Back in Medellin we zoomed up to another Mirador to check out the city from a different perspective. At the top of the hill was a strange miniature village with old furniture still in the reconstructed rooms. Not entirely sure what that was all about but the view was nice from up there.

We drove back to Jose’s apartment (where he still lives with his brother and sister) and had a traditional Colombian soup before heading out to see the slums. We were forced to leave his car behind because in Medellin the law only allows certain number plates to be on the road at particular times of the day. This is true in many Colombian cities and is a relatively successful way of keeping the traffic constant.

The slums were interesting and having Jose explain everything made it even more fascinating. The ultimate juxtaposition of riding a pristine cable car over the jumbled, crowded assortment of slum shacks was crazy. The government had built the cable car to give people access to parts of the slums that were so dense cars can’t get in. The most amazing thing was that, after 15 years, the metro (of which the cable car is a part) is still in pristine condition, there is not a single spec of evidence that would suggest disrespect. Imagine what it would look like after a day if it was built for Slough.

On our return we stopped off at the Botanical gardens to see some orchids, for which Medellin is famous as well as a load of other species of plants and trees that J had no interest in. After this relaxing peaceful stroll it was back on the Metro to Downtown. This was definitely anything but peaceful and relaxing. The streets teemed with people and traffic could hardly move, crazy people preached for the end of the world and some people swang their hips in time to a busker playing his guitar. Following Jose through the chaos he pointed out all the land marks and some Botero statues and gave us more history.

Tired and hungry having seen everything in one day we returned to the hostel for a beer. Matthew and eventually Eduardo (a Brazilian we had met the day before) then joined the trio for dinner. Conversation turned to war in Iraq and Jose who had lived in UAE for several years offered some interesting views and insights. He blamed prior intervention from the western world post WWI and WWII for all of the areas problems. The theory was that there were no problems in the middle east prior to the wars. It was the dividing up of countries by the victors in the western world (in order to claim who’s is who’s) that initiated tension and unrest. This, combined with ‘Green Zone’, really left a bitter taste when thinking about America.

Once at Cocora we turned down the idea of going on horse back in favour of walking the route instead. V was totally against moving but tried her hardest to make it as far as possible. It was only a 2 hour walk after all. Well it should have been but V&J were pretty sure they had gone the wrong way somewhere. So after an hour they turned around and plodded back again. The view was still very pretty with the giant wax palm trees, the tallest in the world and Colombia’s national symbol. However, V was only cheered up by ‘fluffy’ cows and calf’s. Yes V took a photo of the cows bum hole. The return jeep journey was not as crowded and only demanded J to stand on a step above the back towbar, whilst a Colombian baby grabbed onto V’s finger and clutched it tightly for the entire journey.

After lunch we were just in time to catch a tour of a coffee plantation in English. The tour was given by Tim or Don Eduardo as the locals liked to call him. He’s originally from England, grew up in Oz and now married with children in rural Colombia. He had acquired the 12 hecter coffee plantation almost 3 years ago for £25000. He explained all about the different types of coffee that is grown, the conditions they require to grow and how he turned the fruit into a coffee bean. It was really interesting and he explained everything really well with a ton of enthusiasm. In fact he was so enthusiastic it was hard to get away from him at the end. The whole plantation was situated on the side of a mountain looking down the valley, it was picture perfect and just what you would imagine rural Colombia to look like. Before we headed back up to our hostel for dinner we took a look at his small pineapple patch. V&J had never seen how a pineapple grew before, it is not how you would imagine it to be. Check out the photos.

We went to dinner with Freddy and Ed two guys from Newcastle University then said bye to them immediately afterwards as they boarded a bus to Bogota. That’s how good a company V&J make. Friendless V&J put themselves to bed with sun burnt necks. Stupid weather, we were meant to be in a cloud forest so didn’t bother with the sun cream, doh.

Time was running low they had to be out of here in two days. This was just enough time to do the dive course. So with a poorly V going nowhere J left her to sleep with water and drugs and went alone to do some more diving. Yeh, seems V is not the only shit Florence Nightingale around.

First two adventure dives were “Peak Performance Buoyancy” and “Underwater Navigation”. The buoyancy control was all about controlling your vertical movement using your breath. After weighting ourselves properly (J had acquired a new girlfriend Tam) we dropped down to the bottom and inflated our BCD’s (big inflatable life jacket) until we were neutrally buoyant. We practised swimming through hoops horizontally and vertically by breathing in to go up and out to go down. The final test was to stay inside a set area at the same height by only using breath. This was difficult but crazy cool. After doing these simple exercises it was suddenly now possible to move vertically by power of thought. Diving just got that little bit better. There was no more frantic waving of the arms to hover above coral or fish. This gave diving a real feeling like your flying.

During our break our instructor showed us how to use a compass as neither of us had been shown in the Open Water Course. Wasn’t really looking forward to this dive. It was one of the compulsory ones that you had to do to pass the course. Down at the bottom we practised using the compass to swim in different patterns. Yes this was as boring as J thought it was going to be. Swimming in squares triangles and rectangles.wasn’t exactly J’s idea of fun. He also chewed through his oxygen trying to get it over and done with as fast as possible. J discovered that if you get out of breath 18 meter underwater its dam difficult to get your breath back.

Back on land J went back to check up on the pathetic one who demanded more drugs. J obliged and left El Sleepo to do what she did best. He read through the next sections of the book and completed one of the question sections. It was then time for dive 3 of the day. The night dive. Just the three of us went out on the boat into the darkness. Everyone had talked up a night dive to a great height so J really hoped it wasn’t going to be disappointing. Down under the water in the dark with just a torch was quite crazy. Swimming into stuff was common practice for J. For the first half of the dive we didn’t really see that much. However on our return all the good stuff came out at once. We saw lobster, who are hilarious to watch swim, a load of different type of crabs but best of all we saw a puffer fish. This guy was brilliant. He has great big eyes and just kept on swimming into the instructors torch. Every time he hit the glass he puffed up a little bit bigger until eventually he was fully inflated and incapable of swimming any more. We watch him float helplessly upwards through our bubbles of laughter. Finally to finish the dive we shut our torches of and sat in the pitch black waving our arms frantically to make all the plankton light up. This was cool, it was like sitting in the stars (if that makes sense).

Kicked out at a beach in shallow water, strapped all our gear on and took our first dive down to 5 meters. V&J were both pleasantly surprised when V didn’t freak out. Sitting on the bottom we performed simple exercises and were forced to high five and fist pump their Instructor after every breath. J was even starting to think about not breathing so he didn’t have to look like such a gay. Simple tasks complete there was then a break for a snack and to let everyone replace oxygen tanks and recover before the next dive.

The first dive provided poor visibility and the second was even more disappointing, we could hardly see a meter. V freaked out slightly as they descended 10 meters but once coaxed down by the attentive highly excited instructor all thoughts of fear were lost in the cloudy water. Swimming around we were careful not to stray too far from each other. Although the visibility was terrible our instructor still managed to find a ton of cool stuff. We played with plants that disappeared when you moved near them, saw a load of interesting fish and some kind of weird sea spider.

Back on shore an almost fully recovered J woofed down a late lunch. V spent the rest of the day relaxing while J spent the rest of the day snoozing.

The succeeding week consisted of a relatively regular routine. We would get up, go on the internet and have breakfast whilst waiting for the wind to pick up. Windsurf for a bit, come in for lunch (soup, chicken/beef/fish, rice, beans and salad), then head back out onto the water for a few more hours. This normally involved smashing ourselves in resulting in numerous bruises, scratches, and pulled muscles. V sliced her toe up and J managed to carve his leg up on the fin, probably requiring stitches but steri-strips will have to do. Don’t want to take time out of windsurfing do we?! Some days its gusty, some days its weak, but we are able to get out everyday which is sweet. J can now carve jibe with ease and V can now waterstart consistently, without needing the assistance of the boat to drag her back to shore. Brap!

During the week we also attempted to get some footage with our cheapo ‘waterproof’ camera. When Terry (a local) saw the make (Premier) he wished us good luck. We said our goodbyes to the camera and managed to get a few minutes of cool footage before the camera closed its eyes for the last time. Several days of drying it out couldn’t resuscitate it in time; ‘it was a gonner, do we all agree?’. Not sure the insurance company covers ‘accidental damage; strapped-it-to-a-windsurf-and-bombed-about-the-lake’.

After windsurfing we would warm up with a nice hot bath. By this I mean freezing cold hose shower. By now it was time to head into town for dinner in Pescao’s hand controlled car for pizza, asado (BBQ), a la plancha (grilled meats), or burgers with some of the guys from Pescao’s place. A few beers and the sudden realisation that we are all completely knackered forces us to get to bed relatively early every night.

With the exception of Saturday night. That was a slightly different story involving muchas cervezas and a bottle of the deadly local liquor. The usual group (Matthew-the irish guy, Jose-the 65yr old Colombian, V&J-you know these guys) went into town and met up with a bunch of people we had met over the past few days. They led us to a bar, which in Colombia means; buy some beer from a shop, drag a bench over and sit in the street and get drunk. And it’s legal. We were then taken to a local club, which turned out to be very different to what you are all thinking. Yes, there are tons of youngsters getting pissed, yes, there are a load of couples making out, and yes, its loud. But this is Colombian clubbing! Every song played was a different type of latino dance requiring completely different and highly complicated dance steps. V&J, who aren’t the worst dancers in the world, were immediately grabbed from the dance floor and given lessons in the middle of the club. Clearly the big white people were making fools of themselves by knocking the small sexy Colombians out the way like dominoes. Nonetheless they were determined to learn and continued to be guided for the entire night. It was exhausting, sweaty fun, but it did cause a bit of a stonking hangover. On Friday night it was also a tad different with a small group of us getting our groove on in an otherwise empty club. We were quite a sight, two horny Colombian guys trying to get it on with two horny Colombian girls, a German who managed to pull out the worlds most horrendous shirt (and dance moves), chickdick poo-boy (who went back early to continue his relationship with the bathroom), and V&J to top it off. It was great fun though and we still managed to make a scene on the dancefloor with almost every Colombian taking pity on us and giving us dance lessons. Are we really that bad?!

After extending our stay for an extra 4 days V now looks like one big freckle and J has a peeling nose, but at least we can both windsurf like pros. Regardless of the fact that we can’t feel our hands anymore, perhaps we will return for the ‘Black and White’ fiesta in August.

We came into the island through the rolling waves to see the colonies of crabs clinging to the rocks that were taking a pounding from the sea. Following the path up forced us to pick our way over huge families of Marine Iguanas. This path lead to an incuisative baby sea lion that wanted to sniff everyone. Then the best part, the blue footed boobies. These birds are the best. They walk around like clowns lifting their feet unnecessarily high. The males also make a cool whistling noise and point at the sky to attract females. After spending much time here we moved on and spotted a Galapagos centipede in the undergrowth. Nesting Albatrosses followed. Never knew how cool and eccentric these birds were. They spend the first 6 years of their lives away from land sleeping as they fly. So much so when they come into land on ground for the first time, 60% (or 40% can’t remember which way round the statistic went) of them kill themselves due to lack of practice. Finally to take off they have to walk to a cliff and jump. This is where we headed now, to look out over the cliff edge at the blow hole in the middle of the awesome view. More of the same animals surrounded us on our walk back to the Panga lots had positioned them selves in brilliant places and posed like supermodels for the camera. Just before we left our Haun Carlos (our guide) spotted a Galapagos Hawk perched right above our heads. Espanola was the best as the view was the best and the animals were not only fearless but boisterous and inquisitive.

Truly happy with our mornings activity we took lunch on deck B at the stern. I’M ON A BOAT. The afternoon had been assigned as another walk along a beach for personal relaxing time. This beach had colonies of sea lions lazing in the sun, with one especially cute really tiny baby. As we lay on the beach a lucky sea lion hobbled up bearing the wounds of a shark bite on one of his fins.

Flies were driving everyone wild and made it impossible to relax. V&J killed 20 flies between them much to the delight of a hungry Galapagos mocking bird. J then went snorkelling with some playful sea lions and swam out to a rock to check out any fish. The visibility was a little rubbish and the water was freezing. Looking back he saw everyone else had gone back to the boat. Time to call it a day. Briefing and dinner.

Lunch was a BBQ in the highlands in the fine misty (where’s misty?) rain. Then we went in search of wild tortoises. These huge guys (J comfortably managed to fit himself inside an old tortoise shell, that is how big they are) migrate from the top of the hills to the bottom depending on the season. The round trip takes them 12 months. We did some calculations and found out that this means that their average speed is 2.75 meters an hour.

A small bus ride took us to a ‘Lava Tube’. This is a long tunnel formed by molten lava flowing underground. Everyone went down into the tube but only a brave few continued all the way through, crawling on their stomachs through the last 10 meters. The afternoons activities came to a close at around 3:30 so we had free time to explore the tiny town. After buying some stuff V&J went and did what they do best, weight lifting in the bar. They were soon joined by most people from the boat before it was time to head back.

Dinner and NO briefing (because the extremely wealthy Mexican family that are going to give a huge tip weren’t there. Apparently the rest of us weren’t worth it.) Everyone having had a few beers were up for some more. So took the Panga back into town. The usual affair of drinking and chatting was supplemented with a load of awkward, underaged Americans getting hammered in the bar. One who was especially good at falling over and pretending he was break dancing.

Back on the boat V was leading the way, accusing the Israeli guy of having smuggled an M16 in his ass and generally abusing the other passengers. It came to a climactic end with some dancing, graffiti on the whiteboard and V talking into the tanoy system. J unimpressed at V’s last move went to bed before things got even more out of hand.

They received their wish as the next activity was indeed snorkelling. Supposedly this would be the best day for snorkelling and to top it off the water clarity was perfect. Freezing but perfect. Hypothermia was held at bay by a white tipped reef shark that stuck around long enough to get a couple of videos. Starfish seemed to be the main attraction here as they carpeted the sea bed only sharing there space with the odd sea cucumber. All were different sizes and colours laid out in varying positions. Accompanying all of this was the usual array of fish, one in particular V some how managed to spot. It blended so well we may have just taken a picture of a rock.

A long soaking session in the roasting jacuzzi brought blood circulation back to extremities while giving a scolding sensation, it was brilliant. Now sufficiently warm lunch was served while we changed location.

The afternoon was mainly relaxing but included a stroll along a sandy beach to see some flamingos. The stroll was nice but the flamingos where a no show. V&J not too bothered about this having seen a huge flocks of flamingos on the Salt Flats in Bolivia. Did manage to see a ghost crab, these are really hard to see because they feel the vibrations and hide in the sand.

The boat then had to refuel so everyone was confined to the inside the boat for more relaxing. Watched the film “Up” which was surprisingly depressing for a Pixar movie. Again this was followed by the briefing and dinner.

During this walk we were hoping to see land iguanas and some giant tortoises. Halfway through the walk we came across a couple of land iguanas that were much more colourful than their sea bound relatives. However, our search for a giant tortoise was unsuccessful.

Another turn around put us back in our much needed wetsuits to do some more snorkelling in “the ice box”. However, the cold water was forgotten by everyone as soon as a white tipped reef shark was seen. Two hungry penguins took to the water, more than happy to duck and dive around us catching their lunch. Joining the party was some marine iguanas, flightless cormarants and a large numbers of turtles. The cold could only be fought off for so long and back on the Palace the few brave snorkelers gathered in the roasting hot tub to regain blood circulation.

Stayed put for lunch and then took a panga ride around the rock faces looking at the blue footed bobbies nesting on the cliffs and diving into the water. Well V&J eventually did this after missing the departure they got the big boat to blast its fog horn at the little ones until one came back to pick them up.

We motored through the afternoon in order to get to our next destination in time tomorrow. During this time we crossed the Equator for a third time putting us briefly in the Northern Hemisphere (tonight we cross back to the southern). We also spotted some blue whales off the stern and span around to take some good photos. These things are huge, they show such a minimal proportion above the surface that it is hard to comprehend their size, or get a good photo.

Dinner was amusing as V&J sat with the Spanish primary school teacher who only talked Spanish. He was telling them how he eats fruit and seeds from certain animal poo because it is nutritious. He also let on that he eats cuckooned butterflies. This became highly amusing when it finally transpired half an hour later that he wasn’t infact talking about himself but other animals. This guy hasn’t yet slept because he is down near the engine room and has to put up with the constant wail from the engine. We checked out the noise and felt so sorry for him that we gave away our new earplugs. Good luck.

Again we pigged out at breakfast to prepare ourselves for our big day. First off we checked out some graffiti left on the rocks by sailors from the 1800’s to present day. It seems even the Galapagos islands are not even free from vandals. On our walk to the ridge top we mainly saw different types of Darwin Finches. However, there was some red headed Lava Lizards (like V) that made a nice change from birds.

Every island here was formed by volcanic activity, so every time we set foot on land it is on solidified molten lava at different stages of its development. The hike to the ridge top allowed us to look over the valley and see where the lava had “recently” flown down devastating everything in its path. We also passed by the volcanic crater that had now filled with water, this is due to the fact that volcanic rock is permeable so fills with sea water (not rain).

Back in the Pangas we took a ride out to the point where penguins where swimming, chilling and mating on the rocks. That’s right we watched two penguins go at it, even got to see its little penguin penis. A quick trip back to our floating village allowed us to grab our snorkelling gear and return to swim with penguins. The penguins had other ideas. When we returned they had all decided it was slightly chilly and were heating themselves on the rocks. So like idiots we swam around them waiting. Waiting turned out to be rather eventful, we got to see the flightless cormorant (a bird) swimming underwater along with a marine iguana, lots of fish and a ton of giant turtles. Being pressed for time we could wait for the penguins no longer and had to leave. As the last person got back into the boat the penguins decided it was swim time. Official comment: “Shit Happens”.

During lunch we sailed to a nearby island allowing us all to return to the pangas and be taken back to shore. This island’s speciality was Marine Iguanas but also played host to a whale’s skeleton, some camera obsessed crabs, the usual handful of boisterous sea lions and a lava flow boasting large, deep cracks between its giant segments. Spent a couple of hours exploring this island being careful not to walk on the soft sand where the Marine Iguanas have laid all their eggs. We headed back in time to watch the sunset over on the horizon.

Same protocol for the evening. Briefing followed by dinner followed by an early night. Tonight we only travel around the corner in calm water so hopefully it will be a comfortable sleep.