I was a bit annoyed with my bike for costing so much after a slip in the mud so I ended up leaving it at Cartagena for five weeks and went to Venezuela with a girl that I met on the boat on the way over and did the normal backpacking transportation of taking the bus.

With 50 Litres costing $5US Venezuela might not have been the smartest country to leave my bike behind but it was nice to have a break and travel with someone else.

We did quite a few tours including one to Los Llanos, parachuting (I loved), Lago Maracaibo to see the midnight lightening storms,

Catching and eating piranhas, seeing the capybara the largest rodent in the world and more caimans (crocs) that you can count.

Then we flew out to Cuidad Boliver, a town on the banks of the Orinoco, to track five hours up river to Angel Falls the highest falls in the world and is one of the coolest trips I have done.

Other than a quick trip down to the Darien where I met up with my friends hitchhiking through Central America on $4 a day and the Panama Canal I didn’t spend much time in Panama.

I had heard that the road out to the boat might be a bit rough but when I wrote to the Capitan he said it was fine. Maybe it meant when it wasn’t raining. If I hadn’t wiped out and made my bike unable to be ridden I don’t even know how I would have gotten through the two and a foot deep creek.

When I wasn’t helping straighten out my bike I was playing with my new underwater camera in the beautiful San Blass islands.

In Costa Rica after visiting the beautiful Volcano Arenal region I spent almost a week staying at Mishca’s in San Jose cleaning myself and my gear up and renewing my insurance.

And doing yet another of the many maintenance sessions on my bike. As the rainy season was about to start I didn’t stick around too long.

I must admit that I prefer green countries as they remind me of New Zealand and when I rode into Nicaragua it was incredibly brown and everyone honks incessantly. A local actually told me that Nicaraguans couldn’t drive if their horns were disconnected.

When I went to visit the Casa Alianza in Managua I found out that Nicaragua doesn’t use addresses. Everything is based on landmarks. 3 blocks north and 2 blocks west of the National Stadium.

Leon and Omepete Island were pretty cool.

When travelling through Central America you hear horror stories about the next country which made me quite apprehensive entering each country, particularly Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras. By South America this had worn off and even though even a Bolivian motorbike and race car driver said that Paraguay was too dangerous for even him to ride into you I had lost my apprehension. But it was still there entering Honduras.

My first stop was Bay Islands for a spot of diving. Every dive trip I did they were supposed to be looking for whale sharks and one day I recommended to my mates on a non-diving whale shark trip which I was going on the following day and they saw three whale sharks and I saw none.

Then with some girls that I met couch surfing I headed to Comayagua to see the Alfombras (carpets of sawdust made for Easter).

This it was off to a hostel/brewery/banana plantation after getting my friend to pose by my bike in their bikinis as I thought it might get my read ship up and it worked as the day I took the photos someone else the hostel recognised me as he had been following my blog. Two of my highlights was a elaborate hot pools in the forest and being walked around the capital meeting homeless solvent sniffing street kids.

El Salvador was going through an election when I was there and most trees, rocks and posts where painted in the leading parties colours. So I headed into the forest walking across Parque El Imposible and scaled a waterfalls, did some abseiling finishing off with a hot springs.

Then I was lucky enough to be befriended by a motorbiking family whom I stayed with on and off for two weeks.

It is all about connections. One of the family friends let me stay in their volcano lake batch for a week and another one ran a diving school and I dived an active underwater volcano.

I also got to do a free track day and watch a football match between the US and El Salvador.

As a friend had come out to visit me in Belize it felt like Guatemala was going to be my first country I was doing on my own. Then on my first day I met a guy who had ridden down from California and convinced a night guard to give us a private night tour Tikal the Mayan ruins. Then it was off to Semuc Champey and the hot water falls. Though the coolest thing was watching thousands and thousands of bats fly out.

I was lucky enough to be invited out riding for a weekend with some Guatemalans then it was down to San Pedro to do a week of Spanish lessons.

Riding away from San Pedro I was told to mention to the local police as the road I was going to ride had some roadside robberies. I ended up having a four hour police escort to Antigua which is a beautiful historical city where I was hosted by three inspiring women.

I also spent another week learning Spanish, visiting another Mayan ruins, coffee plantation, an active volcano and watched trees tapped for sap to make latex.

I love children and happily did some volunteering teaching computers at a local school where I was learning Spanish.

Belize is a charming mix of English, Spanish and Kriol speaking Caribbean’s. Famous for its diving (though we didn’t manage to do as much as we wanted due to rain) it also has lots of cool activities to do like butterfly ranch, Mayan ruins, a great zoo and a Mennonite settlement you can visit.

And lots of caves where you can raft, canoe and climb three hours into one that still has broken pottery and skeletons from Mayan religious ceremonies.

Once I had established I could ride long distances in foreign countries the real trip began with Mexico! I did not realise how mountainous a lot of Mexico is. It is pretty freaky to ride along and come around a corner to stare over a 2500 meter drop or riding the “El Espinazo del Diablo” (the Devil’s Spine) but finally getting to the beach it was all worthwhile.

As I was a bit nervous about my first non-english speaking country I hooked up with Mark for a few weeks and we went to the town of Tequila.

My favourite city in Mexico was the silver mining city of Guanajuato with it’s brightly coloured houses, cobble stone streets, museum of mummies and street musicians.

Mexico City has the some of the worst road layouts that I have ever experienced.

My highlight was meeting up with Sergio and meeting local families in the Chiapas and going to Agua Azul (Blue Water)

It was a pretty quick trip through mainland USA. I was told to ride through the Northern Cascades which had the distinction of being the only place on my trip I got lost. I managed to get on a forestry service road. When it turned 1 lane I remembered they said it wasn’t a main route but when it went gravel I thought I better turn around only to find I had gone 20 miles too far.

I would love to bike through the USA again. People are so friendly. Every time I stopped for petrol people would come up and talk to me. And the people who hosted me when above and beyond and I have thanked them all on the ‘Thank you’ page.