Mount Roraima? I barely knew her...

We night bussed back to St Elena. Before boarding we had met two french guys who were also coming up Roraima with our group.

When we got on the bus, the french guys were sitting behind us. As the bus started up, the condensation from the (freezing, freezing) aircon leaked out of the vents above them and all over them. They talked to the driver, we stopped for a while, and then went on our merry way, leakage problem seemingly solved.

A CONFESSION: at the time, given we were only one row apart, I was rather pleased that it wasn't us the water was falling on- though I was terribly sympathetic to Remy and Regis.

KARMA ENSUES: a little down the road, I put my hand down the outside of my sleeping bag (did I mention it was pret-ty cold) and it was...dun dun dun...wet! Ergo, I ended up having to wedge myself on the ground behind the back row of seats for an approx 13 hour bus journey- trying very hard to keep in the middle of my wee cage as water was streaming in near my feet, and a little near my head.

On the plus side though, I did manage to miss one of the many ID checks you seem to get on South American buses from my position of secretion. I had thought that the cop had seen me, but current thinking is that he must have supposed me to be either luggage or garbage. All good, it was quite difficult to manouver and contort my way out of the possie, and more annoying still to have to get my passport out of my belt.

It was after this fantastic and comfortable night of sleep, and in what you can possibly guess as being the associate state of mind, that the bus arrived late and Stevo and I were convinced we would immediately have to start the mountain trek.

Stevo undertook the breakfast challenge, beating all other competitors by returning with chicken empanadas and bottles of orange juice in less time than it had taken me to get the luggage out of the hold on the bus.

We arrived at the relevant guest house and speed-packed (well, unpacked)to lighten the load for the walk. Not light enough as it turned out as our bags seemed to be the most bulky out of them all. Which was surprising given we were two of the three people who were too lazy to save a couple of quid by taking 12 Kilo of food etc up the mountain with us. I don't think our bags were the heaviest though...

It's usually a 6 day trek, but for time purposes we were going to do it in 5 (they do run it as a 5 day trek sometimes, so this didn't seem too ambitious).

We hit the road..