Inveterate dabbler in business, travel, gadgets & life

Quick travelling update

Sorry to my regular readers about the lack of updates ๐Ÿ™
It is simply due to me enjoying myself so much and having an active social life.

From 26May

The fact is I amย  simply loving travelling here, especially with beer at $1 a pint, hotel rooms at $8 night and decent meals for less than $5.
The scenery is fantastic and my fellow travellers excellent.
I find it hard to believe that I will ever visit The Flying Pig in Cambridge again with beer over 3 pound a pint.
I’ve been using Picasa to store my pictures (it works better than flickr at autobacking up on the computer). My pictures can be found at http://picasaweb.google.com/geofones

Some of my trails can be found at Everytrail

Some action videos are on Youtube

Of course I twitter when I can.and if you are lucky you can catch me on Skype.

Now its a question of convincing Sally to get the travel bug ๐Ÿ™‚

Getting around Cristobal

After 12 hours here in The Galapagos I decided to extend my stay for another week!

A quick bike ride to the airport,then about 12 steps from parking the bike to the AeroGal office followed by about 10 clicks on her computer and the job was done, no charge, no fuss. Airports and booking as it should be ๐Ÿ™‚

I then decided to cycle up the extinct volcano to see the El Junco crater lake, afterย  a few hundred yards a local taxi driver in his Toyota pick up suggested a lift up the 1000ft ascent for $10, since it was in the thirties I thought it was a grand idea (sorry Andrew you are 19 and I’m 62!). A lovely walk around the lake watching the birds washing the salt of their wings then back to the bike and the mainly descent to the La Galapguera de Cello Colorado Tortoise breeding station and then onto the white sand and beach at Puerto Chino.

On the way back the taxi carrying my 2 new American friends, who I met on the beach, stopped to give me a quick lift up the worst incline, I learned from him that you can rent an apartment for $150 a MONTH here, interestingly his girlfriend hs just arrived after his 3 months away ๐Ÿ™‚

The trip with pics is here.

San Cristobal, Galapagos cycle/walk/taxi

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Tomorrow I’m boating over to Isabela via Santa Cruz for $55 a 4 hour ride. co

Samara

Finally made it to Samara at 11pm last night. The bus was totally packed with some folks standing for the five and a half hour journey from San Jose. I was wedged in behind some guy who insisted on reclining his seat ๐Ÿ™
At the bus station I met a young couple from Switzerland who are going to the same school as me, but for 3 weeks..
Eventually my host turned up on a trail bike, so with my rucsac strapped to my back we roared off into the night! Hairy or what ๐Ÿ™
I have my own one room apartment with kitchen area, shower etc so quite luxuourios although the bed feels very board like.

My hosts are very friendly, but to say there is a language barrier is an understatement, Emily where are you?

Breakfast was lovely fruit and toast with some local cake speciality. Dinner is at 7, should be interesting.

Samara itself is a pleasant seaside resort, I mapped the whole village with my GPS this morning and also walked along the beach – all to try and find an open wifi connection, full marks to Hotel Las Brisas del Pacifico – you will have my trade for the rest of the week ๐Ÿ™‚

The weather is much hotter and stickier than San Jose so I’m sure I will be ready for the mountains after a week although maybe I should do the 3 week course here!

Welney visit

Sally has been going on and on about seeing the swan feeding at the Welney Wildfowl & Wetlands Trust ๐Ÿ™‚

So today was the chosen, freezing cold,day, we picked up Ellee, in the midst of writing her secret book, and drove out to the hides.

After getting over the shock of paying over ยฃ11 for the two of us (Ellee is a member so gets in free) we settled into the freezing cold hide to wait for the midday feed. The moment arrived and er well that was it – a few swans and ducks sailed over as they do when you get the bread out at Newnham playground. But the hordes of migratory swans on the horizon couldn’t have cared less, obviously if you have flown a few hundred miles from the arctic you aren’t going to mingle with the local Hoi polloi.

All a tad disappointing. However, Ellee gave us some delicious home made soup on our return and we had a lovely hot bath at home ๐Ÿ™‚ ๐Ÿ™‚

Visit to Welney Wildfowl and Wetland Trust

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Jim. Sally says please leave the names of the ducks etc in the comments andI will modify the photograph titles.