Black Jack

This time last year I was stationed in the South of Costa Rica in the beach town of Quepos. The weather was a toasty 30 degrees, and I was spending the days leading up to Christmas on the beach a stones throw from my hostel. In summary, it was paradise. Except for the fact that […]

Salar de Uyuni

One of the coldest, driest and most isolated places I managed to visit on my South American trip was the famous Salt Plains of Bolivia. It’s also probably one of the most photographed areas in the world not least because of it’s stunning beauty but because of the optical ‘mirror image’ of the land reflecting […]

Swimming with Sharks

IF I HAD created a bucket list in my teens, swimming with sharks would have been near the top. Probably somewhere wedged between scoring the winning goal for Blackburn Rovers and meeting my childhood crush Gillian Anderson aka Dana Scully. The decade of my twenties brought with it a little less daring, and a little more caring. Especially when […]

10 Highlights of Travelling in Central and South America

9 months. 13 countries. There have been some amazing experiences en route. Some internationally renowned. Other’s perhaps not what you’d expect, but magical for their own reasons. Here is a round-up of my Top Ten: 1. MAKING FRIENDS IN ANTIGUA The colonial town of Antigua, Guatemala holds special memories for me. This charming little hub […]

Learning Spanish in Guatemala

My motivation for learning Spanish was pretty straightforward: I was about to embark on a 9 month backpacking whistle-stop tour of Central and South America, and felt that my experience would be heightened if I could speak some of the lingo. I wanted to come back from my travels with a newly learnt, practical skill […]