Colombia - the jewel of South America (just keep it quiet, ok?)

The slogan for the Colombian tourist organisation is 'the only risk is wanting to stay' and I found it to be very true indeed. Colombia was a country I wanted to visit, even before my South American adventure began, however I wasn't sure if it was a realistic option. Mainly because, being a woman travelling on my own, I wasn't sure how safe I would be. But as I travelled I seemed to meet more and more people who told me how amazing Colombia was - very beautiful and relatively safe. So I did a bit of research of my own, and talked to everyone I could that had been there and I learned that Colombia is really trying to boost their tourism industry by making their country more tourist friendly - having better services for travellers, making it safer and of course, through advertising. Another traveller told me that it has become a safer place, even just in the last few years due too a few of the bigger drug cartels being busted. So feeling emboldened by my solo travel thus far, I decided to do it. I'd read that travel by night bus was not the safest (as I write this, some friends I met while travelling Colombia just told me they got robbed at gunpoint, on a night bus between Cali and Ecuador) so I decided to fly around Colombia. Avianca offers a cheap air pass whereby if you book a flight in or out of the country with them, you can book domestic flights with them for just US$70 per flight (except for a couple of destinations that cost US$140). I did some reading up on Colombia and decided where I would go in the two weeks I had. I decided to fly into the capital, Bogota, but nothing to see or do really stood out for me, so I headed straight for Salento, via Pereira. Salento is a small town located in the Zona Cafetera (the coffee zone) and as anyone who knows me will contest - I love my coffee, and I am somewhat of a coffee snob. I stayed in a hostel in a wonderful old plantation house (funnily enough, called Plantation House) which was owned by a very chatty British man, and his Colombian wife. They also owned a small coffee farm down the road, and the owner will quite happily take you on a tour (for a small fee of course) where you can see the coffee growing, and when it's the right season, see it being picked, dried and ground. There was free coffee in the hostel (which I totally overdosed on) and you could buy it to take home. The town is a lovely rural town in a picturesque setting of rolling hills. The quaint town square is surrounded with brightly painted buildings, there are restaurants where you can get a three course almuerzo (set lunch) for 6,000 pesos (about US$3), the locals all say 'hola' to you as you walk the country lanes and it's in close proximity to the Valle de Cocora, where giant wax palms grow, surrounded by little else. To get there, you go to the main square, get in a Jeep Willy and when it fills up (often with about eight people), off you go. When it drops you off, it's a five hour hike to the top of the hill but it was worth it. I got to see some hummingbirds up close, drink some weird tea that was served with cheese, and the view on the walk down from the top was amazing - hundreds of these tall wax palms swaying in the breeze. Salento, funnily enough, was where I met quite a few chicks travelling on their own - the only place I'd come across more was in Brazil. It was also the place where I was introduced to the awesomeness that is the game of tejo - a game involving throwing a metal disc at clay embedded with gunpowder, which explodes if you hit it. I don't usually have a talent for sports of any kind - but for this, I did. I think I need to find a local team and join up. Is it an Olympic sport? I may have found my niche.

After Salento, I flew to Santa Marta on the Carribean Coast. I went straight from the airport to the small fishing village of Taganga, minus my bag because it got left behind again - thankfully only for about 5 hours this time. I spent five days in Taganga, mainly relaxing and doing the PADI open water scuba diving course - something I've wanted to do since the first time I went diving in Thailand in 2004 and Colombia is one of the cheapest places in the world to do it, at a bargain US$300. Taganga was a very chilled little town with plenty of backpackers around and almost as many fresh juice stalls on the main road, where they'd whip up a combo of exotic fruits I'd never heard of for a ridiculously cheap price- a great way to start the day! After I'd been certified (as a scuba diver that is) I headed for

Tayrona National Park. To get to the park, you have to drive for about an hour from Taganga (in a van filled to the brim with backpackers, driven by a bung eyed, slightly sleazy Colombian who spoke no english) and then hike into the jungle for another hour and a half. But man, was it worth it. Beautiful beaches lined with coconut palms, crystalline blue water, and the only decisions that need to be made are whether to sleep in a a tent or in a hammock, and what to order for dinner from the one little cafe. I spent four great days here lying on the beach, trying to crack open coconuts in order to fill them with rum, hiking to the top of a massive hill, in jandals, to see some ancient ruins and.....not too much else. How's the serenity.

After my week on the Carribean coast, I flew to Cali. Cali is near the west coast of Colombia and has a reputation as a party city but I wasn't feeling so well when I arrived on a Saturday, so I didn't go out that night and I only stayed one more night, which was a Sunday and the hostel was almost completely empty. So I caught up on a few DVDs I've been wanting to see. Woah there - easy does it.

People ask me all the time what my favourite place in South America is, and I find it a pretty tough question to answer, but in the end I have to say Colombia. Despite the fact that the New Zealand travel advice website lists many of the places I visited in Colombia as being 'high risk' and the country in general as having a high incidence of kidnapping and a risk of terrorism, I never felt anymore threatened than I did anywhere else. The people are friendly, the landscape is beautiful, it's less well-trodden than all the other countries I'd been to so I felt like I was getting a bit more off the beaten track and there's great variety - whether you want to party, lie on a beach, hike, drink coffee, eat.....it's all there. And the more I saw of the country, the more I added to my list for next time - Cartagena, Medellin, Bogota - I will be back again for sure! Havana however, my next destination, was a different story altogether......

Beautiful Brasil

The first three things I noticed about Brasil: it`s hot, it`s expensive and man, is Portugese hard!

I started my two weeks in Brasil by crossing the border from Argentina. This was a lot easier than my last border crossing - I just got a taxi from one hostel to one on the other side and the taxi driver simply passed my passport through the window at each border, they took a look at me, gave me a stamp and we drove on. It was a bit of a pricey experience (about US$25) but it was either a nice comfortable, quick taxi ride. Or a mission on three buses with a backpack, which could quite easily have taken all day. Being a budget counscious traveller (read: tight arse) I would usually have taken the bus option, but I don`t think I could have handled another hellish border crossing experience. I may just have stayed in Argentina.

I actually preferred Iguacu Falls from the Brasilian side. Although in Argentina you get up close and personal with the water, on the other side you get much more of an idea of the scale of the falls - which is MAS-SIVE  - very impressive and beautiful. Niagara Falls has got nothing on these bad boys. This side was also a bit more organised, slightly cheaper, didn´t take a whole day to navigate and didn`t have nearly as many bloody tour groups. The only draw back was being chased by wasps at the cafe.

After a couple of days in Iguaca, I got the bus to Florianopolis (an 18 hour bus ride, on a less comfortable and more expensive bus than Argentina - welcome to Brasil). Florianopolis is situated on an island off the coast, connected to the mainland by a bridge. It`s stunningly beautiful with clear blue water, decent surf, white sand and a chilled out, beach town atmosphere - my kind of place. I stayed in a hostel that could only be described as an party hostel - and it was awesome. So I spent four days hanging out with a really good bunch of people (including more Kiwis than I have met anywhere else on my trip so far, and strangely, half of Melbourne seemed to be there too), relaxing on the beach and drinking very strong caipirinias. I also spent a day white water rafting for the first time, which was fantastic. It was a bit of a struggle to organise (we`re on Brasilian time now, man) and to get there, but luckily I went with some people who spoke Portugese. Score.
I would have liked to have stayed longer in Floripa (as it`s affectionately known) - in fact, when I originally checked in just for two nights, the guy on reception said "I`ll check you in for three nights. Trust me" and oh, how right he was. I`ve been flying by the seat of my pants so far on this trip and staying where I pleased for however long I pleased (one of the benefits of travelling on my own) but as I had recently booked a flight to Colombia from Rio, I had to sacrifice a day in Rio to stay an extra day in Floripa and I could sacrifice no more. So I got my last ever (thank the sweet baby Jesus) overnight bus to Rio de Janeiro. I sat next to a very nice man on the bus and, although he spoke no English, we had a nice chat about where I should visit in Rio and he showed me some pictures on his laptop and pointed then out to me in my guidebook. Thanks Ivo!

I arrived in Rio de Janeiro at about 8am and being the gung-ho backpacker that I am, I decided to do a

favela tour at 9.30am. A favela is like a slum or shanty town and there are more than one hundred in Rio alone. Now, you may question my motives (and sanity) in my decision to visit a favela but my reasoning is this: first, I selected an organisation that was approved by the community it ran tours to, and I made sure that some of my money went back into the community to help them - this particular organisation ran a daycare centre within the favela. Second, I think it`s an important part of traveling to not just be a tourist who enjoys the good stuff places have to offer, but also to learn more about the cultures and ways of life of different groups of people and do what you can (however small) to help. Our guide, Marcelo, was very passionate about this favela (Rocinha) and as we walked around the community, he showed us the good and bad sides. There is an incredible amount of gang related gun violence and drugs, which is very sad, and there is some work that can be done to help (thanks to Marcelo and organisations like his) but some things are unlikely to change (thanks, in part, to a pretty corrupt police force). But moslty, it´s just normal people, living normal lives - they have jobs and families just like everyone else. There were plenty of drug dealers around and brick walls imbedded with bullets, but I never felt unsafe. One of the best parts was visiting an art studio where I bought a canvas from one of the local artists.

I spent my remaining time in Rio (all of three days) eating Brasilian barbeque (so good), attempting to samba (so bad), checking out Christ the Redeemer, hanging at the beach (Copacabana was a bit dirty so I went to Leblon instead) and drinking fantastic and fresh tropical juice blends....and more caipirinias of course. The it was off to Ilha Grande, an island about four hours south east of Rio. The island is car free and therefore is very chilled out and somewhat unspoilt, with an odd fondness for Reggae. I spent three days here doing much the same as I did in Floripa. On one day I did a boat tour to some far flung beaches as well as Laguna Azur and Laguna Verde (guess what colours they were!) and snorkelled a bunch, and even swam with a turtle - a bit of a dream come true. I did, however, not see any monkeys. I seem to miss them wherever I go that they are supposed to be! Stupid monkeys. I also spent a morning hiking to Lopes Mendes beach and I have never sweated so much in my life. Oh the humidity!

After a somewhat relaxing few days on an idyllic island of secluded beaches (I say somewhat, as I should have listened to the inner voice that said "You`re on an island, it`s probably not a good idea to eat chicken - where do you think it came from?"), I got the boat and bus back to Rio. My flight to Bogota, Colombia was the following morning at 6am so I decided to not shell out for a hostel and stay up all night. I returned to the hostel I had been staying at in Copacabana to collect my backpack, and no-one seemed to notice that I just hung around. I watched some movies and managed two hours sleep on the couch, before getting the receptionist to call me a cab at 3am. Nice work.

And now Colombia.....the land of coffee and cocaine.....but oh so much more.....

Why I love Argentina

Ok, so Argentina is not exactly what I would call authentic South America and I found it quite different to Peru and Bolivia. It´s definitely a lot more westernised than the previous two countries but it was nice to get a change of scene. After my nightmare border crossing from Bolivia, I proceeded to Salta for new year. The hostel I stayed in wasn´t much but they did have a pool and they did have a new year´s eve party - 150 pesos for bbq and unlimited (yes, that´s right, unlimited) alcohol. If there´s one thing Argentinians (or is that Argentines?) do well, it´s bbq, or asado. Great cuts of meet, cooked to perfection and not over priced. Sorry vegetarians out there but it´s amazing! I didn´t see too much else in Salta as I was only there for two days over the new year period and a lot of stuff was closed (even McDonalds, which - shame on me -  I really wanted the next day, after the unlimited alcohol). I got an overnight bus from there to Mendoza on January 1st. Another things Argentina does well is long bus journeys. The buses are so comfortable, and on this ride, we got meals, DVDs (in English - yay!) and, wait for it, bingo! Yup - the waiter that delivered our meals to our seats, also doubled as a bingo caller. A great way for me to practise my Spanish numbers. However, while I was asleep on this bus, someone stole my alarm clock and light. More inconvenient than anything else - perhaps they had trouble getting up in the morning and needed it more than me.

Mendoza was absolutely a highlight for me. After hectically trying to fit things in before Christmas, and then between Christmas and new year, I was ready to chill out. I stayed in a fantastic hostel - small, with a pool, hammocks, and best of all, free wine five nights a week. I met some great people here and relaxed for a few days - I liked it so much I even stayed a fourth night - the longest I´ve stayed in one place on this trip. Mendoza is a wine region, famous for Malbec, so I got together a group of people from the hostel and we spent a day cycling around a few wineries and sampling the local tipple. Thankfully, we didn´t get robbed at gunpoint like two guys I met the day before.

After Mendoza, I headed for Buenos Aires. I spent a very hot four days here - did a great free walking tour of the city, met some Kiwi guys from Otago, went to a steak restaurant where I ate the best steak of my life, walked around colourful local neighbourhoods, ate lots of dulce de leche and emapanadas (but not together), had coffee at the famous Cafe Tortoni, watched locals tango in the streets and even went to an Andy Warhol exhibiton.

From Buenos Aires, I headed for Iguazu Falls, right on the border between Argentina and Brazil. Since this was my last overnight bus trip in Argentina, I decided to splash out and get the next class up on the bus, which meant I got wine with my hot dinner, followed by coffee and champagne (which was a bit of a weird order), a super comfy chair that reclined just that little bit extra and a nice pillow and blanket. Luxury for a backpacker. Iguazu Falls was amazing. I spent a day there doing all the walking paths and the boat ride that takes you right under some of the falls - I got absolutely soaked. The hoards of tour groups were a bit of a downer, but that´s to be expected. I went back the next day to do the Macuco trail, a 3.5 km trail into the jungle within the national park. The hike went to a waterfall with a swimming hole at the end. I was hoping to see capuchin monkeys, but unfortunately I didn´t. I did, however, see three toucans together in a tree - that was pretty incredible.

I´ve now crossed the border into Brazil to see the falls from the other side and I´m looking forward to the next two weeks of beaches and sun as I head up to coast to Rio de Janeiro. I´m hoping I´ll be ok given that I don´t speak any Portuguese!

Adventures in Bolivia

My two weeks in Bolivia was filled with adventure in one form or another - however a lot of it was transport related.

Firstly, La Paz. All of South America has crazy traffic, but La Paz is more hectic than the rest. Cars are literally bumper to bumper, people make lanes where there are no lanes, and people use their horns constantly. My first and second day in La Paz was spent checking out the witches markets (dried llama foetuses anyone?), buying presents and trying to organise a jungle expedition. My third day was spent mountain biking down Death Road, the world´s most dangerous road. It was a lot of fun and only a little scary - there are no longer cars on the road so it´s more the danger of sliding over one of the sheer cliffs as you come careening down the hill. I´m glad the tour guides waited until after we´d done the ride to tell us about the tourists who had died - some recently.

From La Paz, I flew to Santa Cruz with a couple of people I met on my tour of Peru. I´d booked a hostel online, however when we showed up, they said they were full, wouldn´t acknowledge the booking I´d made or deposit I´d paid and we had to squish into one room with two beds. After visiting the office to pay for the 3 day trip into Amboro National Park (part of the Amazon Basin) I had to go and buy the ugliest shoes known to man on the insistence of our tour guide (apparently we needed them for climbing on wet rocks). They were those kind of sandals with the velcro straps. The kind of sandals some people wear with socks. The kind of sandals I make fun of people for wearing. Needless to say, they went straight in the bin once the tour was over and I tried hard to avoid there being any photos of me wearing them. The jungle trip was certainly an adventure. Just getting into the park was a feat in itself. We went by van, jeep, boat, horse and cart, waded across rivers and hiked. It took us a full day just to get to the gates of the park. And then it started to rain. And didn´t stop. We spent the second day hiking to a waterfall - we waded across countless rivers and climbed waterfalls, all in the pouring rain. Just call me Indiana Jones. After lunch, our guides suggested we do a further 3 hour hike to another waterfall, making the total trek back, 5 hours. Something I have learnt is that Bolivians don´t really have much of a sense of time. When they say "oh, it´s about 20 minutes away", that can mean anything from 45 minutes to an hour and a half. The first waterfall was apparently 2 hours away - it took us about 7 hours to get there and back. The jungle was pretty amazing - very lush, green and tropical with vines and huge trees. And huge mosquitos. We didn´t see as much wildife as I had hoped - no toucans or monkeys, but we did see a frog and a snake and some beautiful butterflies. We were supposed to trek further into the jungle but there was too much rain, so we camped in the same place and then spent the last day trekking out again, in the same way as we trekked in. Definitely an adventure although not exactly what I had hoped for.

The next adventure was trying to get to Sucre for Christmas. We thought it would be very simple to be able to get an overnight bus. Oh how wrong we were. The tickets were only sold on the day of the trip, so one of my friends went to the bus station at 6am to get tickets for that night. Sold out. Everything was booked up, even flights. We discovered that there was another group of 3 staying at the hostel who were also trying to get to Sucre, so we hired a van to take us. And this is where the nightmare began. Bolivia has one paved road. We were not on it. We drove for 18 hours (it was meant to be 15) on a windy and bumpy dirt road. No sleep was to be had by anyone. I have never been happier to arrive somewhere. Christmas was a relaxed affair - we decided to splash out and stay at quite a nice hotel and we spent the day watching Christmas movies on cable tv (when we could find English ones) and eating a lot - pretty standard really. We even found a restaurant that did a turkey lunch - not very Bolivian I know.

Sucre is where I left the girls I´d been travelling with for the last week and headed to Uyuni. Getting there was a 14 hour mission on 2 buses. I arrived at 2am and luckily befriended some American guys on the bus so I didn´t have to walk to my hostel alone. The next morning, I left for a 3 day tour of the salt flats. What an amazing experience - one of the most beautiful places I have ever been. The weather was perfect - there had been a little bit of rain the day before meaning that the was a few inches of water on the salar, making for beautiful reflections of the sky. We stayed in a salt hotel and also saw red and green lakes and millions of flamingoes. Then came a tough 24 hours. My tour returned to Uyuni (a 9 hour bumpy 4WD ride) at about 6pm and at 11pm I got a train to Villazon, the small town on the border between Bolivia and Argentina. The train was supposed to arrive at 7am, but for some reason, it stopped at a station for 3 hours at 4am (something to do with rain I think - although since when that´s affected trains, I´m not sure), so it was 3 hours late. I was very glad I´d gotten a ´first class´ticket (a reclinable seat, a blanket and pillow, and breakfast). When I got off the train, I headed for the border. My guide book said it ´couldn´t be easier´ to cross to Argentina here. Yeah right. First I had to get my Bolivian exit stamp - there was a line so long it double backed on itself and after 45 minutes, I hadn´t moved. I heard that other travellers had been paying the guard at the front to stamp their passports. So I bribed an immigration official with 5 pesos and I got my stamp. Then I got in the line for the Argentinian immigration.....and spent 5 hours in that line. At one point I actually thought I would never get to the front. This was followed by a 7 hour bus ride to finally arrive in Sucre.

So Bolivia was definitely choccas full of adventure for me, and now that I´m in Argentina, I am looking forward to some down time. Bring on the wine and steaks!

The 0 - 10 of Peru

My 23 days in Peru are up, and as I sit in the sweltering tropical heat of Santa Cruz, Bolvia, I reflect on my time in Peru....

0: good coffees I had and times I was lost (yay me!).

1: scary bugs I saw (a big spider at a homestay on Amantani Island - not including the dead tarantula on the Inca trail), horrible bus rides (12 hours, 1 stop, dirty bus, even dirtier toilets), meals of alpaca, times I put my togs on, ate McDonalds, had altitude sickness, drank Inca Cola (tastes like bubble-gum) and number of hostels I stayed in (on my tour, we stayed in ´hotels´, however they were very basic).

2: times I dressed in Peruvian costume (the one and only time...ever, I assure you), boat trips I did, local communities I stayed in, number of backpacker braclets I accumulated and number of times I washed my clothes in the bathroom sink of my accommodation.

3: nights I spent in a tent, times I felt lonely, orchids I saw on the Inca trail, books I read, times I had a dodgy tummy, things I´ve lost (my torch - however, not a great loss, see 5 below - a bracelet and a postcard), times I´ve danced and number of different kinds of Peruvian beer I drank.

4: days it took me to hike the Inca trail from the 82km mark to Machu Picchu (about 45 kms I think - with a lot of steep uphill and downhill) and number of Kiwis I met.

5: number of awesome people on my Intrepid tour (ok, so that was the whole group), times my solar powered torch ran out, times I heard the Cranberries (I´m sure pop music in Peru is stuck in 1996) and number of Plaza des Armas I saw.

6: times I dropped my camera on the Inca trail (I´m surprised it´s still working), times I didn´t want to tip guides and drivers (didn´t I pay enough for this already?), number of Incan ruins I saw, different kinds of Pisco I´ve tried and average number of hours sleep I got a night (so many early starts).

7: US$ for a pedicure in Cuzco, total days I went without a shower (not in a row though - ew!).

8: times my camera batteries went flat (can´t wait to get a new one) and number of Nazca lines I saw (I think - I was feeling a bit ill and suffering from vertigo in the tiny plane).

9: times I´ve tried to read my Rough Guide book and decide where I´m going and times people said ´but it´s the rainy season´

10 plus: flamingoes, penguins, seals and alpacas I´ve seen, great meals I ate, number of people who tried to sell me stuff, times I wanted to eat a salad so bad, days I didn´t write in my journal, times I wish I´d learnt proper Spanish before I left, squat toilets I used, number of breakfasts that were bread and jam and the number of incredible, beautiful, funny and amazing things I saw and experienced.

Let´s see if Bolivia can top THAT!

When things go tits up while travelling

There´s always a few hiccups when you´re travelling. Like the time I accidently washed my passport in Berlin and had to get a new one in the space of a few hours as I was due to leave the country. Or the time I spent all my cash in France and then discovered my ATM card wouldn´t work. Or the time(s) the old van I was driving arond Australia broke down in the middle of the outback. It´s all part of the experience right? Well, this trip has been no different. My first two weeks of travelling went pretty smoothly....the worst thing that happened was arriving at my hostel in Montreal to discover that it had been closed for the last 3 weeks because the building next door started to fall down. Fortunately it was re-opening that day, so all it meant for me was a few hours without any power (good time to go for a walk), no hot shower that night and a pretty empty hostel.

And then I left Canada. I had one of those crazy cheap flights that goes to a dozen random places before arriving at the final destination, and takes 3 days to get there. Ok it wasn´t quite that bad - almost 24 hours of travel time, flying from Montreal to Toronto to San Salvador to Lima. I checked my bag in all the way to Lima at Montreal Airport, double checked with the counter staff that all I had to do was pick it up in Lima and was assured that it would and ignored the sinking feeling that it wasn´t going to make it - I thought to myself, hey they´re professionals, what could go wrong? Then, when I was the last person standing at the baggage carousel in Lima with a forlorn look on my face, I realised I should have trusted my instincts and taken some underwear and toiletries out of my bag before checking it. To cut a long story short, for 2 days the airline didn´t even know where my bag was and seemed in no hurry to find it. After many phone calls and a few stressful moments, I finally got it back after 3 days - just in time as I left Lima the next day. I was wearing my warmest and dirties clothes for the flight because Montreal was cold and I planned on doing washing as soon as I arrived in Peru. The airline gave me money to spend on neccesary stuff so at least I could get the basics. Crisis over....and on to the next. Getting out of a taxi outside my hotel the following day, I clipped the mirror of a passing car with the taxi door and broke it. I couldn´t really communicate with the driver with my limited Spanish aside from ´lo siento signor´ but the guide from my tour, that had started the previous day, was fortunately on hand. The driver of the car I hit wanted me to give him US$150 as it was a new car and he would have to replace the whole mirror. My guide talked him down to US$80...so I was pretty lucky in the end I guess. And it´s only money after all. I am hoping that I´ve had my quota of bad luck for this trip and that the next 3 months will go smoothly. I´m loading up on good travelling karma!

Aside from these minor set backs, Peru has been great and I´ve already done so much - experienced loads of good food and drink - my favourites have been ceviche (raw fish marinated in chili and lime) and chicha (a drink made from purple corn, tastes a bit like Ribena), I´ve seen penguins on the Ballestas Islands, tasted all sorts of kinds of Pisco (a spirit a bit like tequila), flown over the Nazca lines in a very small plane (I was very brave and sweating profusely), seen enough mummies and skeletons to last a lifetime, met some awesome people from assorted countries, marvelled at some massive sand dunes from a lake oasis at the bottom, and slept a record 7 hours on an overnight bus. Chomping at the bit for the Inca trail.....6 days and counting!

Highlights of Ontario and Quebec

Two free beers and a bottle opener at the Steamwhistle Brewery in Toronto

Trying to get the perfect photo of me at Niagara Falls

A Korean guy introducing himself to me because he´d just been to New Zealand and wanted to tell me how much he loved it there

When I was freezing after a day of walking all over Toronto, having the best hot chocolate at Soma in the Distillery District - with spices, orange, chili and ginger

Free wine and cheese at my hostel

Discussing Kiwi music with a friend of a friend over jugs of beer - strangers one minute, mates the next

Kensington Markets - best place for people watching, giant burritos and hippy murals

Catching up with an old roommate from Sydney who I hadn´t seen in 4 years, at a bar with mismatched chairs and fairy lights - my favourite kind of bar

Walking around Old Montreal....beautiful buildings, cobbled streets

Taking a break from walking round the city by reading books and warming up in Chapters

Walking to the top of Mont Royale for the view over the city

Enjoying a smoked meat sandwich at Schwartz´s and poutine at Frite Alors! on Rue St Laurent - food is a big part of travel for me

Going to a bar on my own and sitting next to a dude from Wellington at the bar

No pics this time as my internet time is limited.....because I´m in Peru! Well and truly on the road now.