They can all be found on the Photography page, but here are the links for simplicity:

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Argentina
Bolivia
Colombia
Guatemala
Honduras
Mexico
Nicaragua
Panama
Peru

Clothes

1 Pair Trousers - used sparingly, in nightclubs and whe ntemperature dipped – especially in Bolivia
1 Pair Cargo Shorts – used extensively. I recommend Gap. Lasted very well, had pockets repaired in Panama then replaced in Colombia.
3 T Shirts - White t-shirts didn’t last too well. Easy and cheap to buy when replacement needed.
2 Vests - Easy and cheap to buy when replacement needed.
1 Shirt
Haverhill C.C. Baseball Cap
Woolly Hat – used sparingly, but always handy to have – again especially in Bolivia.
Belt - As it turned out, I put on a lot of weight around the waist. Who would have thought.
Swimming Shorts
4 Pairs Boxer Shorts – Not enough.
3 Pairs Socks – Enough.
1 Pair Flip Flops – Every day wear. Replaced in Argentina. Havaianas are the way forward.
1 Pair Reef Sandals - Used very sparingly, posted home from Bolivia.
1 Pair Shoes/Trainers – Replaced in Colombia.
2 Jumpers – One stolen from hostel in Oaxaca, replaced in Guatemala.
1 Raincoat – Again, used sparingly but useful in colder places.
Sunglasses
2 Pairs Glasses
90 Pairs Contact Lenses - used all and bought new ones in Colombia.

Toiletry Bag

Toothbrush – no need to worry, these things are available everywhere you go.
Toothpaste
Dental Floss
Shower Gel
Razor
Shaving Oil
Aftershave
Deodorant
Ear Plugs – Absolutely indispensable. Used a lot, enabled me to sleep in places I wouldn’t have otherwise slept. If you are thinking about travelling, take earplugs. Simple as that.
Sleeping Mask – never used.
Vitamin Tablets
Sun Cream
Aftersun Cream
Sun Protection Lip Balm
Spare Razor Blades
Cotton Buds
Insect Repellent
Nail Clippers
Shaving Mirror
Eye Drops
Hair Wax

First Aid Kit etc.

280 Doxycycline Tablets (Malaria) - didnt end up taking.
Chloroquine Tablets (Malaria) - took them through Central America. Lots of people don’t bother.
Plasters
Antiseptic Wipes
Dressing Bandage – didn’t use
Dressing Pads - didn’t use
Germoline – didn’t use
Bonjela – didn’t use
Antihistamine - used sparingly
Ibuprofen/Paracetamol
Condoms
Sewing Kit – unless real emergencies are required, very cheap to go to a launderette and pay a tailor to make repairs.
Dental Floss
Ear Plugs

As a side note, all of these toiletry and first aid things are widely available in every town and most villages. Probably worth buying as and when required, unless planning to do a lot of things away from towns and villages.

Documents

Passport – oh dear.
Flight Tickets – never once got asked for proof of onward journey.
Address Book – never used
Vaccination Record Card - never got asked to show it.
Notebook/Journal - used a lot. Sent home full one in Bolivia. Replaced in Arequipa.
Hotel Reservations for USA
Photocopies of Passport – came in handy when passport was stolen.
Insurance Policy
Glasses and Contact Lenses Prescription – came in handy when buying new contact lenses.
Elastic Bands – ?
Pen
Calculator – never used

General Bag

Battery Charger c/w Adaptor – lost and replaced in Guatemala
Alarm Clock -
Victorinox Swiss Army Knife – confiscated in Panama City. Forgot it was in my pocket and tried to board a plane! Whoops.
Duck Tape – Used to repair pockets in trousers and money belt, and to keep camera battery compartment door closed.
Cable Ties – never used.
Torch - Don’t remember ever seeing this!
Padlock – Used a lot, especially in hotels with lockers.
Batteries for MP3 Player
Camera Memory Card

Books

Lonely Planet Mexico – very useful. Heavy. Left in Guatemala.
Rough Guide Central America – ?
Rough Guide South America – Not brilliant. South America is too big a continent to condense like that.
English-Spanish Dictionary – helpful.
Lonely Planet Health Handbook - never used.
American Psycho (some light reading) - book exchanges in hostels are for winners.

Other Stuff

Travel Towel – not good. felt horrible, didn’t dry properly. After a few days I bought a normal towel. Started using a sarong in South America, which is lightweight and dries quickly.
Sleep Sheet – not good. Too small, too hot in Mexico to sleep with anything covering. Sent home from Bolivia
MP3 Player – used to store photos. Have since bought an iPod.
Digital Camera & USB Cable - worked wel until Panama, where it died. Would take small camera and possibly a larger better quality camera next time.
Money Belt – works well if you actually wear it. Doesn’t do so good if you leave it in your daysack. As I unfortunately found out. Replaced in Arequipa.
Day Pack – stolen in Peru. Replaced. handy to keep with you when on buses.
Laundry bags – useful for separating dirty clothes from clean.

Things I bought when away

Casio watch – needed to know the time. worked well until stolen from hostel in Lima. Replaced with imitation in Colombia, which didnt work too well.
Extra jumper - didnt really need this, just bought it because I liked it.
Pen and small pad – I kept wanting to write little things down but never had paper available, so I bought a little notepad and kept it with me all the time.
Hiking boots – cheap ones, from a market in Bolivia. The Hi-Tec Squash – although awesome – were not up to the rigours of hiking in the Andes. Would probably buy better ones next time as they were not the most comfortable.
Blanket – for cold nights in Guatemala. Used sparingly and sent home from Bolivia.
Sleeping bag – bought in Argentina. Never really used and got lost on the plane journey from Panama to Madrid at the end of the trip. Quite hard to find a decent camping store, so I would buy from home next time. I thought about getting all the camping gear and starting to camp more to save some money, but the equipment (where available) was not of a great standard and not cheap either.
Valium – used to sleep on buses. Needed a prescription in Lima, but available over the counter in a small village pharmacy. Work well but leave you very drowsy the next morning. I read the whole of Mice and Men the morning after taking one, and I can’t remember a thing about the book. Not sure about the legality of taking them across international borders?

If you like this equipemtn review, or are trying to research your own equipment needs, be sure to read the review of my Six Essential Items to Carry Whilst Travelling

Back to Latin America Summary >>

Below is a small selection of photos from Latin America 2005/06….

The last photo (of the flower) was taken with a Canon DIGITAL IXUS 60 in Ireland

Every time I browse through the photos of Latin America I wish I had taken larger photos, as the size of the majority of photos do not do justice to of the places I visited. I have decided that for the next trip I want to concentrate more on taking quality photos, and am willing to buy a better camera to do the job. Storage is now not so much of an issue as memory cards are very cheap – probably only a few pounds per gb. As 1gb will store about 200 photos (assuming 5mb per photo), and blank DVD’s are only a few pence, there isn’t any need to worry about storing photos.

As for the camera, I have wanted something of a better quality for a while, and having read about the entry level digital SLR cameras being of a very good standard, I recently bought a Nikon D40 SLR camera, as it has some good reviews, and it was a decent price.

For more photos from specific countries, click on the links below:

Mexico

Guatemala

Honduras

Nicaragua

Panama

Argentina

Bolivia

Peru

Colombia

I woke feeling groggy, packed my stuff, woke Aaron and we left Quito. I didn’t see anything there but I wasn’t overly concerned as at this time the only thing I wanted to do was get to Colombia.

We took another slow bus (once I arrived in Pasto later that evening I worked out I had travelled about 44 hours on buses from the previous 100 travelling from Lima, Peru to Pasto, Colombia) to the Colombian border. The formalities were surprisingly easy, and we took a taxi to the bus station in the border town of which I forget the name.

We took another bus of 2 hours to Pasto where we checked into a hostel. As we did so and left the building to go get some food, Oscar Jens and Robin pulled up in a taxi having travelled the same as us that day. Talk about co-incidence. We all went out for dinner and they told us about their Galapagos trip and showed the photos, which looked amazing but at $1000 each for the week long trip it was out of my budget. Maybe when I am older!

We then went in search of a bar to catch up over a beer, and who did we bump into, but Jon. Therefore the six were back together. Very strange and very co-incidental.

Jon had been held up in Pasto due to a farmer’s strike which was blocking the road an hour north of town. No-one could pass and hence we were stuck until it broke up or we got a flight out of town.

Leaving the worries about that until morning we had a beer and a chat but it wasn’t a party night so we called time.

I woke up early and decided to make my way north. There was no specific reason for this, I just decided that I wanted to get to Colombia as soon as possible, and hanging around in beach towns was not really conducive to achieving this.

To get north to Colombia meant passing through Ecuador. In this part of the world even a small country is actually not that small. It took me two hours to get to the border in a small VW minibus. I left the bus, took another shuttle to the border and was immediately accosted by a local guy trying to guide me across the border. I had been emailed by the Swedes and warned of this scam so I was ready for all that was coming.

He explained that the border was particularly bad and dangerous, however if he helped me no such harm would come to me.

I went into the border control of Peru and got my exit stamp, before walking about a mile through a crowded market to the offices of a local bus company where I could take the bus to Guayaguil, first stopping off at the Ecuadorian border control a few miles out of town.

The lad offered to carry my big bag so I let him (the day was boiling hot) and he guided me through the streets to the bus offices. When we got there he made the effect of asking for payment, as the Swedes said he would. I knew it was coming so wasn’t bothered, and in reality he had helped me out so I gave him and his mate $5 for their trouble.

As soon as I gave him the money he was off out of the traps like a greyhound!

I had a few minutes to kill before the bus left so I bought some food from the handy food stall which happened to be right at the entry point to the bus. A $1.25 meal later (by the way the official currency of Ecuador is the US Dollar) and the bus was ready to leave.

Not much happened on the bus, except as usual I asked how many hours it was and was told 4. The actual time was more like 6. I am not sure if the people lie on purpose or the buses really do get delayed by such long times, but every bus and every conductor is the same!

So 6 hours later, about 5pm, I arrived in Guayaguil without a clue as to where to stay. Usually there is some form of internet near the bus station but this wasn’t the case in Guayaguil. I was left to ask taxi drivers for hostels, as they either tried to rip me off or take me to the wrong place. I stood there and asked about 20 people before one guy seemed to know what he was talking about so I got in and he took me to a hostel. He still charged me too much but at least I got to something like the kind of place I wanted to be in.

Guayaguil is mainly a stopping off point for people looking to do Galapagos Island tours and as a result the number of tour operators is growing. I wasn’t looking to do such a tour and as such it was kind of just a stopping off point for me on my way to Quito.

The hostel was ok, the people staying there were decent enough and I had a chat about the forthcoming world cup over a few beers, shared a pizza and generally spoke about travelling before I made my way to bed.

Arriving at 9.00am in Mancora (north of Peru) about 18 hours after leaving Lima, it was clear it was going to be a hot day! I jumped into a golf cart taxi and told my caddy to take me to a hotel. He drove me down the main road and after a couple of minutes we arrived at my concrete monstrosity of a hotel.

I checked in and although tired from the journey I changed and headed straight for the beach. This being my first experience of the Pacific since Nicaragua, and my first in South America, and my first beach of any kind since Argentina I jumped straight into the water.

Refreshed I lay on the sand and continued to read my mammoth book, Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. I stayed where I was for a few hours until I began to feel a little peckish. I fancied ceviche, the raw fish dish, and here was apparently the place to eat it. Almost every restaurant boasted of serving it, however the shacks on the beach drew my attention and I made a beeline for them. I ordered the mixed ceviche served with chilli and lime, which turned out to be an absolute treat.

Engrossed in Atlas Shrugged but needing to retire from the Equatorial rays of the sun, I returned to my hotel and sat in the shade of the bar, beer in hand, reading.

I managed to pass most of the day this way, and in doing so, also got through a fair chunk of my book. I had originally picked the book up in Bariloche however I didn’t start it until Bolivia, but still my reading had been neglected in favour of lash the previous few weeks, and travelling alone again I had the opportunity to get back into the quiet life!

During the late afternoon and early evening I strolled about the town (along the high street in truth – the town is basically the high street) and along the golden sandy beach. I managed to find some Valium tablets for long bus journeys (the pharmacies wouldn’t sell me any in Lima, but I had no such problems in the smaller town.

I did consider heading out after dark for a few beers, so I went out for dinner and enjoyed two golden nectars with my rice & seafood, but I began to feel the effects of my 18 hour bus journey so called it a night at about 10pm.

I had planned on staying in Lima over the weekend, so not having been able to collect my Passport wasn’t so much of an issue, more of an inconvenience. The other thing I needed to collect whilst I was in Lima were my ATM cards. They had been Fed-Ex’ed to me in Lima (Cheers Mum and Dad) and arrived within three days of benig sent. They went from London to New York to Atlanta to Florida to Caracas to Lima in the space of Friday to Tuesday.

I needed to collect them but they were over the other side of the city so Fed-Ex got a motorbike courier and delivered them to my hostel. Didn’t even need to move. Efficiency at its best.

On the other hand, the British Embassy were the antithesis of efficiency. I got one excuse after another as to why my Passport (which I had paid about £120 for – not as if they were doing me a favour amd giving me the Passport) wasn’t ready.

1. We only got your forms two days ago from the British Consulate in Cusco – I had left them there 11 days previous.

5. If you really need a Passport we can issue you an emergency, but you can only return to England on that.

All this was taking its toll. I was pretty much expecting it to be a struggle but after the fourth time I went there or called them I began to get pretty pissed off.

I passed the weekend away with Aaron and Jon getting drunk, reading, watching DVD’s and generally lazing around, so it wasn’t like it was a hardship, but it was just annoying that I couldn’t go anywhere – I had to wait until these people decided that they would actually fix this problem instead of giving me excuses.

When Aaron and Jon left on Monday evening to head north I was still waiting for my Passport. It turned out I needed to wait until Thursday afternoon when I would finally collect it.

Friday I decided I had enough of Peru, it wasn’t doing me any favours and I wanted to get north to Colombia. So I boarded a bus for 20 hours to Mancora, a beach town right at the northern end of Peru.

After waiting around in Arequipa for the whole day we caught an overnight bus to Lima. This bus began with such potential! Comfortable seats, decent legroom and right at the front. I was hoping after Bolivia and Peru for a decent bus to travel in comfort. Unfortunately as we left Lima and got into the country, this became yet another horrible journey.

As we got into the country it became obvious the driver was a maniac and he also liked to have the heating up very high. So therefore as we sat sweltering, we were also sweating as every bend we seemed to go up onto two wheels. Invariably at these bends we were also on the wrong side of the road as we were performing an overtaking manouvre. Not a very comfortable feeling when you are being thrown out of your seat every two minutes, and even less when heading around blind bends and seeing oncoming traffic directly in your path.

This was made all the worse as we were right at the front of the bus and had an excellent view of all the corners we were nearly not maing it around, as well as all the cars and trucks we were nearly hitting.

Given the difficulties of the heat and of remaining in our seats, sleep was hard to come by but eventually when the road straightened out I managed to drop off only to be woken at 6am by the steward putting on ‘The Princess Diaries’ at maximum volume for our viewing pleasure. With great luck we mananged to see all of that great film before we pulled into Lima bus station and took a taxi to the district of Barranco for our stay in the original and best of the Point Hostel chain.

After checking in an a bite to eat we set out to take a tour of the capital of Peru. We walked from our suburb district Barranco into Miraflores, passing the newly built apartment blocks overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Arriving in Miraflores I headed straight for the British Embassy to collect my Passport. In Cusco they had told me that I would be able to collect my Passport in 10 days. This being 11 days from that I was looking forward to recieiving the decent Birthday present of a shiny new Passport.

This being beaurocacy of the highest order, I wasn’t overly suprised when they told me it wasn’t ready and wouldn’t be for another day or two. I had planned on staying around in Lima for the weekend so it wasn’t really an inconvience at this point.

We had a wander around the Miraflores district before taking a taxi to the city centre. The main plaza was large but not as impressive as others in Peru, and the city streets were dirty and noisy. I liked it. We ended up wandering around the city for a good few hours looking at some of the buildings and other squares around. We stumbled into Chinatown where we had a decent feed for pennies, before going to an indoor market, Polvos Azules.

This is the market where all the stolen goods from Peru end up and it is pretty decent. All brand makes of every item you can think of from watches to laptop computers are on sale at really low prices. The stuff is a mixture of fake and real stuff but the fakes are generally pretty good. I bought a new bag to replace the one I had “misplaced’. After a decent browse we went back to the hostel and ended up in the attached bar, drinking until the wee hours before heading a club.

For this reason I woke a little fuzzy headed on the day 26 years after I entered the world. I had a quiet morning before treating myself to the national dish of Peru, Ceviche. This is a selection of raw seafood marinated in lime juice and peppers. Although I mistakenly ate one of the hottest chilli’s ever, the ceviche was delicious.

I spent the afternoon relaxing ready for a night out on the town. Much tequila was consumed in the Point bar befre we headed out to a club called El Dragon and had a few more beers. Compared to my last birthday when I was sat at a desk in Felixstowe, 26 beats 25 hands down!