Last Stop Paradise

On the eighth day the Lord created Paradise on Earth and plopped it in the ocean just off the north coast of Venezuela. Just to confuse everyone he called these islands Los Roques rather than Las Playas, which is what they really are along with a whole heap of coral. ..Oh, and He only mentioned it to the Italians, who it turns out can keep secrets as well as win World Cups.

I'd have written more but I've been way too busy relaxing in the sun. It's been a great way to end a fabulous trip!

Wetsuit Mountaineering

The adventure is nearly over. We're in Caracas, surely one of the ugliest cities on Earth. It makes Middlesbrough look lovely, though the restaurants and salsa are rather better here. Still, we're off to enjoy our final few days on the Carribean Islas Los Roques, which are reputed to be as close to paradise as you can get this side of a chat with the grim reaper. I hope they turn out to be as beautiful as promised since this trip is going to be the final boot in the groin of my travel finances. I guess it's about time I went home and got a job!

In the past few days we've been alternating between cool mountains and bug infested swamplands that fester in unbelievable heat. Naturally, I preferred the mountains, though the sight in Los Llanos of groups of giant capybara, the world's largest rodent, was possibly worth the entry price paid in mosquito bites. Grace would disagree I suspect. Not everything has gone exactly to plan of late. A day of canyoning in the Andes went totally tits up, resulting in three of us inventing the new sport of mountaineering in wetsuits in order to get back to civilisation. It can get a bit sweaty in the suits, but they're handy for downpours during the wet season.

The Venezuelan coast is particularly spectacular with pristine beaches backed by coastal mountains that provide a magnificent backdrop. This is indeed where the wannabe Miss Worlds are all hanging out, though with a strictly fry it or throw it attitude to food preparation in this country they're not all going to live the dream. The people seem to have a lot more attitude in these coastal parts too, which can seem engaging or straight out rude by turns. You learn to tred a little warily as a gringo here.

...Oh, and England didn't win the World Cup again, in case you hadn't heard.

The Last Country

It's rather a sad thought to think that Venezuela is my final country on this fourteen-month oddessey. It's number 39 if you don't include a few random plane changes in places as far ranging as Switzerland, Quatar and Equitorial Guinea, and also if you take the 'de facto' approach of not counting Tibet as a country in its own right. Anyway, it's been quite a journey.

And I'm not unhappy to make Venezuela the final stop. It's a vibrant, bustling country with bags of personality and a style that seems to mark it out from its Latin American neighbours. The leisured, slow lane life of colonial Cartagena, in Colombia, couldn't be more different to the lively atmosphere of the Andean city of Merida. This place has more extreme outdoor pursuits going down than you could do in a week, as well as the World's longest and highest cable car, taking you up to a nearby peak at 4,765m. It's a cool trip if a little relaxed in the safety department - the doors didn't quite shut in one of the cars and the maximum passenger load limit seemed to be more an aspiration than a regulation. It was freezing on the top with only about 10 metres visibility after the first snowfall of the year, but it was exhilarating to ride up into the clouds all the same. Mind you, I'm not sure the American tourist who went up in t-shirt and flip flops was quite so enthusiastic.

Venezuela has quite a few interesting quirks aside from its well known fondness for beauty contests - it's won more than any other nation, though I haven't encountered that many goddesses on my travels in the country so far. Perhaps that will change when I reach the beach! Taxis and many private cars here are enormous American gas-guzzlers, universally painted white it seems and normally looking like they've been on the road a good twenty to thirty years. I guess they can afford the fuel but not the new motors, though President Hugo Chavez's unilateral campaign against the USA, and all it stands for, doesn't exactly facilitate the flow of US imports. At night the local youths of the city like to hang out in these battered vehicles beside the main park with the car doors and trunks flung open as they blast latino music out at the world at large. It's all very friendly if a little difficult to sleep at times.

Holidaying in Colombia

Nobody much comes to Colombia which is something of a shame. It's a rich and diversely beautiful country which is home to some of the most engaging and welcoming people I've met in all the Americas. Perhaps it's their realisation that with 'the kidnap capital of the World' moniker sullying the country's tourism efforts, it's all the more important to make the right impression with those intrepid travellers who do still come.

Colombia certainly has some pretty major problems. Aside from a 40 year civil war being waged with more than one 'left-wing' guerilla group, there is the problem of other paramilitary forces run on a sort of vigilante basis to protect landed interests, and then the problem that all sides are more or less implicated in the illegal but lucrative cocaine business, which supplies more than 80% of the cocaine sold in the US. Unsurprisingly, the US are deeply involved in funding a drugs eradication programme here and back the tough anti-drugs stance of the President of Colombia, who's just been re-elected. President Uribe is popular for his no compromises approach to the country's problems and you can watch footage of coca fields being burned by government forces on the TV of an evening. Still, there doesn't seem to any great hope that all this conflict and violence is about to come to an end, so Colombia looks set to remain the unvisited country of South America a good while longer.

All of which seems a world away when you're actually in Colombia. There are plenty of no-go areas and even the locals choose to travel internally within the country by plane. However, the safer places seem as safe as anywhere I've been since Mexico. You don't get hassled much and people go out of their way to assist you with no hint of an expected reward for their efforts. It's the repetition of a scenario that I've observed all over the World. The more of us that come to visit a place the less respect we receive as tourists and the more difficulties and hassles we encounter. No doubt a great deal of this is the fault of the tourists, not the locals, when it comes to making a bad impression. The less visited countries are invariably the most pleasant to experience in terms of dealings with local people, even if there are sometimes sacrifices to be made in terms of hotel standards and general tourist infrastructure.

In the case of Colombia, there is no sense in which a derth of foreign visitors has inhibited the country's modern development however. Walking around the posher parts of Bogata you could feel yourself to be at the heart of an affluent European city, with smart restaurants, pavement cafes and delicatessans that would give Harrods' food hall a run for its money. Consumerism is booming in Colombia, and the people seem smart and articulate, well versed in their own problems but dealing with them with a wicked sense of humour - after all, we were greeted by our guide in Bogata with a cheery 'Thank you for being brave enough to visit us here in Colombia'!

The Mundial

The World Cup, or Mundial as they call it over here, is a pretty major event for South Americans. So it was that I found myself in the small Ecuadorian town of Latacunga surrounded by slow moving Toyota pick-up trucks honking their horns and spilling out hundreds of jubilant young people waving yellow flags. Ecuador had beaten Poland in their opening match and everyone was very very excited about it. What a contrast finding myself alone in a cafe the following morning watching England limp dismally to a win over fellow South Americans Paraguay.

We're holed up in a remote corner of the Andes for a few days, well away from the Mundial, enjoying invigorating walks at high altitude in spectacular mountain scenery. I haven't enjoyed the view from my bedroom window this much since I was in Nepal. We're staying at an American run eco-lodge equipped with every environmentally sustainable modernity you could require from 'dry toilets' through to a pet pig that eats the meagre leftovers that remain after sorting waste for recycling. There's also dogs and sheep to keep you company, and a llama that has a tendency to want to join you in the outside shower. Though occasionally you fear getting into trouble for eco-blundering, it's actually a wonderful place to stay and quite inspiring to see the way the owners have striven to put their profits back into supporting the needs of the local community, which is overwhelmingly indigenous and relatively poor even by Ecuadorian standards. I'm not looking forward to leaving this place to return to the big city lights of Quito.

Panama Hats

I've been getting a bit lax with my hat purchasing since Africa, but I did procure a rather natty Panama hat in Merida, Mexico, which has seen quite a bit of wear in Central America and has almost blown away a fair few times. Oddly, Panama hats don't come from Panama. Traditionally they were made in Ecuador, but they were first popularized by workers digging the Panama Canal. The Yucatan version from Mexico is a quality sub-species of a superior weave. I've had quite a few compliments on the hat from locals, which certainly ranks as a first on my travels. With most of my other hat purchases they've just tended to point a finger at me and roar with laughter.

The back end of Central America has been a touch less exciting than the front end, partly I suspect because we've actually missed some of the best places to visit. Still, Costa Rica and Panama have been undeniably beautiful despite the rigours of their sweaty climates. It seems the closer you get to the Equator the more you have to get cosy with biting bugs of one sort or another, and several folk have been wandering around looking like they've just caught a nasty bout of the plague. The occasional foray into the mountains provides welcome relief from the bugs as well as the opportunity to explore coffee plantations and bath in mountainous thermal springs beneath yet more smoking volcanos.

And at the end of it all you hit the great metropolis of Panama City. It's not my favourite capital city of the trip despite friendly enough people and a dramatic setting on a sweeping bay of the Pacific with mountains behind. Somehow it lacks enough of a character or charm of its own to imprint on the memory, though it does have very funkily painted buses. What does impress though is the Panama Canal. A mighty engineering feat in its construction, it remains quite breathtaking to see even today as you watch container ships the size of multi-storey buildings edge by the narrowest of margins into and out of giant locks. By comparison, the Suez Canal seems like chicken feed

Lava Cocktails

Unbelieveably I've been a year on the road [and occasionally the sea] with Dragoman. I celebrated the anniversary in style at the Volcan Arenal in Costa Rica, the World's second most active volcano, which erupts every twenty minutes or so. Though the summit is invariably swathed in cloud, you can spot the red glow of the odd pyroclastic flow rolling out under the night sky from beneath the cloudline. The volcano has a very sticky form of lava forced to the surface by water pressure which also cools the magma sufficiently so that it rolls rather than flows. The same water is itself heated in the process, which means there are numerous thermal springs dotted around the place. After peering through the murk at the red glow, we journeyed around the mountain to a fabulous hot springs bar where you can sit in a pool of warm water sipping the cocktail of your choice and gazing up at the night sky. The whole complex with its smartly dressed waiters serving bikini clad boozers late into the night has a quite sureal feel to it, like some sort of space age fantasy bar out of Star Wars or perhaps The Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy. It was all a very long way from that first night in a cheap motel in Dover.

I've been rather gorging on volcanos having recently scaled the active Masaya Volcano in Nicaragua. It's an incredible feeling to stand on the rim of a giant smoking hole in the earth, breathing in a sulphurous smelling air and understanding how ancient inhabitants of this land came to see these places as portals of the underworld. Despite their destructive power, these places are responsible for generating the incredible fertility of this part of the World too. Travelling through Costa Rica, a country which for once is really striving to preserve its unique ecosystems, you cannot fail to be amazed by the immense richness and diversity of the landscapes contained in such a small amount of space. The rivers and forests are literally teaming with life and the are skies filled with birds of every colour imaginable. It's a wildlife lover's fantasy country come true.