Oh dear! Sometimes we just get our timing wrong. This time it’s very wrong. So wrong that it would hands-down win the Eurovision Wrong Contest. Why-o-why-o-why couldn’t we have got to Nicaragua a few months before the rebels decide they want regime change? They’re having a bit of bother there and we find ourselves hanging around in Costa Rica waiting to drive across Nicaragua … Continue reading
Author Archives: marcustuck@btinternet.com
Costa Rica – The Pura Vida Thing
Costa Rica’s ubiquitous mantra – Pura Vida (‘pure life’) is on everything here: t-shirts, hats, cuddly toys, hair-clips, flip-flops, wooden turtles, plastic dolphins, pots & pans… you name it, it’s got a bit of ‘pura vida’ scrawled somewhere across it. It works too. The tourists lap it up, so we can’t blame the Ticos for flogging it. But it can give a rather cheesy impression of the country. So far, we’ve toured the south/west of Costa Rica which is just a bit less popular with the ‘pura vida set’ than some other parts of the country. As we head now into a more touristy part of the country, we find some extraordinary wildlife, but still ponder whether this cheesy image of Costa Rica, generated partly by the ‘pura vida thing’, is otherwise justified.
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Costa Rica – Jungle, Wildlife and Beaches
Costa Rica generates mixed reviews from travellers: jungle, wildlife, beaches… but two words crop-up with some regularity: ‘touristy’ and ‘expensive’. Not the most enticing adjectives. But even if it were possible to avoid the country on our way through Central America, which it isn’t, we still wouldn’t want to miss checking it out for ourselves. So here we are… just checking it out…
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Bring it on! Preparing Cuthbert for the Tropical Rainy Season
Last year we spent around four months of tropical rainy season in the Amazon delta and jungle. Looking back, we have to admit that we weren’t perhaps quite as well prepared for the climate as we could have been. Recently we’ve been preparing a camper for tropical climate. Continue reading
Get-rich-quick in Costa Rica
Do you feel lucky? Most people come to Costa Rica to spend a fortune, so why not buck the trend and find a fortune instead? All you’ve got to do is go panning for gold … and get lucky.
Panama’s Wild West
“How long for Panama d’ya reckon?” I asked Marcus in a rare and rash attempt at planning before we arrived here. “Dunno…” he said “…three, four weeks? Not much there, is there?”. “Dunno” I replied. Truth is, we really had no clue as to what there is to do in Panama. The Canal was on our bucket list, but other than that…. who knows? Even if you’d offered us a few $$$ to do so, we wouldn’t have been able to name another town or attraction that Panama had to offer the casual overlanding tourist – particularly not in the wild western Panama.
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Panama City: Mind the Gap
It’s a big hop from South to Central America. From Colombia, our Cuthbert took a luxury Caribbean RORO cruise and we took a flight into Panama. Once we had Cuthbert released from Customs, we set out to explore eastern Panama, Panama City, and one of our bucket-list destinations: the Canal. As Panama City is a glitzy, first-world, cosmopolitan city, we also took the opportunity to sort out some over-due dental work. What we hadn’t anticipated, is quite how long the dentist would keep us here!Around the Darien Gap.
Cuthbert with a London Taxi in Panama!
South America Route Planning: 10 Reasons to go beyond the PanAm
You’re doing your overland South America route planning. Hitting the PanAmerican north/south corridor route between Colombia and Tierra del Fuego is the way to do it, right? A PanAm road-trip down the western side of South America is a terrific, jaw-droppingly gorgeous drive. With adventures galore… stunning scenery, awesome mountains, simmering volcanos, breath-taking hikes, challenging routes, relaxing hot-springs, interesting towns, tasty food and fascinating historic sites. All these are served with a generous sprinkling of llamas and the occasional chunky chap in a brightly coloured poncho. Sounds just the ticket for ‘doing’ South America doesn’t it? Continue reading
Panama Canal: The Chicken of Golden Eggs
Panama has a canal. You’ve probably heard of it, it’s quite famous. But have you heard it referred to as ‘The Chicken of Golden Eggs’? For Panamanians, the Canal is indeed the gift that keeps on giving. For us, the Canal is a much anticipated, Bucket List destination. We’re excited merely to see it. It’s fabulous to watch from the viewing-decks, the ships passing through. We don’t even dare to hope that we might do the Panama Canal crewing on a yacht. But guess what? Holy moly… we actually do get to do it! We help to crew the beautiful s/v Platina through the Canal. “No waaay!!!” you say in amazement. “Yes waaay” we say to convince you. Read on how it goes…
Caribbean Colombia – The Final Call
Unlike the rest of the country, Caribbean Colombia is hot and humid. The northern coast and plains are a marked contrast to the temperate green highlands of central Colombia that we enjoyed for the last weeks of 2017. Now to kick-off 2018, we help another overlander after his unscheduled rendezvous with a local moped near Mompos; cross the desert of La Guajira; go to jail in colonial Cartagena and finally… we wave farewell to Cuthbert as he sets sail on a cruise to Panama. Oh… and in between all that, Marcus learns to kite-surf!
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La Guajira Overland – the Pie-crust and the Wayuu
Few places in South America have poverty like the far-northern desert wastelands of Colombia. La Guajira is Colombia’s most northerly region and a marked contrast to the prosperous green lands of the central coffee region where we spent Christmas. It’s wild, remote, windy and inhospitable up there. But at the top sits our Holy Grail destination, the most northerly point of the whole South American continent: Punta Gallinas. On our South American journey so far, we’ve visited the most southerly, easterly, westerly and the geodesic centre points of the continent. It would be churlish to leave without popping up to see Mr Northerly. En-route we have the challenge of driving the mud-pan pie-crust and the dilemma of the poverty-stricken Wayuu children (click here for Map and notes for self-drive to Punta Gallinas).
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Mud-roading Cuthbert – The Videos
A belated Happy New Year for 2018! Over the Christmas chill-out, Marcus ‘Spielberg‘ Tuck has put together some more video stuff from our 2017 moochings around South America in Cuthbert. Four short videos including the mega-adventure double-feature-set of mud-roads through the Amazon jungle, hiking through Colombia’s towering wax-palms and a super-moon setting at dawn.
First ‘proper’ blog of 2018 coming soon, but in the meantime… get your popcorn, sit back and enjoy the show 🙂 Continue reading
Colombia: Down to the Heat
It’s a curious thing this overlanding. Who’s to tell you when to move on, where to go next? Time in a country is obviously dictated by visas and permits palaver, but other than that we kind of ‘go with the wind’ or sometimes not. Colombia is a particularly ‘stick-around’ place for us. We’re staying here longer than any other country in South America and the cool central highlands/coffee region is our favourite. Here we’re hanging around doing… ummm… not a lot. Just avoiding ‘the heat’ really.
New Map, New Brakes!
Look, look, looook……. a new map of all our favourite bits of South America! Zoom in, scroll around, click on the links! If you’re itching to find out how we came to have such a fab new South America highlights map on our website, and how Cuthbert came to have such beautiful new brakes… read on below 🙂 Continue reading
South America Overlanding Video Fest!!
Central Colombia is as good a place as any to take a bit of time out and rustle up a few much-overdue videos of our South America travels. We love it here and are more than happy to stay-put near Medellin for a while, but if we’re honest… our sojourn is actually less our choice and more enforced by Iveco. Remember way back, weeks ago, we placed an order for spare parts with Iveco (Navitrans, in Colombia) which were going to arrive second week of November? Well… surprise, surprise, they didn’t arrive on time and we had a week of sitting around waiting. Anyway… here for your delectation and delight, are the results of our South America Overlanding Videos Fest week: the Lencois Maranhenses, the Salar de Uyuni, and the Sacred Valley Skylodge. Continue reading
Bogotá
Bogotá is big. A city of over ten million people. Ten million!!! It’s a gritty working city, full of graffiti and certainly not known for its colonial charm. A trip up the Monserrate cable car for an overview of the metropolis provides a small clue as to the scale of the place, but never let it be said that we judge a book by its cover. We’re here to give Bogotá a fair crack-of-the-whip and we find it a nice city to mooch about! Also, we’re here to do some gadget shopping. Hmmm… sounds expensive! Bogotá Blog
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Central Colombia
Help! We need an adequate superlative for Colombia. Bit unimaginative to say that it’s just the loveliest country… but trust me… it really is. After the friendliest welcome, countless scenic small towns, the finest coffee, the ancient history and the fascinating former drug-lands… we’re heading east and south a bit, on a very roundabout route through central Colombia to Bogotá.
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Medellin: Tale of a City
Milo is just 25 years old and extremely personable. At the age of 7 years old on his way to school, he saw his first dead body, lying riddled with bullets in the street of his neighbourhood. Eeishh… bit of a grim start to a travel blog, eh? Milo has much to tell us about growing up in the ‘90s in a drug-war-torn Medellin, but first let’s lighten things up and back-track a bit…
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Colombian Coffee Time
Got time for a coffee? These days we’re not short on time to sit around and swap stories with other overlanders over a coffee, so it’s rather cool to finally be here in the centre of the Colombian coffee universe. You know that Colombia’s big on coffee, right? Well, here in the Zona Cafetera they grow shed-loads of it. And many of the coffee haciendas don’t just do the coffee-crop, they do coffee-tourism too. Large-scale and small-scale producers take pride in both educating visitors and producing top-notch beans. We trotted along to a hacienda at each end of the spectrum to see them do their thing.
Here’s ten little factoids Colombia’s Zona Cafetera has taught us about coffee: Continue reading
Cool Colombia
Hope we’re not tempting fate…. but after three weeks, cool Colombia ’s already looking hot-favourite for Cuthbert’s ‘Top Spot – South America’ Award. In the last blog we joked about Colombia’s notoriety for drugs barons and banditos. In truth, the threat to tourists from such characters is now very much history. Beautiful, clean, lots to see and do, outstanding value for money, exceptionally friendly and with a kind of chilled-out vibe that’s difficult to quite put your finger on. We’re continuing north now for some ancient tombs, a photo-dilemma and (yet another) visit to Iveco. The bar has been set high for Colombia so far… let’s see if we can find any points to knock it back along the way!
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