OK this is the beginning of the end..

In Colombia, Cartagena to be exact. It is the 5th of January 2007 and last night I decided to start this blog. Since I left London on the 26th of September I have been travelling from Cancun in Mexico down through Central America then by a crazy boat trip to Colombia in South America.. There has been adventure after adventure and I think the best way to let the world know the adventures of Peakey is to tell them via a blog. I dont know how to do this, was thinking will just blog my new adventures from this date on but maybe I should revise the adventures I have had since arriving in Mexico first of all..

Ok.. will write a brief outline of my travels mentioning different highlights of different countries and throughout the next couple months of blogging I will bring up some stories from the past few months before this blog, if you know what i mean.

Cancun, Mexico - Beautiful white sandy beaches, too touristy though but water colour was amazing.

Playa del Carmen, Mexico - we loved this place, had a good vibe, lots of tourists but had some great seafood and nightlife.

Cozumel, Mexico - Island of the coast of Mexico, got motorbikes and rode around the island, got stopped by police and none of us had licenses, wiggy just kept saying "habla englis" and we played dumb and the cops let us go.

Tulum, Mexico - beautiful beaches, quite expensive, went into some awesome caves and swam through little caverns, sting operation on the beach which involved a chick skinny dipping at midnight, a guy with a torch and about 10 policemen and my mate wiggy.

Mahuhal, Mexico - nice little beach town with awesome storm like clouds floating over the horizon, very quiet place and good for chilling out.

San Cristobal, Mexico - this place rocked, little colonial city up in the hills, really good nightlife and heaps of backpackers, could live here!! crazy aussie guy payed 20,000 dollars to buy into a club.

Shela, Guatamela - beautiful city and beautiful people, did a 2 week spanish course living with a family, got drunk quite a bit though, on a sunday we had an all day hike up a volcano - 4500 metres to be exact - and so we decided on having a couple drinks the night before which turned into staying awake till 3am and walking straight up the volcano with no sleep, hardest thing i ever had to do but was amazing once we got to the top with views of a smaller volcano erupting every 30 minutes.

San Pedro, Guatemala - psycho little hippy town fully of drugs and wierdos but really good atmosphere and chilled out.. had an awesome room with a hammock outfront right on the lake.

Antigua, Guatemala - the famous Antiqua, full of tourists but a beautiful town with a good vibe. Went up a volcano again but this time in the evening and saw the most amazing things, through my eyes it appeared as a red serpent coming down the hill in the distance and as we approached it got clearer and realised it was a running red stream of lava about 5 metres wide coming down the hill, we got within touching distance of it and the heat was so intense that the soles of my shoes were melting to the rock. Left our mate Johno as he headed up to Bay of Islands for diving.

Guatemala City, Guatemala - headed to Zona 10 in Guatemala City. Very new and modern part of the city with heaps of hotels and good clubs and restaurants. Got tickets to the Shakira concert which was cool as about 20,000 people and the latin americans love her so she put on a great show, she is hot as!...

San Salvador, El Salvador - Ok, from here it went pear shaped for a couple weeks, well not pear shaped in a good way but pear shaped in a crazy, we are famous, cant leave this place sort of way!! San Salvador rocked!.. everyone told us not to go there but we did and had an amazing time and rocked it on at the clubs like movie stars. Seriously when we went out to the clubs we would be escorted to VIP and would sit on a veranda over looking the dance floor and pretty much feeling like the kings of the world. The women thought we were the best and the people were so friendly, we would get photos taken of us in the shopping centres and stuff. Had some really good adventures with wiggy and our other mate from perth James. Was suppose to be here for 3 days which turned into 2 weeks.

Managua, Nicuragua - got a bus direct from San Salvador to Managua and spent a night there, very dodgy city and had a bad vibe but a night in a city doesnt really tell much.

San Juan, Nicuragua - spent a couple nights in San Juan on the beach, beautiful little beach town with surfers everywhere. Had to get a boat to the surf beaches around the corner for waves. Met up with our mate Johno again and had a blinder of a night.

Liberia, Costa Rica - after a big night on the piss in San Juan, me and wiggy woke up and got a taxi to the border of Nicuragua and Costa Rica, bit of a mission with our money situation and getting through but eventually got it sorted. Waited for a bus but none were coming so hitchiked in a big semi trailer tuck. Got about an hour into Costa Rica then got pulled over by cops who checked our passports and pointed out we forgot to get stamped going into Costa Rica - oops! The first run of bad luck had begun for our Costa Rica trip.. We taxi´d back to the border and got stamped then bused it on to Liberia. Spent 2 nights in Liberia, did a day trip up to some waterfalls and I slipped on a rock and lost my phone into a creek - bad luck number 2...

Playa Tamarindo, Costa Rica - a cool beach town with heaps of backpackers and tourists. Nicknamed Playa Tamargringo cause of all the Americans. Spent a couple nights here in a cool backpackers. Went for an afternoon surf in some small swell. 2nd night Wiggy tried to score weed and got walked into the bush and once the dodgy hippy gave him the weed he dissapeared into the darkness and next second we had a torch in our face and surrounded by cops. They took us to the atm and made us pay a fine of 20 dollars to get out of it. Was so dodgy they pretended to call their lawyer! haha.. and the funniest part is that at the police station they had the Aussie Rules on the tv and were asking us about Australia. Bad luck number 3.. but thats not the end.. the next night we went to a reggae night at some bar and were dancing around with a group of people, for some reason cause me and wiggy were enjoying ourselves and girls seemed to be watching us etc this group of local surfer costa ricans surrounded us and started pushing wiggy and trying to fight us. 2 Candadian dudes jumped in on our side and got us out a back entrance and we jumped into there 4x4 headed to the hostel and got wasted. Thanks boyz!.. bad luck number 4.. lets get the fuck outta Costa Rica!

San Jose, Costa Rica - decided to mission out of Costa Rica and get a move on towards South America. So did a big bus mission to San Jose the capital. Spent a few days here partying and running a muck. Ok city but felt a bit dodgy. Overrall Costa Rica didnt live up to my expectations as it was the country I was most keen on visiting.

Panama City, Panama - now this is a cool city! did a huge bus mission to Panama City from San Jose and as soon as we got there we hit the Casino. Casinos and restaurants and hotels everywhere. This city has a really cool vibe and really good nightlife. Had a few very messy nights here and met some cool dudes. Did a day trip and visited the Panama Canal, is amazing how much work was involved into getting this bad boy up and running and built. Is definately a human wonder of the world.

Colon, Panama - decided on heading up to Colon to get the boat to Colombia as thought this would be a better option and more boats - but were we wrong! one of the dodgiest experiences I have had. The city was so unsafe. Jumped in a taxi and got the old mate to take us to the big pier where we thought the boats would be docked. Had to drive off the main street and through what you could just call a road, there was burn down houses and apartments, kids running around the streets with guns and sticks and homeless people everywhere following the taxi. Was scared for my life - felt like I had driven into the scene in the movie City of God.

Portobello, Panama - got out of Colon and got to Portobello where the other option for boats was. Wiggy got us in yet another situation and tried to buy some weed again off some dodgy dude, he came with us in a taxi to a town 30 minutes away and waited for us to get money from the ATM then tried to get us to come to Colon to get the weed - once he mentioned Colon we knew something wasnt right so said NO and he took the money for the weed and gave wiggy the brown parcel. When wiggy got back to the room and opened it it was full of grass from the ground! done again mr cuss... Anyway had better luck the next day cause met an english couple who just arrived on a boat from Colombia and met their skipper and he booked us onto his boat for 3 days time. Wohoo we finally got a boat!..

Isla El Grande, Panama - while we waited for the skipper to return we headed to Isla El Grande which is a beautiful island off the mainland. Cool little village atmosphere on an island with some beautiful beaches. I think this could be a good investment in Panama as its only new to tourists and the scenery is amazing. It hosts calm sandy beaches and also has a pumping surf beach off the south side of the island at certain times of the year.

San Blas Islands, Panama to Colombia - ok now this was a real adventure. The skipper arrived back in Portobello and we headed off. We had quite a dodgy little sail boat and aboard we had the 42 year old skipper Humberto and his 21 year old beautiful girlfriend Lady, an aussie couple Alex and Sofia, two swedish girls Charlotte and Sofi, a crazy german (in a good way) Dan the Man and wiggy and myself. In tail with our boat was another sail boat (better then ours) with about 8 crazy aussies aboard who I had met some of them while living in London.

The boat cruise started with an overnight sail leaving Portobello at about 6pm. We got told there was rough winds but we didnt expect just how rough the oceans actually would get. Most of us on board hadnt sailed the big oceans before so nobody really knew what to expect but when the 4 metre swells started pumping and none of us onboard had life jackets or safety ropes we realised "ok, fair enough, this is a Colombia skipper".. was a crazy night of huge waves and everybody on board except me and wiggy, and ofcourse the skipper and his woman, were vommiting all night over the side of the boat. Up and down, up and down, we from the crash of waves over the hull.. all night.. over and over again.. then we saw the sun come up, the oceans calmed and life was great!!.. was so beautiful we got really stoned on board and sat there with our sun glasses on as the ocean calmed and the sun rose and in the distance the first of the beautiful deserted San Blas islands appeared.

We sailed up to a larger of the islands that had 1 shop and an airplane strip and a couple soldiers who checked our passports - so this is customs huh? .. then stopped for a swim and snorkel and had some food (which we didnt get much of on this boat trip unless by choice - but we will get to that). Then we sailed on to another island for most of the afternoon. It was gorgeous with palms trees and a tiny village on an opposite island. We ate coconut and swam and snorkelled over some wrecks and just chilled out for 2 days. Little dug out canoes would paddle up to the side of our boat and we would buy fresh lobsters for 50 cents each and huge crabs for 1 dollar. One night we cooked up a beautiful feed of lobster, crab and fish.. mmm... can still taste it now!..

After sailing to a couple other islands we came across this village of people who I cant remember there names but they cant really speak spanish and have there own parlaiment. Was very primative and they were all living in little huts. Above the water they had these wooden cage thingies and inside each was a pig. We got very hungry seeing this as our food was very limited on the boat so us boys came up with the idea of buying and eating a pig. The girls were disgusted with us and decided not to talk to us and voluntee to be a part of this savageness.. but we did it anyway and payed 50 bucks for a half grown pig. The guy asked us if it was the one we wanted and before we knew it he had smashed its head over the side of the boat infront of us and slit its throat. The poor pig was dead in seconds before we even realised what we had done. They boiled the pig up for us to get rid of the brain worm virus and brought it down to us in large pieces. That night we made a big fire on the beach and I had the job of slicing the poor piggy up into pieces and marinating the ribs and cooking it for everyone over the fire. We ate the pig like savages but was so worth it as one of the best bbq´s I have ever had.. yummmmyyyy yummy piggys bummy! phrr

Anyway after that we sailed on overnight towards Colombia and got our exit stamps done on the Panama border then sailed further and backflipped off the boat on the Panama / Colombia border, then sailed on and got our stamps done again in Colombia. Spent a night in a nice little village only accessable by boat. Then left the skipper and his woman and got a dodgy dug out canoe / speed boat which constantly felt like it was going to tip and covering us with water and then got another boat from there which was a big speed boat then got a bus from the next town onto Cartagena.. swooo that was a big mouthfull.. (just like the pig)..