by Anna Downing | Sep 14, 2011 | Features, Travel
Just as I’m fastening my goggles to my face, the crowd pushes inwards and my ribs are almost crushed. I can’t breathe, and thanks to the fogged-up goggles I can’t see either. My feet are being trampled and elbows are jabbing me from every direction. The first tomato...
by Anna Downing | Jun 24, 2011 | Features, Travel
I thought the border crossing from Colombia to Peru was a joke (it happened in a bar), but the one from Argentina to Brazil was ridiculous – it didn’t even require standing up. We simply got in a cab, gave our passports to the cab driver, who showed them...
by Anna Downing | Jun 23, 2011 | Features, Travel
Saying goodbye to Buenos Aires, even after spending only six days there, was a sad day. Not least because as a parting gift it had given me a solid day of rain. But it didn’t matter, because I was about to experience my first ever flat-bed bus ride. The journey...
by Anna Downing | May 21, 2011 | Features, Travel
I have had twelve hours’ sleep in the past six days. In BA, people don’t eat till 10pm, and if you get to a nightclub before 4am you’re like, so uncool. I’m far from cool. Apparently I’m supposed to nap between 4pm and 7pm and spend the...
by Anna Downing | May 17, 2011 | Features, Travel
I love Argentina – and I haven’t even eaten the steak yet. There’s too much else to eat. Churros, ice cream, empanadas, fried hotdogs – and the hostel I’m in offers breakfast AND dinner, which is a first in my whole four and a bit...
by Anna Downing | May 11, 2011 | Features, Travel
Coming straight into desert of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, from the Uyuni salt flats tour, we were treated to more of the same stunning landscape as south east Bolivia. Said to be the driest place on Earth (although it rained just before we got there, sparking...
by Anna Downing | May 11, 2011 | Features, Travel
My flight out of La Paz, Bolivia, finally arrived not a moment too soon, and within an hour I was in the beautiful capital city of Sucre. With no plan other than to enjoy a Bolivian city that wasn’t La Paz, I soon bumped into a tour group made up of English, Canadian,...
by Anna Downing | May 1, 2011 | Features, Travel
The days following Death Road I spent wandering around La Paz. I’m not taken by the city. It’s busy, fumey from the buses, smells of wee and the altitude is so high I can’t breathe. Plus it’s all uphill, which doesn’t help with the inability to breathe. I have a...
by Anna Downing | May 1, 2011 | Features, Travel
Having ummed and ahhed for months about cycling Bolivia’s Death Road I was so excited to be actually doing it that all my reservations had completely disappeared. I was just looking forward to getting back on the bike and getting some good adrenaline going. The...
by Anna Downing | Apr 30, 2011 | Features, Travel
My journey to Bolivia started in Cusco, where I got on a bus at 10pm only to find my Polish friends from Machu Picchu also on the bus! The first thing we discussed was the ways in which people steal your things on buses. We got no sleep. We arrived in Puno, on Lake...
by Anna Downing | Apr 30, 2011 | Features, Travel
Leaving Huaraz, I was sent off at the bus station by Hannes, Katherine, Jim, his wife and Lucas, then settled in or a six-hour bus ride (with the amazing Cruz Del Sur) to Lima then got straight into a cab for the airport. In the cab I thought I was going to be robbed...
by Anna Downing | Apr 27, 2011 | Features, Travel
Three hours on a bus, three hours climbing a mountain at 4,800m altitude and this is my favourite picture of the beautiful Laguna 69 near Huaraz, Peru. It was so hard to breathe on the way up and my legs turned to jelly, but we eventually made it, and the journey was...
by Anna Downing | Apr 20, 2011 | Features, Travel
I feel like I should talk a bit about the volunteer work I was given the opportunity to do, as it really made my trip and was brilliant to actually see what these NGOs do rather than just giving someone a fiver towards some charity for running 26.2 miles every April...
by Anna Downing | Apr 17, 2011 | Features, Travel
I arrived in Huaraz at 5.30am, in the pitch dark, only to be accosted by two other travellers (Dutch Sabina and Israeli Elad) asking where I was staying, so I very kindly offered them to join me at my remote mountain lodge. We arrived at the mountain lodge to hidden...
by Anna Downing | Apr 17, 2011 | Features, Travel
We got off the boat in Iquitos, Peru, at a ridiculous hour (5:30am), but somehow managed to find an almost empty hostel (and cheap – $4) right next door to what became my very regular hang out, the Karma Café. The hostel also had two kittens, so I was very happy...
by Anna Downing | Apr 12, 2011 | Features, Travel
After years of dreaming of visiting the Amazon, I’m finally here! Sadly, the Amazon attracts the twattiest of travellers – a breed of people that is pretty annoying already. They’re all here solely to try Ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic drug that you do with a...
by Anna Downing | Mar 28, 2011 | Features, Travel
The morning after my fun jaunt through the death zone of Medellin was finally time to move on – to Manizales, coffee capital of Colombia. But not before finally meeting the Aussie guy also on a homestay across the street – the one the girls were doing...
by Anna Downing | Mar 27, 2011 | Features, Travel
My last day in Medellin started off well – my visa got sorted in five minutes and then I went for a wandering Spanish lesson in which my teacher Jorge and I walked around town and ate a huge lunch. Then he had to go teach another class and I had a task to attend...
by Anna Downing | Mar 23, 2011 | Features, Travel
The very morning I had to extend my visa for being here too long (never done that before) was the same day that demonstrated exactly why I have stayed here so long in the first place. So the day started off pretty uneventful. I spent 5 hours sorting out my visa (which...
by Anna Downing | Mar 22, 2011 | Features, Travel
I’m now four/five days into my homestay and Saturday night was a great turning point with my family – we got plastered together, Colombia style. But my story begins a few hours earlier, when I shunned Spanish lessons in favour of taking a day trip to Gautape, a...
by Anna Downing | Mar 20, 2011 | Features, Travel
After cramming more exercise into five days than I have in my entire life, I just wanted to lay my butt down on a beach and eat lots of food for a couple of days – so that’s exactly what I did. We got back to Santa Marta on the Friday night, I slept like a baby...
by Anna Downing | Mar 18, 2011 | Features, Travel
First of all, I should explain why I wanted to drag my exercise-shy ass through a muddy, mosquito-infested jungle for five days, sleeping in hammocks every night. Basically, the Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) trek is said to be a bit like Peru’s Inca Trail, except there...
by Anna Downing | Mar 15, 2011 | Features, Travel
So the day after getting back from Cabo de la Vela (which I promised to continue – basically we had a bad journey back, being ripped off and arguing with taxi drivers a lot), we went to Laura’s cousin’s apartment in Barranquilla, a swanky place in a...
by Anna Downing | Mar 7, 2011 | Features, Travel
After Cartagena Laura and I went off the beaten path (even more so than just being in Colombia…) to a place called Punta Gallinas. The Lonely Planet describes it as being near impossible to reach without being on an organised tour that costs $350 (for 3 days!), and...
by Anna Downing | Mar 4, 2011 | Features, Travel
A retrospective post about Panama, as things have been such a whirlwind that I’ve blasted through to Colombia and been too excited about this amazing country that I just want to write about here. But Panama was really gorgeous. The landscape up north was similar to...
by Anna Downing | Feb 27, 2011 | Features, Travel
My experience of Colombia really began when I got on the plane in Panama City. After chasing an ambulance through gridlocked traffic to get to the airport, the plane left early, arrived 15 before schedule, we got off the plane the moment it touched down, walked...
by Anna Downing | Feb 10, 2011 | Features, Travel
Panama Day 1 Panama day 1 really kind of starts in Costa Rica. We were held up in traffic on the way to Panama so we ended up not making the border crossing in time and had to spend the night in Sixaola, a weird little town with nothing going for it. We were literally...
by Anna Downing | Feb 8, 2011 | Features, Travel
Day 14 – last week Santa Cruz, Ometepe, Nicaragua Today was our first full day on Ometepe, the volcano island in the middle of lake Nicaragua. It’s a beautiful island, and the side we stayed on was very windy and the lake was really wavy. Women clean their...
by Anna Downing | Feb 2, 2011 | Features, Travel
Costa Rica Day 10 Another night in the tent, which was so much fun. It was also quite interesting to share a bathroom block with loads of other people – meeting people for the first time as you stand side by side brushing your teeth together is a funny way to...
by Anna Downing | Jan 26, 2011 | Features, Travel
Flying from Cuba to San Jose, Costa Rica, I was finally officially travelling on my own. I’d left my boyfriend behind and had four months of solo travel ahead. It didn’t take me long to meet new people though, and before I’d even got on the plane I...