stopping at the numerous viewpoints to see the sandy beaches, the forests, and the caves. At the cheese factory we tasted some of the lovely cheese (the best we have tasted this trip!) and their glorious ice cream!

We stopped by at Astoria, visiting the tower and the County jail, where part of the Goonies was filmed. It is  now a film museum and we spent a great hour in here, as you can act our short scenes from films that have been filmed in the area. We threw ourselves into this with gusto, earning a few looks from other customers, none who wanted to join in! We did scenes from The Shining, Point Break, Twilight  and Kindergarten Cop. The best was Twilight where Gav had a long wig and crown and I thought I was wearing a unicorn hat, which was actually a broken Viking hat!

We met some characters whilst camping in the RV park at Cannon beach. Bob was a lovely gentleman in his mid seventies, who would come and chat a few times a day and give us good advice on places to visit in the US. He made me smile when he asked me what I did for a living. When I told him I worked with people who got into trouble-he made a firing gun gesture and said "I'd shoot them all"."So you`re a liberal then Bob?! I teased him. He was a super gentleman in spite of our differences of opinion on certain matters, with a genuine curiosity in our trip.

The weekend dawned and it was time to reunite with our Oregon family to go to the Tillamook fair. We met them at their beach house (amazing terrace with sea views) and we headed off. We had a great day there, looking at the livestock, eating the best fried food (corn dogs and chips) and betting a couple of dollars on the horse racing. The highlight was undoubtedly the Pig n Ford world championship finals, which are world famous. It involved the driver collecting a piglet from a pen, cranking up their ford model T car and driving it around the arena,  swapping piglets each lap! The commentator said it is one of the most redneck things you will ever see! There was also a demolition derby which was equally as entertaining.

We spent the following day with the family, crabbing in their small boat and chilling out together on their wonderful balcony. In the evening, we played poker and had a fire with s`mores! We really hope to meet these guys again one day.

Saying goodbye on the Monday, we headed off again down the coast and spotted numerous grey whales close to the shore along the way. We camped at a casino overnight which offered free RV camping. We had a little flutter in the casino and made use of the free sodas and coffees, and the immaculate toilets! We stayed for one night in Sutherlin in an RV park and met a wonderful lady in her 70s who asked me where I was from. When I replied "England" she came over and, in all seriousness, asked me "what does the Queen think of Trump?!" she followed it up by saying "because I think he`s a Motherfuc...."! (you can guess the rest!). "I think that`s probably what the Queen thinks too" I spluttered! The RV park was originally the location of a drive in movie theatre and it still has its huge screen. The owners have invested in a huge projector and a sound system. we asked whether they were showing a film that night and they told us we could choose one! Gav chose the Goonies, as we had just passed through where it was filmed and we spent the evening on the grass, watching it on the big screen. It was brilliant!
Our next stop is the beautiful Crater Lake National Park, where we will spend a few days before heading towards Utah and our next workaway placement!
 
 

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Going wild in Alaska.........get me off this sodding boat.......sightseeing in Seattle

8/7/2017

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We camped for a couple of nights at Lake Ki, North of Seattle whilst we prepared for our cruise. We headed to a huge outlet park to buy some decent clothes to wear on the ship for "Gala nights"! I purchased a frock and Gav got some decent trousers-all at a massive discount so we were happy! After 14 months on the road-our clothes have a permanent grubbiness about them and we did not want to let the side down on the ship!

The day of the cruise dawned. We were heading off for 2 weeks down the inside passage of Alaska, on a mid size ship carrying about 1300 passengers. We parked Ruby at the car park on the docks and boarded the ship. It was massive compared to the Fram, our wonderful boat that took us to the Antarctic. There were 9 floors for passenger use, which contained a few restaurants,2 swimming pools, bars, lounges, shops, an art gallery, cinema and casino! Our room was lovely and had a big window with a sea view. It also had a comfy seating area and flat screen TV, which we became glued to every night watching American politics! It made us feel slightly better about British politics!

Well this cruise turned into the longest 2 weeks of our trip so far! Whist we loved Alaska and really enjoyed the wonderful staff and food aboard the ship, we soon realised the cruising life is not one for us! There was a huge emphasis on shopping and gambling and much less focus on the places and wildlife we would be seeing. We met a lot of lovely people on the ship and also met quite a lot that were rude and greedy. More of that later!

Gav and I were super excited on the first couple of days on the boat. By 9am on morning 1, we had: been to the gym (at 6am!!!); had breakfast and lost $10 in the casino! This was our first and last time in the casino and we were gobsmacked at people who seemed to be in the casino day and night, feeding the machines and tables. One man told us he would not care if the boat never stopped at ports-so he could play in the casino all the time!

Now to Alaska, the biggest state in the USA although one of the least populous. What a beautiful, wild and remote place. We sailed past miles and miles of rugged, mountainous coastline covered with thousands of fir trees, saw numerous whales blowing in the sea and floated past some spectacular glaciers. wildlife is in abundance here, bears, bald eagles, moose, elks, salmon, and many more. Our first stop was Ketchikan, a small Alaskan town, where we did our own walking tour using a great visitor`s map. The ship docked at the edge of town, so we literally got off and were in the middle of things. We visited the totem heritage centre, which holds a world renowned collection of original, unrestored totem poles from the 19th century. We also visited the very picturesque Creek Street, which was the red light district from 1902. More than 30 "bawdy" houses lined the creek over the years. With prohibition, some became speak easies; rowboats slipped in at night on a high tide and liquor rose through trap doors. Now the houses had been converted to small shops and cafes all built on wooden stilts over the creek.

Our next stop was Juneau, the capital of Alaska, but not possible to reach by road! It was a pretty, small City with the water on one side and mountains behind it. Juneau was originally inhabited by the Tlinglit  people who hunted and fished along its shores. It then became known for gold mining, and grew to be one of the most elaborate gold mining operations in the world. We took a tour here to the nearby Mendenhall glacier, Alaska`s most accessible glacier. We took a short walk to Mendenhall lake where a huge waterfall crashed down and we could also view the glacier. Alaska has 100,000 glaciers covering 28,000 square miles, equal to 5% of the state. Mendenhall glacier is one of the 38 large glaciers that flow from the 1,500 square mile expanse of snow and ice known as the Juneau ice field.  As the glacial ice accumulates seasonally, gravity pulls the ice down valleys. Slowly and steadily the glacier scours bedrock, grinding everything to powder or transporting huge boulders on its 13 mile path to Mendenhall Lake. Nearby, were short walking trails which led to salmon spawning grounds-a prime place to see bears! We saw none on this day-but did see massive red salmon flipping and jumping out of the water which was an incredible sight! We also saw a porcupine up a tree. We spotted a lot of electric wires and a TV camera. Mum had already told us that the BBC were going to filming wild Alaska live over a few days. We spotted a camera man checking the equipment so we rushed over to him, and told him that we were from England and loved the BBC! We had a little chat about the programme and he told us who the presenters were and where they were filming. It was due to go out from that spot live, the following evening in England. After the glacier, we returned to town and caught a cable car tram up Mount Roberts. The views from the top were great, of Juneau, Douglas island, Gastineau channel and the Chilkat mountains.

In addition to our landings, we had some days spent at sea. On these days, there were activities and talks which you could go to. It became very clear very soon that there was a huge focus on shopping, with a lot of talks about what to buy in various ports and what deals were on at the shops in the ship. I went to some of these talks and experienced some people pushing, in fact one lady pushed me to get to her seat earning a very English " excuse me"! People would also holler for free stuff and almost fight each other to get it as it was thrown into the audience. I also went to the art auctions, which I really enjoyed, as there was also a lot of info given about the art. We also got free champagne. The lovely waiter slipped and knocked a small amount of champagne over a woman sitting waiting for the auction. She jumped up shrieking, (excuse the language) " this is fucking shit" and ran out of the room! She returned a short while later and threw her clothes at one of the staff, demanding that they launder them for her! The other thing we struggled to understand was how much food people would order. We sat with different people every night for dinner and were perplexed when some people would order 2 main meals and 2 starters.  People would also tell us that we must send our food back if we did not like it and get something else or order 2 of something if we wanted to. There was a lot of excess and this did not feel right to us, even though we are both very fond of our food!

We did meet 2 wonderful sets of people. Jurgen and Sharon from Florida, and Jurgen told us wonderful stories from when he back packed around the world for a couple of years in his 20s (he is now in his mid 70s with the same sense of fun and adventure as ever!). Also a great family from Oregon, Stacey, Ryun and their 2 great boys-Heath and Payton. We had dinner with them a few times as they were such good company and they were also great dancers-all of them dancing every night in the nightclub!

We visited Icy strait point, where I went on my best wildlife watching trip in Alaska. I went on a grizzly bear watching tour, with a small group and guide. We drove to all of the areas where the grizzlies were known to frequent, in particular the rivers which were full of salmon, prime bear food. We saw a total of 8 grizzly bears and it was brilliant to see them in their natural habitat. We saw a mother with her 2 cubs ambling after her, and a number of other bears in the river hunting for salmon, whilst we observed from a bridge. One bear came under the bridge we were standing on and was only about 40 feet away at one stage.

Other highlights were Anchorage, where we visited the nearby glacier of Portage aboard a small boat and then went to the Alaska wildlife conservation centre, which provided spacious enclosures and care for its injured and orphaned animals including black and brown bears, wolves, moose, elks, etc. In Homer we spotted a wild moose feeding on the wetlands and a pair of bald eagles nesting. In Sitka, we visited a wonderful place for orphaned bears called the Fortress of the Bear. The 8 bears were housed in 2 acres of space and it was possible to view them close up. They were clearly happy, well looked after and stimulated-2 of them were swimming and playing in a large lake in the middle of their enclosure. The mission at the Fortress of the bear is to rescue orphaned bear cubs, bring them back to full health and provide them with a long enriched life. Other than here, Alaska has no bear rehabilitation programme in place so orphaned cubs are routinely shot for lack of an alternative. They would eventually like to see the law in Alaska change, so that the bear cubs can be released back into the wild, where they belong. We also visited the rapture recue centre which cares for injured eagles and other birds, releasing those which have been rehabilitated back into the wild.

Sitka was also interesting for its Russian style buildings-as Alaska was owned by the Russians until 1867 when the USA purchased it for just over 7 million dollars, the transfer taking place in Sitka.

We spent an afternoon scenic cruising on our ship to the Hubbard glacier, which was spectacular. Although we stopped within a mile of it-it felt really close and we could see and hear chunks of ice carving into the sea.
The last day of the cruise was spent in Victoria, on Vancouver island, a place we were familiar with from our 5 weeks on the island. We walked the harbour path and rejoiced that we would be free again the following day! "Get me off this sodding boat" said Jen much to Gav`s amusement!

We were delighted to disembark in Seattle and found a camp site on Bainbridge island, a ferry ride from the city centre. We caught the ferry for 2 days into the centre of town whilst we saw the sights. On day 1, we were hijacked by a couple of young lads who were trying to get people to attend a timeshare presentation. They were offering all sorts of incentives and we managed to get them to offer free tickets to all of the sights we had planned to see over the next few days! For this, we were whisked off by taxi to a posh hotel and introduced to our personal timeshare agent, Matt. Poor Matt. We were both very polite and listened intently to everything he had to say. We also answered his questions very honestly, so when he asked us both what our dream vacation would be, I answered honestly ,that I would love to travel to outer space. Well, he went a shade of grey, as I am not sure they are doing timeshares in space....yet! After 2 hours, the poor lad was sweating and bought in the big gun. He spent abut 2 minutes with us and realised we were not going to buy a time share in their luxury hotel chin, and sent us off with our free tickets!

We visited the Space needle and its superb viewing platform with views across Seattle and beyond, the amazing Chiully glass and gardens and did an underground tour of Seattle. My favourite place was free to enter: the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation which displayed in an interactive and entertaining way, the monumental good work they do around the world. One of their goals is to inspire others to make a difference and it this place really facilitated that. Armed with loads of leaflets, Jen marched off ready to try and change the world again!

We loved Seattle and now plan to head to the national parks of Mount Rainier and St Helens. We are so glad to be back in  Ruby!
 

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O Canada.............Ruby  arrives........National parks Banff and Jaspar

7/17/2017

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We left Rocky Creek winery after a wonderful 5 weeks and headed back to Vancouver, where we  rented an airbnb whilst waiting for Ruby to arrive. We really enjoyed Vancouver, particularly hiring bikes and cycling around the sea wall at Stanley Park and visiting the fantastic aquarium there. We got the news from Dane that Ruby had arrived safely in Vancouver, and we met him early one morning at customs to clear Ruby for collection. We picked her up on the morning of my birthday and we were delighted to see her! She started first time and clearly could not wait to get going again! That evening we wild camped at Spanish Banks, next to the beach, with Dane, Penny and Wyatt the dog. It was great to see them again after last seeing them in Chile at least 8 months ago. We did not realise that it was illegal to wild camp here and also to drink alcohol in public. Guess what we were doing?! Both! Well suddenly 2 police officers came driving over on their massive quad bikes and by the look on Penny and Dane`s faces, I realised that something was wrong! We went into charm overload. However, they were the nicest blokes you could imagine and had actually come over because one of them really wanted a landrover! After almost an hour of chat and guided tours of Ruby, I cheekily asked if we could have a picture on their quad bikes. They agreed and we had our photo taken with them and the bikes, much to the amusement of people nearby.

We spent Canada day, 1st July, at Canada place where there were huge celebrations for Canada`s 150th anniversary of independence from Britain. It was great to see the patriotism and happiness of the Canadians and we enjoyed being in the middle of it all as bands played and food and drink was served.

Whilst we were in Vancouver, we had another change of plan! We decided that we did not want to clock up almost 7,000 miles return to the tip of Alaska and back, so we have booked another cruise! This time it sounds like a more traditional cruise, with 3 gala nights (we don`t own any smart clothes!) and all sorts of entertainment! It will take us over 14 nights, up the inside passage of Alaska and back, departing from Seattle. When we return we will then head South through the USA.

With this date in mind-we decided to head into the neighbour state of Alberta and the beautiful Rocky mountains, to the national parks of Banff and Jaspar. We made a stopover in the Wine district and camped in Kelona, before arriving at our first Park Canada campsite in Banff. The scenery was spectacular-with beautiful blue lakes, mountains and trees. We were also firmly in bear country and there were warnings and information signs everywhere about bear encounters and how to keep a "bare" campsite! Well, as you know I have not yet got used to the idea of meeting a bear and am fully equipped with my bear bells, air horn and bear spray-all of which I took to bed with me every night! We had to make sure that our camping spot was clean of all food smells, cooking stuff, and anything else that smelled nice e.g. deodorant. Well, we had the cleanest camp spot in the whole national park as I cleaned every last crumb away!! We visited the glorious Lake Louise, which is a turquoise glacier lake surrounded by snow capped mountains and drove the Bow Park highway, again though the most beautiful scenery. There were many places to stop along the way, including Johnston canyon and other view points. We spotted a bear by the side of the road, eating some of its 25,000 calories a day. We did not stop and take its picture though, as the Park Canada staff were trying to discourage this as it is dangerous and stressed the bears out. We saw another 2 bears over the next few days and it was wonderful to see them in their natural environment, just getting on with searching for food.

We headed towards Jaspar national park, camping for 2 nights at Waterfowl lake which was one of our all time favourite camp sites ever! It was on the shores of a river and in between 2 beautiful lakes. We met Steve and Hilly here, a great British couple who now live in Florida. We drove the Icefields parkway, again through wonderful scenery making many stops along the way to take in the views. We walked to the foot of the Columbia glacier, which has receded drastically over the years but was still a great sight. in Jaspar, we headed to Maligne lake and took a walk along its shore.

I went on a bear walk with the park rangers, just outside of Jaspar! Its purpose was to educate you about bears, to reduce the fear and equip you with the knowledge of how to deal with them. I was so keen I was the first one at the meeting point and nearly got back in the landy when they told me a grizzly bear had been seen on the trail we were taking, earlier that day! The 3 hours spent on this walk, with the rangers, was just great and I was the most attentive and enthusiastic participant ever! They taught us how to use bear spray properly, how to look for signs of bear activity on the tree etc, and how to recognise bear pooh! They also dispelled a lot of myths about bears and taught us how they live, feed and operate. This was such a useful experience for me and it has definitely reduced my daft fears! For the next few days, poor Gav had to listen to my new found knowledge about bears!

We had heard that there were numerous wildfires in British Columbia and that it had been declared a state of emergency. We decided we needed to head back, and if we could not, we were going to drop into the USA and go to Seattle from there. We stopped to camp at a beautiful lake in Clearwater-where we could smell the smoke and saw helicopters with huge buckets of water, attempting to control the fires a hundred miles or so away. We made it back to Vancouver and headed back to Spanish Banks, where we had wild camped on my birthday. Our favourite police officer turned up again on his quad bile with 2 newbies and we again chatted for a while and he told us we were OK there for a couple of nights. We had a BBQ here with Penny and Dane, and said our farewells to them, hoping to see them again one day somewhere in the world. We visited Granville island market and then spent our final night wild camping and Matt from Vancouver joined us, a lad we met through facebook who has just bought a landy and wants to do an overland trip.

We headed off the next day and crossed the border into USA at the Peace arch. It took 3 hours in total, and is known to be a busy crossing. We will spend a couple of days just outside of Seattle, getting our stuff together for our Alaska cruise and trying to explain to Ruby why we are leaving her again!!

We have only scraped the surface of Canada and absolutely love it. The scenery, the people and the lifestyle have been incredible and we want to return one day and see a lot more.
 

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Brief return to  Blighty.........Bears, whales, wolves and cougars......Oooh I could crush a grape!

6/19/2017

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We flew back to the UK from Santiago with Air Mexico, via Mexico city, which took us about 2 days with an 18 hour stopover in Mexico. We treated ourselves to the first class lounge in Mexico and spent almost the full 18 hours there, making good use of the shower and complimentary snacks and drinks! We had a lovely time back in England, basing ourselves in London with David, my brother and heading up North to visit my Mum and Dad and Gav`s family. On our last weekend a gang of lovely friends came down to spend time with us-Julie, Sarah, Sue, Lindsay, Lucy and Ros and we had a great time! We spent a disproportionate amount of time in Wetherspoons , even downloading the Wetherspoons app for our phones so we could order from the bar from our seats!! We had a wonderful curry in Brick Lane and a walk around St Catherine`s dock. We also REALLY enjoyed some great British food whilst at home-a full English breakfast, a Christmas dinner,  Sunday dinner and fish and chips!

The time in England flew past too quickly and it was soon time to head off again for the second phase of our trip. We were due to catch the Easybus  to Gatwick airport at 6.30am on the Monday morning. The 6.30 bus did not show and we eventually bordered the 7am one. This got us to Gatwick at 8.50am for our 10.10 flight and this earned us a telling off from the lady at the check in desk, even though we had already checked in on line. We looked suitably ashamed of ourselves (!) and hurried through security and straight to the gate for boarding.

9 hours later and we landed in Vancouver. We caught the skytrain into the City centre and a taxi to our hotel. Our budget hotel. Whilst the hotel itself was perfectly adequate, we had not realised that it was in one of the dodgiest areas in Vancouver, East Hastings Street. We soon realised this when we took a walk. It was incredibly sad to see so many people clustered in a few streets who clearly had a huge range of problems including homelessness, significant alcohol and drugs use and mental health issues. Neither of us had ever witnessed such a sad sight, in such a volume, before. People who were clearly in a desperate state, moving around as though they were zombies due to the nature of the drugs they were taking. This impacted on us so much we read up about the area on line. We walked to Gastown and Canada place, where we watched the sea planes land and saw one of the huge cruise ships that leaves here for Alaska.

The following day, we caught the ferry to Vancouver island which was to be our home for the next 4 weeks. The ferry ride was beautiful-as we headed towards the green, tree clad hills and rugged coast of Vancouver island. We had arranged to do a voluntary placement for 5 weeks at a vineyard in Cowichan valley. Following the ferry crossing, we caught the local bus to Cowichan valley and were met at the bus stop by Mark, our host. He took us the short ride to the vineyard, Rocky Creek, in a beautiful location overlooking the hills. Mark and Linda are the owners of Rocky Creek and we also met Kathryn and Mikkel, 2 other volunteers from Denmark. We were really impressed with Rocky Creek and Mark and Linda`s passion for the wine and their business. They started making the wine in the basement of their last house, before moving to their current location, which they have built up with the help of friends and family. Everything is grown on the island, they have 4 vineyards and the grapes are handpicked, processed and hand bottled on site. They hope to pass the business on to one of their daughters , who is studying wine making at University, one day. They have won more awards than any other vineyard on the island and we were very proud to have worked for them for a short while.

The next 5 weeks were spent working at Rocky Creek and we had such a wonderful experience. We carried out a variety of tasks including gardening, bottling the wine (over 2,000 bottles), working with the grapes in the vineyard (shooting is the technical term!), washing glasses for the tasting room and working at a stall on a huge outdoor market. I got off to a typical Jen start, as full of enthusiasm on day 1, I ended up falling over with the hosepipe, which I switched on and proceeded to douse myself with water! Rocky Creek is a small family owned and run vineyard and in addition to growing grapes and producing a variety of wine, there was a tasting room in the beautiful gardens at the back of the house. Tour groups and individuals visited on a daily basis and we got to meet some of them when working in the gardens. We slept in a caravan at the back of the vineyard and ate in the house with Mark and Linda and the others. Mark was an excellent cook and we were treated to a huge variety of really tasty dinners each evening!

We both really enjoyed the gardening-to the extent that when we visited other gardens on our days off, I was pulling up the occasional weed! We spent some time bottling the wine, by hand, with 4 of us working as a team on the process. This was great fun, my job was to cork the wine after Mark had bottled it-and I used a machine that pressed the cork into the bottle. Gav`s job was to heat seal the bottles. We bottled about 2,000 bottles and it was really satisfying to see them packaged and ready for tasting and sale. We had some great chats during the process and also the occasional dance when becoming a little stir crazy after bottling so much wine!

 At this time of year, the grapes are still in the process of growing and were absolutely tiny. Our job in the vineyard was to work up each row of vines and snap off shoots that either had no grapes growing or not many grapes growing on them. This will then give the other grapes the chance to grow bigger. It was repetitive work and we covered a lot of vines across the 3 vineyards in different locations. We worked in sunshine and absolute pouring rain, with our waterproofs on and our ipods on to distract us from the repetitive nature of the work.

Gav and I spent a day at a Street market in Victoria, staffing a stall for the winery. We both really enjoyed talking to the customers and I (Jen) was pouring small samples so they could taste. We sold quite a lot of wine and I ended up with purple fingers from so much wine pouring! We were also selling the wine that we had helped to bottle a few weeks earlier, which was a great experience.

Canada is bear country and I had already watched some you tube videos when back in the UK, about how to stay safe from bears! Very early on morning 1, when walking to the toilet from the caravan, I realised I had not checked about the bear situation with Mark and Linda! One of the tips to prevent a bear encounter, is to make a noise, so I started to click my fingers in a bit of a rhythm as I walked the few hundred metres to the loo! Later I checked with Linda that there have been no bears around the vineyard so no more musical trips to the toilet were needed! A week or so later, we were out in a hire car and saw our first bear by the side of the road! We stopped a reasonable distance away and watched in awe as it crossed the road a couple of times, before ambling back into the forest. There are between 9 and 11,000 black bears on Vancouver island, alongside wolves and cougars! I have read all of the safety leaflets and purchased some bear bells, which allegedly will let the bears know I am coming, so they will avoid me!!

We got 2 days off a week and I think we appreciated them more because we were working.  We visited Victoria, the capital of the island and really enjoyed exploring it`s coast, including cattle point and the quaint floating houses and restaurants at Fisherman`s wharf ; the lovely Beacon hill Park which hugs the coastline and has the world`s tallest totem pole; the imposing British Colombia Parliament buildings and the fantastic  Royal BC museum which was so interesting and informative about First nations people, the natural world and the history of BC. We went on a whale watching trip from Cowichan Bay and were delighted to see a few orca (Killer)whale families, with young whales about 3 month old who would come right out of the water as they were swimming. We also spotted bald eagles, native birds of prey to North America. We also visited the imposing Cathedral Grove rainforest, where the trees were dense and  massive; and the rugged Pacific rim national Park where we visited the huge beaches which are lined with dense rainforests and full  of huge pieces of driftwood from trees. It was a beautiful place and we did some short walks through the forest onto the beaches , whilst taking care to make enough noise so the bears, wolves and cougars would avoid us!! There were notices up about the bears, wolves and cougars and I have all the safety leaflets so am now an expert in how to avoid or deal with an encounter!  We also drove into Tofino and went to the wonderful botanic gardens which led down to the shore.

So where is Ruby whilst we have been working and enjoying ourselves on Vancouver island? She is still sailing the high seas! She left Chile on the 12th May, apparently got delayed somewhere near Panama, changed ships in Mexico and is still at sea!! She is due to arrive in Vancouver on the 23rd May and we hope to get her back the following week. Our wonderful friend Dane, who we met in South America, and lives and works in shipping in Vancouver has handled the whole shipping process for us and will help us get Ruby back!

We are due to leave the wonderful Rocky Creek on the 25th May, when we will head back to Vancouver for a week. We will spend my birthday and Canada day there, before heading North towards the Alaskan border. It will be great to see her again and get going on the next phase of this epic road trip!

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Did the earth move for you?!!..........Vibrant Valparaiso..............Hasta Luego South America!

5/6/2017

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Whilst Ruby was getting her clutch fixed, we stayed in a fantastic airbnb on the outskirts of Santiago. It was a small house, with a lovely yard, owned by a wonderful lady who lived next door, Teresita. This was our best ever airbnb experience! Teresita had filled the fridge full of goodies for us and she popped round most nights with something that she had baked that day. We had cakes, pies, puddings, empanadas and other delights! We were invited for Sunday lunch with Teresita and her two grown up children, Cristian and Marcella. We had a wonderful time-filled with meat from the parilla and lots of good wine. The following weekend, we reciprocated and invited them for a traditional English Sunday dinner-consisting of roast beef, yorkshire puddings, roast spuds, vegetables and gravy! Then for pudding-we had scones with jam and cream! They loved it! Gav did all of the cooking (he is a fab cook) and Jen was on waitressing and cleaning up!

We had heard that this time of year was an active one for earthquakes in Chile and a flashlight had been provided at the airbnb, kept beside the bed. We were woken one night by the bed shaking like crazy-it was our first earthquake-the epicentre being off the coast of Valparaiso some 100km away. However a couple of days later-we experienced a much bigger one. At around 7.30pm-the whole house and floor began to shake for about a minute! Teresita called us outside after it had finished. It is safer to stay indoors whilst the ground shakes and then evacuate outside once it has stopped. It measured a 7.1 on the Richter scale and was reported across the world. Thank goodness there were no deaths-as Chile is very well prepared to deal with earthquakes. Teresita showed us her emergency box outside-containing clothing, food, water and other emergency supplies in case of a big devastating earthquake. She told us how she and her family had to camp in the garden of the house for a month in 1985 after a huge devastating earthquake. There were a few tremors over the following days but nothing as big as before.

We collected Ruby from the mechanics, where they had replaced the clutch and they did a great job cleaning her too. All of the dirt and dust from the last year was washed and polished away, as we prepared her for her second shipping experience! We had a great shipping agent in Chile, called Ronald and he came with us and our shipping partners to the port of San Antonio, where we did all the paperwork and left Ruby to be put into a container! We were lucky to find 2 Canadians who were shipping home to Canada, to share a 40 foot container with. We had also booked a high cube, so Ruby could be driven straight in without having to remove the rooftent.

After saying farewell to Rubes, Gav and I caught the bus from San Antonio to Valparaiso, a huge city on the coast. We were staying on the 13th floor of an apartment just outside the City. As we were in the taxi heading to the apartment, the taxi began to shake! " Terremoto" (earthquake) said the taxi driver! Wonderful and we were heading to a 13th floor apartment!!  There were a few shakes that night but nothing major!

Valparaiso was a great city to spend a few days. It is quite a dirty chaotic city-however its numerous hills with the colourful buildings and street art gives it such a charm. We took 2 walking tours here and then wandered around ourselves for another day or so.

Finally we returned to Santiago to spend our final days in South America. We did some sightseeing and got our bags ready for our flights. Whilst Ruby heads for Vancouver, we are going via the UK for a couple of weeks to see family, friends and stock up on the things we have missed such as Yorkshire teabags! We will then fly to Vancouver and be reunited with Ruby-before heading North to Alaska.

South America has been a brilliant experience and has been so very kind to us. We have had no problems whatsoever, in fact have been overwhelmed by the wonderful, warm hearted people. Next phase-North and Central America!
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Mellow in Mendoza.........cycling the vineyards.......Adieu Argentina

4/17/2017

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We made our way to Mendoza and camped at the Suizo camp site, next door to Roger and Anita, our lovely Swiss friends. We completely wound down here and ending up staying for 22 days-our longest stay anywhere yet! The weather was perfect, the company great and we really liked the campsite. Mendoza`s top industries are the production of olive oil and wine. The region around Greater Mendoza is the largest wine producing area in Latin America.

We spent some time in Mendoza wandering around the town and doing a walking tour, however most of our time here was spent relaxing on the camp site! We spent a day on bicycles, touring the vineyards in Maipu with Roger and Anita, what a great day! We started out at our first vineyard, Vina el Cerno, a family owned Bodega. We expected the amounts of wine for tasting would be quite small however we were immediately proved wrong, as we all got 3 large glasses almost full on our first tasting! Well, the four of us were tipsy after the first glass. Roger began singing falsetto (I like to ride my bicycle-Queen); Anita was crossing herself and muttering "Oh Jesus" and Gav and I were laughing at them!

Back on the bikes and we weaved our way to the next bodega, Tempus Alba, where we decided that it would be a good idea to have some lunch before drinking more wine! We then finished with Trapiche winery, which is the largest exported brand  of wine from Argentina, exporting its wines to more than 80 countries worldwide. Here we had a tour and finished with 3 more "tasting" glasses of wine each!

After the bodegas, we went to a wonderful olive oil production shop, where we wanted a break from the alcohol! We tasted some delicious olive tapenades, olive oils, malbec and chardonnay honey and then chocolate and liqueurs! (More alcohol-oh no!!!)

We somehow made our way back to the cycle hire shop-who promptly ushered us into their "bar" and produced more wine for us to drink! We managed to get back onto our bus to Mendoza and the campsite, and slept very well that night!
We really enjoyed the company of the campsite dogs. One worthy of mention was Simona, an overweight labrador, who was absolutely brilliant at football! She could dribble it, control it etc and we named her Maradonna after the other overweight great Argentinean footballer!

The time came for Roger and Anita to leave and this was definitely the last time we would see them on this trip. We finished in style with 2 nights of asado (BBQ) and a crazy night of pisco sours and karaoke, at the campsite, singing along to Jen`s ipod.  Gav was the DJ, whilst Anita, Roger and I belted out the cheesy greats such as Sex bomb, Dancing Queen, and Mamma Mia. We were sad to say goodbye the next day but know we will see them again one day.

A few days later, Frank and Sharon from Australia turned up in their landy-we had been facebook friends for a couple of years so it was great to meet them in real life! We spent our last couple of days in Mendoza with them and, again, had a wonderful last night BBQ (minus the singing!)

We dragged ourselves away from Mendoza and crossed the pass into Argentina at Paso Internacional Los Libertadores. From the Argentine side the route to the pass is a slow, gentle incline until entering a tunnel at approximately 3,200 meters (10,500 feet) elevation. On the Chilean side the slope has a far higher grade, and the road descends down a long series of switchbacks to make the descent. It was snowing when we got to the border, which was a huge contrast to the warm weather of Mendoza. The border was fairly easy to cross. Both the Argentine and Chilean officials were in the same building-so we went from one to another to complete the paperwork and then had the car searched by Chilean officials. We had heard that they could spend hours searching the car, insisting that they inspect every nook and cranny. We were lucky and they only looked in a few boxes before sending us on our way.

As we left Argentina, we reflected that this was our last time in the country on this trip. We had first entered Argentina in October of last year and then spent a lot of time in the country, as well as zig zagging to and from  Chile and entering Uruguay for a couple of weeks. We have loved Argentina-for many reasons but mostly because of the incredibly friendly people. We have been overwhelmed with offers of food, lifts and just the great nature and spirit of the people. We have felt no animosity from anybody about the Falklands (Malvinas), although a lot of people feel very strongly about the islands. Those who asked our opinions about the Falklands (Malvinas) did so with interest and not hostility. We want to return one day as there is so much of this great country we have not yet seen.

So, Ruby zig zagged her way down the mountains heading towards Los Andes, where we planned to spend the night, before heading into Santiago. As we got to the outskirts of Los Andes, Ruby decided she would go no further and her clutch stopped working! We could run the engine, however could not change gear and were stuck in the road. We were happy that we had made it down the winding mountain roads but felt a bit stuck! Again, the wonderful South American people came to the rescue and we got a tow to a nearby hotel from a lovely young man and his Dad, in a small jeep!

We left Ruby at the hotel and went into Santiago, as we had an appointment at the US embassy to apply for a 6 months US visa. We already have our 3 months ESTA, however realised that this would not be sufficient, given the US visa "clock" would start to tick as soon as we entered Alaska, giving us only a short time to drive up North and then transit back though Canada and return and explore the US. We had completed our application on line and had to go into the embassy for an interview. We were delighted when our visa application was approved. To celebrate, we went to see the film "Train spotting 2". It was in English with Spanish subtitles, but how you capture the wonderful dialogue in subtitles, I`m not sure, and some people left the cinema before the film ended looking a little bemused!

We returned to collect Ruby in a pickup truck and she entered her last South American capital city kicking and screaming!! She is currently with the mechanic and we hope to get her back soon. We are staying in a wonderful airbnb on the outskirts of Santiago, with great parking and when we get her back we need to clean and pack our things ready for shipping from Valparaiso to Canada.

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Is the volcano erupting?...........The island of Chiloe.....howling with the huskies

3/15/2017

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We left Cochamo and the lovely people we had met at the land rover meeting and headed to Puerto Varas which is on the shore of Lago Llanquihue  and overlooked by two volcanoes, Osorno and Calbuco. Varas  is a very picturesque town with a lot of colonial German architecture. We found a wonderful hostel where we met some lovely English people-Tabitha and Nick from Around the world in 8000 days, who had retired at 40 and were now travelling permanently and Rachel, Chris and their 2 children from My family travels who were backpacking around the world for a year. We really enjoyed  their company and spent a lot of time chatting!

The area is renowned for all sorts of extremes such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes. Every day at noon, the warning siren is tested, sending an eerie wailing sound across town. At 6.30 one morning, we woke suddenly to the sound of the siren. I leapt out of the rooftent, certain that we were about to be covered in volcanic lava and ran into the hostel. The owner and her staff were in the kitchen cooking breakfast, when I burst in in my PJs loudly asking "Is the volcano erupting?"! They informed me that it was the siren form the fire station we had heard, so I went back to bed, telling the other campers that we were all safe!

We spent a couple of days on the island of Chiloe, South America`s second largest island, catching a feryy from outside of Puerto Montt. We took a short boat trip at Punihuil to three small islands just off the coast which are home to Magellenic and Humboldt penguins. The Humboldt was the 9th species of penguin that we have seen this trip! Chiloe is also famous for its 150 wooden churches and chapels, 14 of which are UNESCO world heritage sites and we visited a few of them.
We then headed to Osorno for a catch up with Krystelle and Justin, a fab Aussie couple we had met on the Antarctic trip. They were working at a hostel and we spent a lovely couple of hours with them. Krystelle made us feel  right at home with homemade scones with jam and cream and copious amounts of tea!

We had also been in touch with our lovely Swiss friends, Roger and Anita, who told us they were in Pucon, near Volcano Villarica so we decided to go and meet them at the campsite. We had a rainy couple of days there with them, although we did not let it stop us enjoying a BBQ under both of our awnings. We only saw the volcano on our drive in as it was then under cloud for the 2 days we were there. Villarrica is still active and can spit out out lava and smoke.

We then all decided to head back into Argentina to escape the rain of Chile, and on the way we stopped at Las Llajas where our other lovely Swiss friends, Claudia and David (who we first met in Colombia) were working at a huskie and horse lodge. The owner had left them in charge for the weekend and we spent a brilliant weekend together. The farm was located at around 1500 metres in the Andes, which were dusted with snow. There were  around 20 beautiful husky dogs, who  lived in huge kennels in husky land! They work in Winter taking tourists on sledge trips. We loved them. Claudia and David let us feed them, which was amazing. They eat one meal a day and devour their food in about 20 seconds, bones and all! We had to enter each pen with 2, 3 or 4 dogs in, put the bowl down without them biting our fingers off in their haste to get to their food, make sure they don`t steal each other's food when they have finished and then take their empty bowls out. A few times a day they would all put their heads in the air and howl in unison, which was a haunting sound. One, Bart, was old and blind and was let out to exercise each day. He loved chewing on bones and once, whilst we had taken our eyes off him, ate a whole pair of gloves that he had found in the porch! He also ran into thongs when he was let loose, but had a wonderful time exploring! There was also a husky puppy called Zorita who also was let out to exercise and get fussed by everybody!  We had great weather for the 2 days and ate and drank outside admiring the spectacular views, chattering ten to the dozen! Gav and David went fishing and returned with a huge trout, which we ate for our tea. Although David managed to cut his finger with his fishing knife whilst he wrestled with the fish! This is the last time we will see Claudia and David this trip, as they are returning home soon and we will miss them as we have seen them a few times along the way. This was a great way to say goodbye though!

Now we plan to head to Mendoza, famous for its vineyards and wine tasting!

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Driving the Carretera Austral..........from shed to shed............the cat is under the table!

2/27/2017

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We left Argentina at Los Antiguos, crossing the border into Chile at Chile Chico. Again, the process was straightforward, although the Chilean customs agent wanted a really good look in a lot of the boxes in Ruby. She was very impressed  when she looked inside Gav`s boxes at his very neat packing (good spacial awareness so my mum says!) She was less impressed by the state of the packing in my boxes with stuff crammed everywhere!

After spending the night in Chile Chico, we began the drive North on the Carretera Austral. The Carretera Austral ranks amongst the world`s ultimate road trips and runs 1240 kilometres alongside national parks, forests, glaciers, farms, turquoise lakes and the Pacific ocean. Big portions of it are unpaved and part of the fun is trying to negotiate the large potholes and corrugations! We drove on rough road to Puerto Rio Tranquillo where we camped with tens of Chilean students, before catching a small boat trip to the marble caves (Capilla De Marmol). The boat took us on the beautiful clear waters of Lago General Carrera to the caves which are sculpted geological rock formations and we went inside some of them, marvelling at how smooth and colourful they were.

We drove to the National Park San Rafael and hiked to a viewpoint for the San Valentin glacier. The glacier dates back 30,000 years and was interesting to see. The drive there and back, however, was spectacular-with waterfalls, mountains and lakes along a rough dirt track.

Next we headed to Cerro Castillo, where we did a long day hike and climbed 1000 metres in the national park to a turquoise mountain lake and glacier. It was a tough but rewarding walk with great views of this part of Chile. And then the rain started. And went on and on and on for 7 days! We have experienced the Lake District in the rain, in England, but this rain beat that hands down!

We continued along the Carrera Austral, and could still appreciate the stunning scenery through the rain. We stayed in Coyhaique for two days on a campsite which had covered shelters with a table and bench in, similar to a garden shed! We put on our waterproofs and walked into town to get our laundry done and stock up on supplies from the supermarket. We then spent the rest of the 2 days in our shed, reading, playing yangtzee and watching films!

Continuing North, we headed into National Park Queulat. a beautiful  green forested national park on the shores of the Pacific. We found another campsite with a shed on the shore of the Pacific and spent a day or so there! And still it rained! We moved on to La Junta, where we visited a lovely mechanics to have the bush on the front shock absorber replaced (these dirt roads are tough on Ruby!) and we wild camped at Lago Rosselot in a beautiful spot next to the lake. We moved on to Chaiten, close to the volcano which erupted in 2008 for a month with a 20km high column of ash. We wild camped for 2 nights on the shores of the Pacific and black volcanic sand, living underneath Ruby`s awning, as still it rained!

We reached a tiny place called Caleto Gonzalo, where we wild camped before catching the 7am ferry to Hornopiren, a beautiful journey that took us across lakes and between mountains. We then drove to a stunning small village on the shore of the Pacific ocean called Cochamo where we were due to meet with a small group of landy owners from Argentina and Chile for the weekend. This had been arranged by Jorge, the mechanic we had met in Puerto Madryn in Argentina. We had such a good weekend with everyone. Alongside us, there were 3 other landys from Holland, Austria and Switzerland and we all camped at the back of the house where the weekend was being hosted. All the other landys were from Argentina and Chile and we received such a warm and lovely welcome from them. The weekend was spent eating, drinking, chatting and laughing! The food was fantastic and they barbecued a whole sheep and goat one evening on the open fire. On another day we had a traditional dish called curanto from an island called Chiloe. It was a mixture of shellfish, pork sausages, potatoes and dumplings which were all buried in a hole in the ground with stones heated in a bonfire, covered in leaves and left to cook for a few hours! It was great to watch them prepare it and then to eat it! The people were simply great and we had such a giggle with them. One man from Argentina learnt English many years ago when he was child and kept saying in perfect Queen`s English " the cat is under the table", a phrase he had been taught a school. For some reason after a few drinks this became the funniest thing ever and we would yell at him across the garden, "Where is the cat?" and he would shout back "under the table" and we would all laugh our heads off! (You had to be there!). Jorge had decorated the garden with flags from all of the countries present and he also lined us all up in our landys to have a group photo. We spent 3 nights there and left with a lot of new friends and a few pounds heavier!
 
 

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Torres De Paine....Glacier Perito Moreno...."Let`s turn the music down" said no Argentinean ever!

2/12/2017

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We headed North from Ushuaia  and camped the night outside a small hotel at San Sebsatian before the border with Chile. Chile are very strict about the food produce you are allowed to take across the border, so in the morning we had a 6 egg omelette with onion to use everything up that we know they would confiscate! We crossed easily over the border into Chile, getting new Chilean stamps in our passports and temporary import paperwork for Ruby.

We spent a couple of days wild camping outside Punta Arenas, however the town held little of interest for us and we moved on to Puerto Natales, the gateway to the National Park Torres De Paine. Here we stocked up on groceries and then headed straight for the national park, planning to camp at a lovely campsite just outside. Unfortunately it was full and we ended up outside the rangers station at the entrance to the park after hours. We knew it was OK to camp here in the car park, so we put the roof tent up and climbed inside. We had not really had huge issues with the infamous Patagonian wind to date, but that was about to change! The wind was wild and howled around the roof tent, with us rocking around inside! There was no way we would be able to sleep up there and we were also worried it could damage the roof tent. At midnight, we were outside in our PJs wrestling against the wind to get the roof tent down! Unfortunately, we don`t have a system whereby we can sleep inside the landy, so Gav made me a little bed  by folding down the front seat and I lay very curled up over the second and front row and Gav slept in the driver`s seat! We managed some sleep and woke up early, paid and entered the National Park where we headed straight for the official campsite where there was good wind protection for the roof tent! We also had our own armadillo, who was very tame, who we called Arthur!

Torres De Paine is a beautiful national park in Chilean Patagonia full of mountains, turquoise lakes, icebergs, glaciers, rivers and forests. The Torres del Paine are the distinctive three granite peaks of the Paine mountain range or Paine Massif. They extend up to 2,500 meters above sea level, and are joined by the Cuernos del Paine. We spent a lovely few days doing some short walks, as Gav`s ankle is still healing and driving around the park. On our last morning-we were in bed when we heard a thumping sound at the front of the landy. We thought it was a vehicle parked in front of us and I was merrily cursing them for the noise, when we suddenly also felt the landy shake. Gav got out to find a southern crested caracara bird (bird of prey) on the bonnet, tearing  the rubber from our windscreen wipers! Gav shooed it away but it had managed to take both of them! Luckily we had replacements and fitted them before we left!

We crossed back into Argentina and headed to El Calafate, a small town which serves as the gateway to Los Glaciares National park which houses the Perito Moreno glacier. We found a lovely campsite and stayed a few days, doing some checks on Ruby and replacing the UJs on the rear prop shaft. We also met a lovely British couple called Polly and Sam, driving a mazda Bongo, lovingly referred to as " the Bong-alow"! We also visited the national park and Perito Moreno glacier. The ice formation is 250 square kilometres and 30 kilometres in length and was a spectacular sight.  The terminus of the glacier is 3 miles wide, with an average height of 74 metres above the water of Lago Argentina. There were a series of long walkways, at different levels, overseeing the glacier which meant  you could view it fairly closely from a variety of angles. The sounds were also interesting-with it creaking, rumbling and crashing, as pieces caved off into the surrounding water. We witnessed some huge pieces break off and crash into the water-leaving multiple pieces of floating ice. We spent a few hours here just staring and listening to the glacier.

After leaving El Calafate, we had planned to head to El Chalten and spend a few days hiking in the Southern part of the Los Glaciares national park, in the famous Fitzroy mountain range. We arrived there, however, and it was incredibly windy and we drove around a few camping spots to see if there was any wind protection. We could not find any, and still scarred from the windy night before we entered Torres, we decided to keep driving and save the park until another time!

We slept at a sheltered camp spot in Tres Lagos and then headed 350 miles to the last town before the Chilean border, Los Antiguos, set on a stunning turquoise lake. We headed for the municipal campsite and were pleased to find there was space and that it was relatively quiet. That was until midnight when the music went on and it was really loud until about 5am the following morning! I am now generalising, however it has been our general experience that the people in Argentina like loud music and also want to generously make sure that you can hear it very loudly too!! After an interrupted nights sleep, I woke up fairly cranky and cross with some of the people on the campsite. It was not too long before the music began again, this time from about 3 or 4 different groups of people! However, within a short time, we realised that we can forgive the people here such a lot because of their incredible warmth and friendliness. A lady bought us a pile of cherries to eat (this town is the cherry capital of Argentina) and then a lovely couple bought us some empanadas over and later a huge sausage sandwich! They were also fascinated by Ruby and we did the guided tour of her and posed for many photos with them! "Now turn that music down!" Said no Argentinean ever!!

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Post Antarctica blues......driving ruta 3............the end of the world....Ruby meets Fram!

1/27/2017

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It took us a week to leave Buenos Aires, following our Antarctica trip, and we reminisced about the wonderful trip we had had and the great people we had met. We set off again in the second week of January heading towards Ushuaia (for the second time, but this time with Ruby), the most Southerly City in the world along Ruta 3.We made it in 10 days, covering 2,500 miles along very long straight roads! We spotted a lot of wildlife along the way, scores of guanacos, hundreds of wild ostrich type birds, armadillos and road runners.

Along the way we had some great stops: we drove to Balneario el Condor, where we wild camped on the cliff tops, which houses the biggest parrot colony in the world. It has over 35,000 nests in its cliff faces and we watched in awe as thousands of parrots flew around and burrowed into their nests in the cliff face. It was incredibly busy when we got there as it is peak holiday season in Argentina, however we had the place to ourselves after sunset and had great views over the Atlantic coast and of the parrots from our roof tent. In the middle of the night the wind really picked up and we were both awoken as it whipped around the roof tent. We decided to move at around 3am, running around outside in the wind in our PJs, winding the tent down and laughing manically (well Jen was!) We drove a few hundred metres down the road to a more sheltered spot and managed to grab a few hours more sleep, waking up to a calm morning!

We also briefly stopped in Puerto Madryn  to get a belt tensioner and serpentine belt for Ruby from a wonderful  landy mechanic called Jorge. He was a lovely man and we gave him some landy gifts that we had received from other people along the way. We had to go to the ATM to get some money out to pay him, and when we returned-he rushed around his garage pulling out loads of gifts for us from stickers, to a large chopping board which he had made with "Landrover Patagonia" etched on it!
We visited Reserva Punta Loma, home to sea lion colony and cormorant rookery and watched the sea lions on the beach. We also visited a small town called Gaiman, which has a strong Welsh heritage from the 1800s. We treated ourselves to tea and scones in a traditional Welsh teashop.6 cups of tea and half a dozen scones later-we rolled ourselves out!

We drove a great gravel road to Cabo Rasa where we camped for the night. The following day we were driving and spotting wildlife along the way and we stopped for Gav to take some photos. Unfortunately, he misjudged the  drop out of the landy to the floor and ended up badly twisting his ankle, which swelled up like  balloon! I took over all of the driving and helped him to get to the loos etc at the campsite for the next couple of days! That afternoon we went to Cabo Dos Bahias, which had a large colony of magellanic penguins which we walked  (Gav hobbled) through on a raised walkway.

We also camped at a few petrol stations along the way. In one we camped by the air machine, expecting that no one would want to fill their tyres with air during the night! Wrong! There was a steady succession of night time visitors to the air machine, resulting in an interrupted night`s sleep! The following morning we showered in the garage, as a lot of them have proper showers. Now maybe it was because I was tired from the night before or maybe it was just me, I managed to leave the knickers I had taken off in the leg of my trousers , whilst wearing clean ones after my shower. As I went into the busy garage to return the shower key, my pants fell out of the bottom of my trouser leg!! With skill akin to that of David Beckham, I kicked them into the air, caught them and swiftly shoved them in my wash bag!

On the way to Ushuaia, we had to cross the border into Chile and back into Argentina again, with all the border processes that involves. We got stamped out of Argentina, gave in our temporary import permit for Ruby, got stamped into Chile and received a temporary import permit for Ruby for Chile.. We had to repeat it all in reverse some hundred or so miles later when we went back into Argentina.

At last we arrived in Ushuaia, the end of the world! It is flanked on one side by the Andes and the Southern ocean on the other. Here we met a fantastic British (and Yorkshire) couple, Amy and Guy, in their landy, Hugo! They have been travelling South from Alaska over the last 18 months so are in the final few months of their trip. We all wild camped in the car park overlooking the Beagle channel and then spent the next couple of nights camping in the Tierra Del Fuego National Park, where we did some small hikes (Gav rested his ankle) and a couple of great BBQs!

We sadly said goodbye to them as they needed to head North and Gav ad I wild camped for a couple of days on Estancia Harberton, about 50 miles South East of Ushuaia, taking in the scenery. Here we were accused of stealing a motor biker's  stash of firewood, when all poor Gav had done was gather firewood he spotted lying around for our fire! It turned out that the biker had gathered it  and left it in sort of a pile, although it was nowhere near his tent. We could not stop laughing after he purposely strode over to  us saying "have you taken my firewood?" before marching off and collecting  more!

We returned to Ushuaia for a couple of days, as we were awaiting the return of MV Fram ,our wonderful Antarctica ship. We wanted to introduce her to Ruby so she knows where we spent Christmas and New Year without her!  The first night we spent back in the car park overlooking the Beagle channel, however it was so noisy that we decide to find another spot for night 2. We found a great spot about 5km out of town on some cliffs overlooking Ushuaia and  the Beagle channel. We knew the Fram was due in early morning so we expected to see it in port. It was a much quieter spot until about 5.30am when I heard a loud thump. I had no idea what it was however about 10 minutes later, a woman knocked on our roof tent and shouted.  I opened the flap and she told us someone had had an accident. When we got out and went to look-a man had driven his van over the side of the cliff , although thank goodness it had not gone all the way down. The police and ambulance were on their way and a few people were helping so there was nothing we could do. He was stretchered into the ambulance and off he went to hospital. And then, under the morning sunshine, the Fram appeared around the corner, sailing towards us down the Beagle channel! We got some pictures of Ruby and Fram and then drove back into Ushuaia , following the Fram down the channel!

What a morning! Now we will start to head North towards the beautiful  national park of Torres del Paine.
 
 

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Prince William`s landy..........Christmas eve in South Georgia......Antarctica ....4,052 miles across the sea and 65.11 degrees South.....the polar plunge!

1/5/2017

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We flew from Buenos Aires to Ushuaia with our fellow passengers on a charter flight, taking about 3 and a half hours. On arrival, we had about 3 hours to spend in Ushuaia before boarding the ship. Ushuaia is regarded as the Southernmost City in the world, located on a wide bay with a mountain range to the North and the Beagle channel to the South. We will be returning here with Ruby, as we plan to drive down when we collect her from Buenos Aires, so we spent most of the time taking photographs of our wonderful ship-MV Fram which was waiting for us anchored in the harbour. We also spotted Houdini-a white van belonging to Jason and Maria of van nomads and left a note on the windscreen, hoping we could meet up for a few minutes. We last saw these two in Ecuador, they are driving from New York to Ushuaia, so were at the end of their journey. We were delighted to meet up with Maria before we boarded the ship and she waved us on our way!

Neither of us had ever been on a "cruise" before and did not know what to expect. We knew that it was not going to be a mainstream cruise, the entertainment was going to be provided by wonderful Mother nature and this suited us both down to the ground. We were so excited to board the MV Fram, named after the ship that carried Roald Amundsen to the south pole before Scott. She was beautiful. The observation lounge had comfortable sitting areas at the top of the ship and large panoramic windows, which gave us incredible views of nature. The huge restaurant provided the same amazing views. Our Captain, Rune Andreassen, who we later labelled Captain fantastic, welcomed us on board and introduced us to some of the crew, who we grew to know and love over the next few weeks. We then had our first fantastic meal and later settled down in the observation lounge as we headed out of the Beagle channel. I was hyper excited and nearly delirious when I spotted whales blowing and breaching not far from the boat. I lost all power of intelligent speech, shrieked "Animals" and caused the first of many stampedes across the ship as people ran to spot them!

The following day was spent at sea as we headed towards the Falkland Islands. We had a daily programme delivered to our cabin each evening by our wonderful cleaner, Jose. On sea days-there would be a series of lectures or talks delivered by our inspirational expedition team and in between we would fit in eating, chatting and going out on deck to spot the wildlife. On our first sea day we saw a lot of sea birds following the boat, such as the Black- browed albatross and the giant petrel.

We then arrived at the Falkland Islands,300 miles to the East of the South American continent  and 580 miles North of the Antarctic. The Falklands consists of two large islands, East and West and 740 small islands and islets. Our first stop was West  Point which lies off the north-west tip of West Falkland. The ship anchored and we were taken to shore in a series of small polar cirkel boats. We did a small hike to Devil`s nose where we saw the beautiful landscape of the cliffs and our first of many penguins! We saw Rockhopper penguins, many of whom were looking after their new born chicks or incubating their eggs. It was a privilege to get close to them and watch, as they fed their chicks, protected them and generally went about their daily life. Amongst them was a large number of Black-browed albatrosses who were also feeding their chicks or incubating their eggs.

There were a couple of land rovers (one formally belonged to the governor of the Falklands and still had the attachment on the bonnet for the flag) which were transporting those who struggled to walk, up and down the hill. We got chatting to their lovely drivers, Alan and Jacqui, who kindly invited us into their house which is the oldest house on the Falklands. We went inside and found our expedition team secretly having tea and a selection of homemade cakes! We were invited to join them and had the best cup of tea since leaving home-PG tips! 3 cups later, we had to leave and Jacqui very kindly packaged me up some tea bags! We will most certainly stay in touch with these lovely people and their face book page is West Point island-Falklands. That afternoon we had our second landing of the day at Carcass island-where we did a 10km walk to and from Leopards beach. The scenery was stunning with beautiful white sandy beaches and we were rewarded with a number of Gentoo and Magellanic penguins.

As a British overseas territory, the Falklands has many land rovers. We needed spare parts for Ruby so we had already been in contact with John from Falklands 4x4 located in Stanley, the most southern land rover dealership in the world! The following day, we docked at the pier in Stanley, the capital of the islands and whilst the other passengers went off on various trips or walks, Gav and I made our first stop at Falklands 4x4 and met John. John was brilliant to talk to and we bought a load of spares including shock absorbers, brake pads etc to squeeze into our luggage! We hope to stay in touch with John, who also shared some of his personal stories about being held hostage at Goose green in the Falkland's war, when he was a child. We were also really lucky to meet Tony. We got chatting as he had a defender land rover and we told him about our trip. Tony was so kind and offered to take us in his landy on a tour around Stanley. This was one of our highlights of the Falklands-it was great to have a locals viewpoint of the area and Tony was a knowledgeable and interesting man. We went all over the area and suddenly Tony told us that the landy we were in had belonged to Prince William when he was stationed on the island!! We went off road and visited some of the battle sites from the 1982 Falkland`s war-we saw Mount Longdon and  Mount Tumbledown, amongst others, and saw machine guns posts and remnants of weapons. We went to the Falklands war memorial and the statue of Maggie Thatcher, and all of the other main tourist spots as well as other places that Tony knew. We loved it and cannot thank Tony enough. He gave us a real insider's view to life on the islands. When I told Tony I had worked in criminal justice he took us to the prison on the island which houses 18 inmates! Before we got there we saw one of the prison guards who was supervising the prisoners who were doing community service. I had a great chat with him and enjoyed meeting him.

Stanley is full of British influences-with union jacks, red phone boxes, British style pubs and supermarkets full of British brands! We bought 2 cans of heinz baked beans (not seen since leaving the UK!) and a box of Yorkshire tea bags for our onward travels, much to the amusement of our fellow passengers!

 (We left the Falklands determined to return one day-as the scenery, wildlife and people are incredible. The following 2 days were at sea as we headed towards the island of South Georgia. We had some interesting lectures on seals , penguins, photography and the explorer Earnest Shackleton. We arrived at South Georgia on Gav`s 45h birthday. The scenery was breathtaking. We landed in the morning at Fortuna bay, named after one of the first whaling ships in the area. This was packed full of wildlife-including hundreds of fur seals and pups, wonderful king penguins and their chicks and elephant seals. There was a massive King penguin colony along the shore with literally thousands of penguins. We spent a couple of hours wandering along the beach, watching the amazing birds and animals. In the afternoon we landed at Stromness, home to 3 deserted whaling stations and King penguins, Gentoo penguins, fur and elephant seals. Gav had a great birthday, topped off in the evening with a cake and singing by the lovely waiting staff!

The next day we landed at St Andrews bay and this was one of our favourite spots from the whole trip. The scenery was spectacular-with the snow covered mountains of the Allardyce range, some 200metres high, towering over the beach. There were 100-150,0000 pairs of king penguins (the largest colony in the world), pottering around, swimming, making a noise, coming to take a closer look at us etc! There were also some massive elephant seals on the beach, waiting to moult, and burping and farting!! There were also plenty of fur seals, who can be aggressive with humans and who can cause some nasty injuries. We had been taught to raise our arms above our heads and shout stop-if they came for us. Sometimes people forgot and tried to run away but they would chase you, so it was not recommended! One went for me at St Andrews and Gav said he could hear my "STOP" from the other end of the beach and not only the seal stopped but all the other people as well, it was so loud!

That afternoon we all went out on the polar cirkel boats for a short ride around Ocean`s harbour where we saw the wreck of the Bayard, a ship built in Liverpool in 1864 and wrecked in South Georgia in 1911.The ship was covered in tussock grass and blue eyed shag birds.

We spent Christmas Eve at Grytviken on South Georgia and had a really special day. We visited the grave of Ernest Shackleton,  who we had learnt so much about on this trip and I toasted him with some whiskey as is custom and practice. We also explored the old whaling station there and saw penguins and fur seals (2 tried to get me this time!) The highlight of the day, for me, was the lovely Christmas Eve service that we all attended in the church at Grytviken. Norwegians celebrate on Christmas Eve and as it was a Norwegian boat with a Norwegian captain, this was a special day. We sang carols in three languages (English, Norwegian and German) and our captain led a short service. It was simple and very touching. We then spent the evening on the boat where we had a toast and a party and were visited by santa! In the middle of all this it had started to snow outside which added to the festive spirit.

 hlyThe following few days were largely spent at sea heading towards Antarctica. The nights started to lengthen until it did not really ever go dark and the scenery began to change with our first sightings of icebergs and ice covered islands. We had a quick stop at the Orcadas scientific station, an Argentinean base where the staff welcomed us and showed us around. They research continental glaciology, seismology, sea ice zone and meteorological observations. We also saw some chinstrap and Adelie penguins. We stopped next to Elephant island, where Shackleton`s men were marooned for 4 and a half months awaiting rescue, barley surviving living under 2 overturned lifeboats. That evening-the boat was surrounded by tens and tens of whales (fin whales-the second largest species) and Captain fantastic decided we would go off course and follow them, stopping when they stopped and observing their movements! The whole boat went crazy-we were all running around the decks shouting "whales", taking pictures and simply enjoying these majestic creatures. What a treat and we all applauded our fantastic Captain when we started back on course a couple of hours later.

We woke up to the most spectacular scenery I think I have ever seen as we came through the Antarctic Sound. It was full of huge tabular icebergs-some had penguins on-as we slowly glided through. We anchored outside Brown Bluff and this was to be our first landing on the Antarctic continent. As we stepped ashore I gave thanks for being lucky enough to have walked on all of the 7 continents on earth. This felt really special. The brown cliffs soared above us and the shore was home to numerous Adelie penguins, Gentoo penguins, kelp gulls and kelp petrels. Here some of our group witnessed a skua  (bird) attack and kill a penguin chick and we watched as it devoured it. We watched and laughed , as the penguins stole small stones from each other to place on their nests and squawk to try and keep other birds at bay.

The following day we  landed at 2 Antarctic islands-Half Moon bay where we saw our first and only Macaroni penguin and Deception Island, Whalers bay where there was another derelict whaling station. Here I was one of the thirty or so passengers out of 230 who did the polar plunge! This involved running into the sea in my swimming costume at icy cold temperatures and running out again! For good measure I also swam round  for a very short while, before getting out. It was the coldest I had ever known and Gav and my lovely new friend Anne, had to help me get dressed as I was completely numb! I then got on the polar boat back to the ship and had a series of cold, then lukewarm and then hot showers to warm myself up!

The next day might have been the best day ever! In the morning we anchored outside Cuverville Island. The weather was spectacular-bright blue skies and pure white snow and ice. The island was mountainous and covered in ice and glaciers. It was home to huge numbers of gentoo penguins-which we observed walking around on penguin highways (channels they have forged in the snow) and we also saw whales feeding and breaching from the shore. We also saw them after lunch from the boat and one swam right under the boat-and we could see it clearly as went past. We had another landing at Neko harbour in the afternoon. First we sailed through some more stunning scenery, into the Andvord bay which is surrounded on all sides by mountains and alpine glaciers. Neko harbour was nestled at the bottom of the bay  and we saw  more penguins and part of a glacier cave in.

We then went on a 2 hour polar boat cruise with 8 other people. It was brilliant and we got up close to our first leopard seal which was resting on a small iceberg. We also saw hump back whales which were blowing, feeding and flicking their tails out of the water as they deep dived. We were so close to them in the smaller boat and it was another one of our highlights. We then spotted the sister ship of the MV Fram, the larger Midnatsol. We knew it was coming to meet us to swap some supplies over. I asked Adrian, the guide if we could go and meet it in our tiny boat. He hesitated, then said shall we go? We yelled "Yes" and so our driver went racing towards this huge boat. When we  got there it towered over us and we did a loop around it, waving and shouting at their passengers who looked on in amazement at this small bunch of people  who were seemingly going bonkers!
We had a lovely BBQ ion board that evening which rounded off a superb day!

On New Year`s Eve day our names had been drawn to go kayaking at Port Lockroy! We had to wear special clothing and were dropped off at a tiny shore to get into the double kayaks. This was a superb experience, kayaking around the peaceful waters, spotting penguins nearby in the water and the odd crab seal on slabs of ice. We then landed at Port Lockroy, which has the penguin post office-the most Southerly one in the world where we sent some post cards and enjoyed watching more penguins and their chicks. There was also a small museum which recreated life when it was a British base.

Then Captain fantastic took us though the Lemaire channel-a spectacular 7 miles long and 1 mile wide channel full of steep cliffs, glaciers, and floating ice. It is often blocked by icebergs so we slowly navigated through huge blocks of ice and lots of floating ice. Nearly every [passenger was on deck admiring the wonderful scenery and marvelling at how close we would get to the icebergs and towering cliffs. and  We nearly made it through when we were thwarted at the end by some huge blocks of ice that were impossible for us to pass through. We did a 3 point turn and headed back. Then the captain stopped and they announced that we would all get a 30 minute small boat ride around part of the channel. This was an unexpected treat and we got up close to the ice bergs and went through the polar ice. To cap off a wonderful New Years eve, our superb crew put on a show and a party. They did a crew show, which contained a lot of talent and some less talented acts! Our expedition team did a George Michael tribute medley and I got pulled up to join in along with my lovely friend Anne and then poor Gav was pulled up too! We jitterbugged our way though the song, I completely threw myself into it and there is video  evidence somewhere! I also got pulled up by our waiters who were in drag dancing to pokerface, but thank goodness afer a few minutes everyone joined in and then we had such a great party! We danced, sang karaoke and marvelled at the light outside. The Captain joined us at 11.30 to count down the New Year with us. By this stage I was giddy as a kipper and much to everyone's amazement, as Captains are rather aloof figures, asked him to dance to Dancing Queen! How could he refuse? He was a great sport and woodenly danced for 5 minutes or so before making his way off the dance floor to do the countdown to midnight. What a way to see in the New Year, dancing and singing, whilst it is still light outside, in Antarctica! Oh not forgetting the whales who made an appearance outside!

The next couple of days were spent crossing Drake`s passage , a notorious rough crossing connecting the Atlantic and the Pacific. We were lucky and had a smooth crossing, arriving in Ushuaia relaxed, happy and tired! We had reached 65.11 degrees South (Just short of the South Pole-damn-will have to go back for that one!) and sailed 4,053 miles. This was our best trip ever! We cannot recommend Hurtigruten and her staff highly enough-they were outstanding and if you ever get the chance to go to Antarctica then just go, don`t think about the cost, just go because it is like nowhere else on earth. It is the highest, windiest, driest, coldest and  most beautiful continent. At times we had to pinch ourselves at what we were seeing and experiencing. We are now back in Buenos Aires, ready to collect Ruby and start the next part of our journey. Ruby is ready to get going again, we might need a little more persuasion as we are still dreaming about Antarctica!

Someof the pictures were taken by our brilliant ships photographer-Dominic Barrington.
 
 

Some of the pictures above were taken by our wonderful ship`s photographer-Dominic Barrington.
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    Ruby, Jen & Gav

    General blog about some of the prep we've done and kit we have bought for our trip in 2016

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