Wow.....time is flying by!

I´ll start with an apology about the length of time its taken to update the blog.....its seems like a long time ago!! Anyway its been a fantastic couple of weeks! we finally left merida in venezuela and travelled to the border of Colombia! Border towns are always a little crazy...people trying to scam you etc and this was no different!! luckily we made the journey with some new friends (3 irish girls and an english guy!) and walked across the bridge to Colombia!! a great experience!! It was time to find a place to stay...Ville De Leyva had been recommended to us so we all decided to go!!! This is a beautiful colonial Colombian town off the beaten track towards the capital Bogota. I have to say it was absolutely beautiful...(although it rained more than England for the first couple of days :-) ...) After a good look around the town we decided to take a walk up a mountain....i would strongly advise thinking about this carefully if you find yourself planning the same activity...i have learnt a very valuable lesson in south america....mountains are always higher than they seem!!! ha ha!! anyway it was a stunning view of the town and the thunder and lightening added to the moment :-S anyway! I´ll stop babbling on....pictures say a thousand words....take care all!! promise to update this more often!! love pi and mj xx

hellooo everyone,

Well we finally made it out of maracay! (where we got stuck due the easter break) and headed west to Merida, a very nice town with lots of hippies, beautifull squares and a great overall atmosphere!! The hostel we stayed in was amazing! They organised their own trips into the surrounding areas so we decided to book a 4 day tour into the savannah with a group of 16 gringos (all from different countries)!!

The first day we hiked up a mountain to some hot springs (we uploaded these photos on our blog last week without a description!! sorry about that!). Anyway they were very hot and crowded (easter again!!!) On the second day we started the safari, sitting on top of 4x4 safari jeeps watching all the wonderful wildlife.....thousands of exotic birds, caiman (little crocodile creatures), capibaras (giant guinea pigs!), anteaters and we finished the day wrestling an annaconda! awesome! The sunset on the savanna was amazing and back at the camp we had a lovely dinner and went to sleep in our pre-prepared hammocks. the next day we went on a boat trip. This was incredible! We were very lucky to see pink dolphins playing around the boat, there were more beautifull birds such as the white necked heron. We moored the boats and went piranha fishing which was a fantastic experience! when we had all caught one each we headed back to camp to cook and eat them!! yum yum!

after dinner we went on a night safari to catch a caiman! scary stuff! our guide (a local native we called steve irwin...ha ha!) lassoed one from a 20 foot bridge which was very impressive! after returning the caiman safely we headed back to camp and then home the following morning. overall it was an incredible experience, we saw so many varieties of wildlife in their natural habitat.... and we met some fantastic people too! ha! love to all! xx

a beautiful walk to some hot springs in the mountains!!