Sea Turtles in Suriname

We got up early for our bus from Guyana to Suriname at 5am. Too early, as it turns out, as it arrived at 6, before bouncing along the road to Moleson Creek. This small town is on the Courantyne River, which forms the border with Suriname. We stamped out of the country here, and boarded a car ferry to take us the 30 minutes to the other side.

The immigration process on the other side can be a very slow affair - locals in the know sprint off the boat to get in line first. We adopted this policy - several of us walking quickly, keeping just behind the border guard leading the way. Jo sabotaged one guy ahead of us by accidentally standing on his flip-flop, and we got a prized spot near the front of the line. We got through quickly, but then had to wait for an hour or so as the other people in our bus took their time to get past the queue. We finally arrived in Paramaribo, the Surinamese capital, 12 hours after we'd set off.

The palm garden in Paramaribo

Paramaribo, for us, wasn't the most appealing of cities. There are plenty of white, balconied colonial houses along a few streets near the Suriname River, a small fort and a public garden filled with hundreds of tall palm trees. On Sunday mornings, people get together to have birdsong competitions where they pit their prized 'twatwas' against each other. Unfortunately, the timing didn't work out for us to see this. We did see lots of people carrying birdcages around during the week though! Apart from that, we found the city a little lacking in soul. It was pretty quiet and felt a lot more like a small country town than a capital city. It's very spread out and most people have cars to get around. We found it very difficult to find essentials like grocers and pharmacies - there didn't seem to be any in the centre at all. Although almost every shop calls itself a 'supermarket', they are more like corner shops and don't stock fresh produce, which limited our ability to cook for ourselves.

Colonial buildings and cars in Paramaribo

Apart from the capital city, the other things to do in Suriname are go to the jungle (moth-y) or go to a sea turtle nesting site. We opted for the latter, but baulked at the 175 Euros quoted by tour agencies for a single night. Instead, we took a bus to Albina, the border town with French Guiana, then negotiated a small boat to take us the 2 hours down the river estuary to Christaankondre. This is a village at the mouth of the river, close to the Atlantic Ocean, which is completely cut off from the rest of the country except by boat. We took a basic room in the only place to stay and joined a small tour group to go and see the turtles that night.

Christiaankondre - in the middle of nowhere

We were rewarded with a full moon giving us great light to search for turtle tracks along the beach. This is the easiest way to find them as at the top of the trail they dig a hole to lay in while laying their eggs. They lay between 100-200, then bury them in sand and dash back to the sea. We found several turtles, and they were enormous - maybe 2 metres in length. We saw every stage in the process: the finding a suitable spot and clearing it; the digging the hole; the laying; the burying; and the dash back to sea We also saw a couple of people in this very remote area who were probably stealing the eggs to sell. Although the beaches here have a nominal guard, it is very easy to go there when the guards are not.

The back of a green turtle laying eggs

The next morning, we found another boat to take us back to Albina, the border town. We took yet another boat across the Maroni River into French Guiana. The border process on either side was the most lax we've seen anywhere in the world, and this time there were no queues to negotiate! We are going to spend about a week in this French territory, before flying into Brazil.

New Year in Ecuador and on into Colombia

We were sad to leave our lovely hostel in Quito but we had decided to spend New Year in Mindo, a backpackery little town in the cloud forest. The bus from Quito took about 2 hours, winding down through beautiful scenery with tree covered slopes.

Hummingbirds around Mindo

Mindo is down at 1200m and the climate is completely different to what we've got used to recently - very humid and pretty hot during the day. The town is mostly unpaved roads and has quite an outpost, jungly feel, with cloud forest all around. This feeling was enhanced by the amazing diversity of birds (and insects!) everywhere. Most cafes and hostels have hummingbird feeders outside and we saw so many beautiful examples of this tiny bird. We'd expected Mindo to be full of backpackers, but actually it was quite a mix of people, including a lot of older tourists here for birdwatching.

Peering in at one of the very large owl butterflies (they can have a wingspan of up to 16cm!)

We arrived in Mindo mid-afternoon but still managed to fit in two activities that day - a butterfly farm, and a chocolate tour. We started with the former. You might ask, why on earth would someone with a butterfly phobia possibly want to visit a butterfly farm?
 Well, I guess I thought it might be good for me - after all, I would actually like one day not to be in mortal fear when a butterfly or moth is in my vicinity. I braved entering the big netted off section with the butterflies once, and did okay until some of the gigantic owl butterflies started flying around. After that I made do with sticking my head through the entrance and withdrawing it whenever one came near. I think it did help, a little. Exposure therapy! But my bravery diminished rapidly that evening when we were confronted with the biggest moth I have ever seen, just casually sitting on the hostel wall. That was truly something out of my worst nightmares and it took a while for me even to pluck up the courage to run past it back to our room.

Cocoa beans drying, part of the chocolate making process

Immediately after the butterfly farm we did the aforementioned chocolate tour, which felt like a reward for surviving the house of horrors. Mindo has its own chocolate company, and over the hour or so of the tour we saw all stages of the chocolate making process, from the cocoa pods on the tree, to the finished bar. We also got to sample several of their chocolate products, including the (amazing) chocolate brownies, sea salt chocolate, and liquid 100% chocolate (added sugar required!).



We spent the first of our two full days here hiking in the jungle around Casa Amarilla. This, as you might expect from the Spanish, is a yellow house, owned by a friendly local lady. She also seems to own the surrounding jungle for miles around; at least, if you pay her a small entrance fee you can spend several hours exploring the paths she's made. We think it's great that she's chosen to open the area for hikers and birdwatchers, rather than getting rid of the trees to make room for cows, or digging for oil. The circuit we did took about 3 or 4 hours and included an enchanting viewpoint, looking down on tiny Mindo surrounded by cloud forest for miles in all directions. We met a Dutch guy and chatted with him for most of the hike; maybe we were making too much noise as we failed to see many birds!

View of Mindo (in the distance) from viewpoint during our jungle hike

Our second day in Mindo was New Year's Eve. In the morning we had a go at ziplining - zooming high above the trees along cables. For $20 we got to do an hour or two's circuit of 10 different ziplines ranging from 75 - 400m in length. It was great fun! Especially trying the 'Butterfly' position - literally upside down, with your legs in the air! Absolutely terrifying, but awesome. We spent the evening hanging out with some fellow travellers, enjoying free cocktails courtesy of our hostel, and then plenty of beers outside watching the festivities in the square. It is traditional in Ecuador to make sort of large dolls, a bit like the 'guys' on Guy Fawkes' Night, and burn them in the street at midnight. Often the dolls have masks representing unpopular politicians or celebrities. There were also kids running around everywhere in masks, and the odd guy or two wearing drag (another tradition apparently)! It felt more like Halloween than New Year! Really fun though, and interesting to see another culture's completely different style of celebration.

Ziplining and the 'Butterfly'

New Year's celebrations in Mindo

We returned from Mindo to Quito on the 1st, feeling a little the worse for wear after the night before (the twisty bus ride didn't help) and spent that afternoon in our hostel recovering. We had intended to proceed to Colombia the next day, but we'd not bargained on the city we were heading to in Colombia, Pasto, being so booked up and expensive! It turns out that Pasto has its annual carnival on the days we were planning to be there. It's so popular that Colombians book up all the places to stay months in advance. The only place we could find to stay was an (expensive) AirBnB, so we ended up prolonging our stay in Quito by a day so as to just spend the one night in Pasto. We were pretty happy to have an extra day in Quito at our favourite hostel, anyway! That day we visited the Basilica del Voto Nacional, a huge neo-Gothic church, and climbed up to the top of one of the towers. The ascent began like normal stairs but ended with some quite scary vertical metal ladders! The view from the top over the historic centre was worth it though.

On our way up the Basilica in Quito

On the Sunday we finally left Kinde House for good and proceeded 5 hours north to the Colombian border by bus. The Ecuador side of the border had a horribly long queue, due to mainly to Ecuadorian citizens returning from a weekend in Colombia. Anything in Ecuador that is imported carries a huge tax. Thus a lot of locals hop across to Colombia at the weekend to buy things like electronics and toiletries there - it's so much cheaper it's worth the journey! Luckily the queue moved quickly and within an hour we were through both Ecuadorian and Colombian immigration.

The Las Lajas church in the daylight...

Our first stop in Colombia was the small village of Las Lajas, only a few km from the border. The main reason for visiting here was to see the famous church, El Santuario de Las Lajas, which is literally built across a gorge. We expected this place to be very quiet but actually it was heaving with crowds of local tourists - it's something of a pilgrimage site for Colombians, it seems. The only place to stay was a sort of convent converted into a very basic hotel and run by nuns. The room was like a cell and the bed might as well have been a rock. I'm not sure being a nun is for me... The one consolation was that it cost £5.60 for the night.

...and by night

In the evening the church was lit up with neon lighting, constantly changing colour, which we found somewhat tacky but quite amusing. We got up early the next day and had a better look in the daylight with fewer tourists. It's certainly a spectacular setting - hopefully the photos demonstrate this better than I can describe. We have now arrived in Pasto for our night in an AirBnB around 10 times the price of last night - about 10 times nicer too. Tomorrow we are flying to Cartagena, on the Caribbean coast, and excited to be meeting up with our old travelling buddies Cindy and Julien again there.

Into Chile

We arrived by bus in Puerto Natales on April 1st. This was our first international bus journey, crossing from Argentina into Chile. Border crossings are always interesting, and this one took quite some time. Getting out of Argentina was easy enough, but at Chilean immigration we all had to get out of the bus and retrieve our big bags (sacks in our case) from the back so that it could go through the X ray scanner. Although there were two desks for checking passports, only one was designated to each direction. So, while one had a queue of a busload of people, the other watched MTV.

A dry-ish moment in Puerto Natales

We spent a couple of days in Puerto Natales, mainly sheltering inside from the freezing winds and snowstorms. But our main reason for coming was to attend one of the daily talks at Erratic Rock hostel, all about Torres del Paine national park and the famous W trek. This was extremely informative (highly recommended if you visit this part of the world) and useful in helping us plan our future itinerary. The local beer on tap was a bonus! We now think we may end up having to come back to this trek at the start of next season, when the weather is better, more places to stay are open and Kev's leg has recovered.

The Strait of Magellan at Punta Arenas

Not letting the cold deter us, we pushed on further south to Punta Arenas, arguably the southernmost city in the world. The other main claimant is Ushuaia, which is further south but smaller. We're pleasantly surprised by how nice this city is - lots of grand buildings and history relating to various early Antarctic expeditions. Plus the weather has been good - we're not missing the horizontal freezing rain we'd heard about. We've also purchased some crutches so that Kev can walk around without using his bad leg. This combination of weather and crutches has allowed us to go for walks along the seafront, with lovely views over the Strait of Magellan to Tierra del Fuego. There are also burnt out piers filled with cormorants and gulls. Most things are closed over Easter, but we plan to make use of the duty free shopping area to replace some of our petrol damaged gear.

Imperial cormorants and dolphin gulls