Karl and Kara in South America

Kara says: Panama. Back in the northern hemisphere and in the tropics, yes! We flew here, first flight since coming from Buenos Aires so very strange to suddenly be dropped into a location so completely different from the last one - we've gotten used to seeing the surroundings gradually change through bus windows. We were thermally imaged at the airport to make sure we didn't have swine flu (we don't!) but other passengers weren't feeling too confident and chose to were silly masks anyway. Panama is a big, humid tropical city on the coast and smells just like Singapore/Bankgkok etc. It's wildly enthusiastic about constructing tall hotels and apartment buildings and so looks exactly like the Gold Coast. The government try to attract US and European retirees to come to live and invest here so you can basically buy citizenship (no test here Kevin!). The types of visa & citizenship vary only in that the more you spend the quicker you become a citizen. The best value

Kara says: Quito. Really lovely colonial city (I haven't said that before have I?) surrounded by green hills with the suburbs climbing up them. In the new part of town the hills seem particularly close and covered in wild jungle that no-one's ever got into 'cause of the monsters. Especially when the afternoon clouds and thunderstorms roll over the mountaintops. So Quito - Pizarro, 154_, you know the story. For a big city it's got a great, quietish but busy, really well preserved old centre full of plazas, churches and pleasant streets. And it's real! The plazas are surrounded by real shops for real people not tourist restaurants and souvenir shops. We had to get a new transformer (stupid 110V sockets) and went to a fabulous little electrical shop with every possible plug, wire, switch, capacitor, thingymagigy that you played with in physics class and now can't remember what they're for. If you lived here I think there would always be at least one dome

Cuenca to Quito. From Cuenca we went to a town further north to take a train ride on an old (or maybe not so old, this is south america after all, may be state of the art) steam train but when we got there the sign said it wasn't running. See photo of disappointed me with my lagrimas de cocodrilo. Photo of Karl having a girl-nap on the bus. Heading up into the Andes the countryside got very Irish-looking - green fields with fresian cows (as opposed to freezing cows in Bolivia, ha ha ha) and the occasional pig. After that we headed for Quito, the capital. Not feeling at all discomforted by the fact that our bus stopped so the conductor could make an offering at an alter at the roadside - I'm sure we'd have arrived safely anyway. Right now we're in a very, very nice hotel room (Karl accidently aimed too high) drinking slightly warm, very sweet, very cheap sparkling wine to celebrate having survived our road trip. From now on all we have to worry about are south american a

Kara says: Ecuador. Do we love Ecuador? Hells yes! Love it. Immensely civilised. Taxis are new, normal-sized cars. I was puzzled at first by the funny thing people were doing with their faces when they were serving us, and then i remembered....smiling! Footpaths are level and, well, finished. People rush when they're late. The currency is US dollars which is very odd, especially when everything costs nothing, and does make it feel slightly like another US state. But anyway. Driving north from Peru towards Ecuador there's a sudden change from dry, dusty desert and clear skies to overcast skies, moist warm tropical air and greenery, loads of greenery. Did you know green has a smell? It does! It smells of chlorophylly goodness. There's lots and lots of banana plantations, bananas as far as the eye can see - all the big companies are here, Fyffes, Bonita, Del Monte (said yes, apparently). Then we arrived in Cuenca, a lovely colonial town with lots of pretty churches, in the mid

Kara says: Mancora. A small beach resort on the far north coast of Peru near the Ecuadorian border. We're just chilling out some more and continuing to do basically nothing, long lunches on the beach, coctels, sunsets... I used my birthday as an excuse. And now I'm really too old to be chasing 'round doing things so just have to take it easy. It's a little one street town. The one street being full of restaurants and bars (prawns! calamari! Thai food!). Also lots of sand, dust and tuk-tuks. We answered the question "can we fit the two of us, two big rucksacks, two small backpacks and Karl's guitar in a tuk-tuk?". Happily for both us and the driver the answer is yes. Also see photo of the other high quality taxi available. We have the best room in the world (ok, in Mancora) overlooking the beach at the surf break so we've been just sitting on the balcony critiquing the surfers for hours on end. Photo of Karl, in rare multitasking mode, playing guitar wh