Since we were only spending 2-3 days in each place, and had planned to visit 7 places over our three-week period, we thought wed end our trip with a nice relaxing beach-front hotel in Drake Bay. Two hours from Manuel Antonio is a town called Sierpe...

We flew from Arenal to Drake bay, via San Jose, in a Cessna Caravan. These are tiny little planes with 10 seats, no tea trolley, and about 3 jokes about the tea trolley per flight. We sat right up the front and could watch the course and weather maps...

Defying all expectations, we made it out of Colombia alive. Our first Costa Rica stop was Arenal, an area of tropical national parks surrounding a volcano. Getting there from Cartagena was standard. Deathly early flight to Bogota, stopover,...

Bogota, Medellin, Santa Marta, Cartagena is arguably a trip through Colombias tourist centres (a phrase I use lightly as Colombia is still far from touristy) from least to most attractive. I highly recommend this route, and not the reverse, ...

Santa Marta is easy to pronounce, which was a great start. We had booked a handy 11am Avianca flight from Medellin to Santa Marta, so wed arrive at 12. Avianca had other ideas, and booted us off our nice flight and put us ...

Medellin is pronounced Med-eh-jean, you uncultured swine. So now weve both embarrassingly learned that after pronouncing it wrong to several locals, lets continue. Edinburgh should have prepared me for all the bloody hills in Colombia....

Bogota introduced me to a new, unfamiliar friend: altitude sickness. Bogota is 2640m above sea level, which means the air is thinner and you feel like you have a permanent hangover. However the feeling is probably not dissimilar to how one might feel after having...

Seven nights was the longest wed stayed in one place since leaving Australia. Wed read that a week is a good amount of time in Havana. This is true, but it probably wouldnt hurt to see more of Cuba if you could....

Mexico was only ever meant as a route to Cuba, but we figured we may as well see a bit of it so we booked 4 days. Originally we were going to stay on the beach in Cancun but Dan rightly insisted Id hate that after one day so we stayed in Mexico City instead....

Antigua is another old, scenic city surrounded by volcanoes. This one is particularly scenic and you can watch Fuego erupt a bit every few minutes. The first time I saw it (its just puffy black smoke) I panicked, wondering why no one else was panicking....

Our trip from Flores to Lake Atitlan involved driving through a bit of Guatemala City. I admit to feeling a little wary when the driver stopped at a garage so we could use the toilet. It was just people paying for petrol and buying chocolate bars....

When we told people we were going to Guatemala they reacted with shock, mingled with trying to cover their shock, followed by sadness that theyd never see us again. Thats sort of how I reacted when Dan suggested Guatemala in the first place....

We spent two days in Chicago after South Bend. Dan and the rest of his wedding friends lived in Chicago for a summer during college so they found everything nostalgic. Id never been there before so irritated everyone by stopping to photograph all the buildings....

Having the USA in the middle of our tropical adventures was a little jarring. South East Asia, boiling heat, mosquitoes, no one speaking English, then suddenly cold, easy, Western Chicago. I would have much preferred to ...

Dan and I went to New York for a week. I'm not very well acquainted with America, having only been to Vegas before now. I was assured Vegas was not representative of America as a whole, which is good because its the most loud, obnoxious and tacky place I've been....