San Andrés diving photos

We got back from San Andrés about an hour ago, it's now 3.15 in the morning so just a very quick post to say I've uploaded a few of the diving photos from San Andrés to my flickr account. I'll try and upload some of the other photos tomorrow along with a bit more about the trip.

Now in San Andrés

We're now on our 3rd day in San Andrés, the hotel is fantasitc, we´ve got a room overlooking the clear blue and green seas of the Carribean. We rented a golf buggy yesterday and did a tour of the island. Our hotel is on the extreme north east of the island and is protected by the coral barrier reef that surrounds most of the island, this creates a natural shallow pool which is great for water sports. So far we've only been sea kayaking, probably because the free 24 hour bar is right next to the place to get the sports equipment and those rum cocktails are becoming very hard to resist! The hotel has a PADI diving school, so the plan is to do an introduction and a first dive either tomorrow or the day after. I also want to get some windsurfing in and Marcela wants to give it a go so she´ll have her first windsurfing lesson tomorrow as long as it doesn't clash with the diving. If there's any time left we'll have a go on the jet skis. We've got to go to dinner so that's it for now, we'll be back in Bogotá for the 28th so I'll try and get some photos uploaded then.

Amazon - Day 3, part 1

The 3rd day was all planned out for us. We had breakfast and went to the travel agency’s office to meet up with our guide for the day. His name was Guillermo, he is without a doubt the most English physics teacher looking Colombian I’ve ever seen. We walked down to the port in Leticia carry all our things as last night was the last night we were spending in Leticia, not a problem carrying them, OK a slight problem considering it was a hundred degrees, the humidity was about 95% and I was wearing long trousers and sleeves, the real test was when we arrived at the port. The Amazon is known for a lot of things, one of which is the difference in it’s and it’s tributary’s water level between seasons, which can be as much as the height of an eight-story building! At the moment it’s at it’s lowest which means to get to the boats you walk down to the bank and then walk along temporary jetties made of pieces of wood and floating tree trunks. You’re therefore walking along a single piece of scaffolding plank carrying all you stuff, not a terribly difficult task but once you’ve got the thought of all your things and you ending up in the Amazon with one small mistake it suddenly feels like you’re on a tightrope.

Safely on to the floating part of the jetty still dry we met up with our boat and driver for the day. This was perfect, we had our own boat, driver and guide for the day.

Our first stop was monkey island, this does exactly what is says on the tin. We were met by a group of indigenous people selling the necklaces, earings, bags (and mobile phone holders!!!) that they make.

A 10 minute walk in to the jungle and we found a group of Squirrel monkeys, they seemed to know the drill quite well and on production of a few bananas, it wasn’t long before a few of them were eating out of our hands. At one point I was surrounded by 3 moneys, one of which was on my shoulder.

We left monkey island via the indigenous market traders and bought a couple of things. We left in our boat happy but I couldn’t help having a niggling thought in the back of my mind, are these indegenous people like the homeless people of London? And by that I don’t mean they’ve found themselves in situation not of their own doing having somehow adapted to what life’s dealt them in as much of a dignified way as possible, I mean at the end of the day do they go home, put their “good clothes” on and count how much money they’ve made from an unsuspecting public?

Amazon - Day 2

We were awoken by the 3 million parrots that live in the trees directly outside of our room at a ridiculously early time, but with the excitement of our first morning in the Amazon we didn’t mind. This was the extra day that we added so we didn’t have anything planned so after breakfast we set off looking for something to do. We visited a couple of travel agencies to see if there were any trips we could do but everything was full up. We popped in to a craft shop to have a look and found out it also doubled as a travel agency, again there was nothing available for today but the man we spoke to was very nice, he said we don’t need an organised tour and suggested we get a cab down to La Feira which is the port of Tabatinga, From there we can get a boat to Benjamin Constant where he recommended a visit to the Indigenous museum, a ride on a motor taxi and a visit to the Cabannas restaurant. We took his advice and did just that!

The taxi ride to Tabatinga only takes 5 minutes and is along one road, Tabatinga is actually on the edge of Leticia and as we later found out is actually in Brazil, that explains why they were speaking Portuguese and wanted payment in Reals!

We waited for the fast boat and that only took about 30 minutes to get to Benjamin Constant. Once there we had a look around the local market and asked where the museum was, it was only a 10 minute walk so we headed off on foot. The museum was somewhat of a disappointment, it was basically a house with 4 rooms filled with indigenous things. We walked around the “museum” as slowly as possible followed the guide/curator/owner who did his best to describe everything to us in his best Portuguese but Marcela couldn’t even tell if he was speaking an indigenous language or Portuguese! Just to add to the surreal experience he insisted on taking all the exhibits out / off of the displays and demonstrating then to us, probably not the best way to preserve your people’s history! Although saying that a lot of the exhibits looked very similar to those available in the gift shop!

Next up was lunch, we got a couple of “motor taxis” to the restaurant which we’d now found out wasn’t our friend in the shop’s strange turn of phrase but what they called motorbike taxis, this is the only was to get around Benjamin Constant and you even see people perched on the back of these with their weekly shopping. It was a 10 minute ride to the restaurant and on arrival we were extremely pleased not to have dismissed our friend’s second piece of advice. The restaurant is set next to a lake where you can fish for your own lunch. We took the easier option of drinking beer and having someone else catch our lunch for us. The food was a buffet type affair and not great, but that really didn’t matter.

We headed back to the port and caught a boat back to Tabatinga. Dinner and a few Ronnies (Rum and Coke’s) later and we were asleep.

Amazon - Day 1

We got to Leticia at about 3 in the afternoon and checked in to our hotel, the Hotel Anaconda. Leticia’s a small city of about 37,000 inhabitants but is still the biggest town/city in the Colombian \ Brazilian \ Peruvian area of the Amazon.

The hotel was OK, but the room looked a little too much like a hospital for my liking.

We had Pirarucú (Arapaima gigas) for dinner which you could easily mistake for chicken, I know it sounds completely clichéd but it really was. I’ve just found out why it’s so meaty, it’s one of the world’s largest freshwater fish and can grow up to 3 or 4 metres in length!

After dinner we had a walk around town, nothing very interesting to report here except for the number of motorbikes and scooters there are, everyone has one which makes crossing the road a bit like a game of Frogger.

Some Amazon photos

I haven´t managed to write anything about the Amazon yet but I have uploaded some photos to my flickr account, the Amazon set are the one's you're after. we're leaving for San Andrés tomorrow but not until the evening so I'll try to write something before we go.

How to confuse your girlfriend´s dad

It´s easy, tell him you´re tired, "estoy cansado" but miss out the "n". This becomes "Estoy casado" which means I´m married!

Quick update

Just a quick update before I have breakfast with more to follow later, hopefully including some of the 400 photos I took in the Amazon! I’ve been back in Bogotá for a couple of days now, yesterday was spent at Marcela’s uncle’s farm in a place called Sylvania in the mountains to the west of Bogotá. The day mostly consisted of eating and drinking, we started by drinking beer, we followed that with more beer and Aguardiente then went to lunch where I ate half a pig and had some more beer. When we got back to the farm we had a little siesta. Marcela woke me up about an hour later for some more food!!! There were eleven of us around the little table and between us we ate about 40 steaks as well as the plantain, bread and arepas that went with it. I’ll write all about the Amazon in a separate post.

I made the connection!!!

I made the connection in Atlanta and got my flight to Bogota, unfortunately my case didn´t! I took everyone´s advise and got to the airport in plenty of time, in fact I arrived at 5.15am for a 9.10am flight. For some reason airlines have decided that opening checkins early to cope with the advice to get their early would make things too easy, so we all waited in line patiently for the checkins to open. Queing for security didn´t take as long as most were prepared for either so by the time I ended up being air-side with more time to spare than I usually, not knowing how long my flight would be delayed. There was another full security check at the gate which took longer than the first as there was only one man conducting them for all male passengers. The longest delay to this flight however wasn´t due to the security measures but the mathmatically failings of the checkin / cabin crew. The number of people on the plane didn´t match the number of people that should be on the plane and more "number crunching" needed to be done, at this point we´d already taxied and were next to the runway. These numbers took between 30 minutes and an hour and a half to crunch! ( I´m not exactly sure as I did doze off a couple of times.) Anyway, to cut this rambling down a little, we landed in Atlanta 2 hours before my Bogota flight and that was delayed anyway. When we got on the plane and the doors closed I then had the longest delay of the day, 2 hours sitting just feet away from the gate due to a case needing to be taken off but the ground crew not being able to find it!!! So I arrived in Bogota a few hours late, my case however arrived last night, 24 hours later than me, due to US baggage not seeing or understanding a giant orange sticker of the case explaing that this should be "checked thru" to my next flight. So back to now, having un-packed my case last night, I´m just about have breakfast and pack my bags for the Amazon, yay!!!

Travel Insurance

I thought I'd have a look at my travel insurance to see what the situation was with regard to putting my camera in the hold instead of carrying it with me as I planned. I had a "live" chat with "Katie" that went as follows:

Katie : We have to follow the terms and conditions of the policy
Katie : You must only take valuables if you are able to keep them on your person as they will not be covered in the hold
Katie : You could see if they are insured under your home contents.
Mike : So is your advice not to take a camera on the holiday of a life time unless specifically on my home contents insurance?
Katie : My advise is that you check if you are able to carry it on your person
Mike : The Department for Transport say no
Katie : and if you cannot then see if it is included on your home contents insurance
Katie : then obviously you will need to see if your home contents insurance extends to cover items when traveling abroad

Oh good, I'll now have a read through the policy to see if delays and cancellations caused by terrorist threats are covered. . . I think we all know the answer to that! :-)

Airline terror plot

Less than 3 days to go until I leave for Colombia and Police in London have disrupted a plot to blow up planes mid air between London and the US. Three US airlines are said to have been targeted. The terrorist threat level in the UK has now been raised to critical threat level which means, "an attack is expected imminently and indicates an extremely high level of threat to the UK". I would have been happier if the police has said they'd foiled a plot rather than disrupted it, it would then sound less like the terrorists have been slightly inconvenienced and delayed for a few days :-)

From what's been reported, the plot seems to have involved waves of attacks mid air, caused by suicide bombers using a liquid explosive disguised as an everyday item that would not have been picked up in hand luggage. The Department for Transport have released new security measures which list what can be taken onboard, even the things that can be taken on board must not be in pockets but in a see-through plastic bag. ". . . all passengers boarding flights to the USA and all the items they are carrying, including those acquired after the central screening point, must be subjected to secondary search at the boarding gate. Any liquids discovered must be removed from the passenger. " I guess the bottle of Whiskey I was going to get for Marcela's dad might not be such a great idea now!

Most UK Airports are currently in chaos with some airports cancelling all flights, hopefully that will calm down in the next 3 days!

5 days to go

There's only 5 days to go now and I've now reached the stage of wondering what I've forgotten to do / buy. One thing I probably should have started by now is packing, the plan was to get some of it done last weekend but that didn't quite happen. I blame Ross, it was his 30th birthday last week so we spent most of this weekend celebrating, the time not celebrating Ross' birthday was spent at Stuart and Sarah's house warming party and celebrating the news that Sarah's pregnant, in fact her due date is just 1 day away from Gray and Mel's! It would seem that I've reached that stage of life where not only are most of my friends married or getting married, but everyone's also having children.

I'm away in Newbury now until Friday night (well actully I'm back tonight for Leyton Orient Vs Millwall but I'll have no time to do anything else!) so I've got no choice but to find everything, get everything ready and packed on Saturday, only then will I find out if everything I've bought will fit in to my new suitcase and just how heavy it is. My spending this week has seen the amount of money spent of things for the Amazon part of the holiday fly past the actual cost of the Amazon part of the holiday, including return flights from Bogota to Leticia! At least now I'm fully prepared for my next trip to a jungle!

An extra night in the jungle

There's been a slight change of plan for the Amazon trip, we're now staying for an extra night and instead of staying in the Decalodge Ticuna we're staying in Puerto Nariño.

Close to Puerto Nariño are Tarapoto lakes, where one of the things I'd love to get a photo can be found, that's the Pink river dolphins!

Baby Keen

Not holiday related in any way but conratulations Gray and Mel who are expecting their first baby on the 9th February. Here's the 3 month scan.