*¡Breaking news!*
Steph manages to log onto the blog, hurrah

¡Buenas! Avid readers/devoted followers of this prestigious site will no doubt have noted the predominantly male (Kiereanesque) flavoured narration thus far. By way of humble explanation, this has been due to Steph´s complete failure to engage successfully with foreign technology. South American governments seem to have permitted her a quota of 6.45 minutes on Facebook and 12 mins on googlemail before entire national systems crash.
This folorn and frustrating state of affairs culminated in my bringing down Colombia´s north coast computer network with a vile electronic virus, and our consequent necessary fleeing of the Cartagenian authorities to Peru - rapidly -by air. Moving overnight up the Amazon river by stealth riverboat, we arrived finally in a city named Iquitos late yesterday afternoon. A frantic plea to the British Embassy here has resulted in my being fortunate enough to snatch these few minutes in their high security internet bunker (located 50m below ground in a classified location) to update K. Gillick´s SuperBlog, so that Gillick voyaging history is no longer gender biased. Relief.

So returning to Playa Blanca, which is where K.G. left you hanging precarioulsy, all that really be noted is that it was/is PARADISE. It was quite simply delicious. Not having quite fully digested the fact that we were on the Carribean Coast, we had not expected the magnificently pristine white sand or lazy palm trees that our eyes found when we rolled off the boat straight into the azurey sea there. Quickly adapting to such indulgent surroundings, as one must, of course, we spent the next few days utterly losing track of time and date, eating nearly-live fish and lolloping between our bamboo hut on stilts and the warm atlantic. Wow.
Spolit and sweaty, (and now off the radar of the pursuing Cartagenian Electronic Police) we were eventually forced to desert Paradise and jump onto a small passenger plane bound for Leticia, the sweetly named south-eastern most tip of Colombia, from where we had been assured a safe border crossing into Peru. Adventure.
But to get to the plane we had to get to the mainland. Challenge. It ought to be noted that this past week has been typified by Terrifying Near-Capsize (TNC). Our boat voyage back to the mainland from Playa Blanca can only be described as Sheer Fright. You have never seen waves as big as this. Never. The boat putted forwards tipped at a continual 45 degree angle, which added to its roaring up and down and side to side made the journey reminiscent of that TV programme I saw on Shackleton before we left. Mental. Kieran´s unwavering calm attained another level, supporting words thus: ´hey we´ll be fine, just pretend we´re on a fairground ride!´... lurch lurch... (but we´re not tied in). worst case scenario, plunging off top of boat into bubbly atlantic ocean. Can´t remember a fairground ride like that. 100% cool. Decided that in fact we´d rather be in the ocean than on the boat and somehow that made it all ok.
And so we made it as far as the mainland, greener in the face but ultimately stronger human beings. I guess with Paradise must come pain.
What befell us next is something that Michael Palin (my personal patron saint of travelling) would have COMPLETELY dug. Nothing of note occurred on the plane journey to Leticia-on-the-Amazon, but o my days what happened on the banks of the Amazon merits full recording.
Leticia turns out to be half in Colombia and half in Brasil. You can stroll gaily between the two (and become alarmed by the Spanish you spoke somehow becoming Urdu? Kurdish? Czec? - no, of course, Portuguese). A traveller who is not entirely wily could be easily caught out by this. Perhaps it is a trick the locals play on tourists to keep them entertained from thier verandas in the sweltering heat....
In any case, having grabbed some scrumptious Letician street food (saddening rumours suggest it might have been some kind of local dog meat) and a jovial room to stay in, we prepared ourselves for a 3am departure by boat to Iquitos in Peru. This 3am departure seemed tricky enough when we realised that the Colombian half of the town ran at 1hr earlier than the Brasilian half, or vice-versa, or something more confusing, and it was difficult to tell exactly which bit you were in, or who watched/believed which clocks. They interchanged currencies willy-nilly so why not interchange time too? Eek. In any case, clutching our passports and intrepidation we made it in time of sorts to the docks. We were shipped by Taxi Fluvial - billions of bugs in hot pursuit - to the other side of the Amazon, whose opposite bank was/is in Peru (3 countries in 2 days, result). It swiftly became clear por que the 3am start: it took 2hrs to leave and we needed to do so before dawn. Leaving, quite extraordinarily, necessitated an hour´s hike through pitch black, steamy, scratchy Amazon mud-marshes to the Immigration Control of Peru hut, whereupon our reluctant guide woke the confused Immigration Guard who slept inside it by constant banging and shouting (for roughly 10 mins). Violently waking a Peruvian Immigration Guard has never, I believe, led to an easy passage through the country. As punishment the necessary stamps in our passports required concerted and complex negotiation, and quite some time to get. What´s more, due to the huge amount of time that took we were bribed into getting a makeshift Taxi Fluvial back to the original boat departure site for too-many-pesos. There were 8 of us boat passengers, 3 assorted guides and the very uncertain boat owner all sardined into the tiny creaking Taxi Fluvial. And this is the bit that Palin would have been totally down with. Senor el boat owner gave the shaky vessel a doubtful once-over, the two Americans whimpered, Kieran for the FIRST TIME EVER looked nervous, and I turned my back so that I faced backwards instead of forwards, as the thing started to fill with water and began chugging across the vast amazon, into the dark.
All that need be known is that despite taking on a good few gallons of water, we reached the Big boat alive, which took us smoothly up the Amazon proper to where we now sit, dry and chuffed, in Iquitos, home to jungle canopies, exotic butterflies and an American desendant of old rubber barons called Mad Mick, who seems to own almost everything. Lovely.
Peruvian wine and coffee are uber-tasty, and everywhere, so there is little more that we need, apart from all your news! Drop us a line about anything if you can - weather, traffic, weekends, we are missing you.
Lima next and a trip to the world´s massivest sand dune to go sandboarding ... o gosh.
Love, S & K.
...one last thing... we picked up a friendly grasshopper named Jorge along the way who is keen to make an appearance somewhere on this page with his own picture diary... checkitout si si.
besos xxxx