and head off for the weekend. As expected, the air pass booking didn’t go so smoothly, and we ended up staying in a nearby motel to work it all out on the internet. We quickly came to conclusion that it was no good, because although you can go anywhere in South America, you always have to go via Santiago, Chile. Not much good if you want to go from Venezuela to Rio!! So after an hour or so being astonished at the price of flights in South America, we found a bargain fare directly from New York to Rio and decided to take it from there.

We got to Tucson the next day, and checked into the only hostel in town, which was pretty nice. We didn’t think much of the place though, it was a big ugly city basically! After a chilled morning we drove up to the desert museum. Far from being a museum though, the place was a full on botanical gardens, zoo and basically full day out! As we hadn’t got there

until after midday, and we didn’t have our good camera with us, we decided to leave it until the next day and do it justice. Instead we went shopping! It was a pretty productive shopping experience, we managed to buy a replacement microphone for the computer, and a replacement pair of sandals for me. The Keen sandals I’ve had since we left England were on their way out, but had been brilliant, so I bought exactly the same type!! Later on after some lunch we headed back into the desert to the Saguaro National Park, home of the fifty foot tall cacti! Actually we’d been seeing them since before Phoenix, but here they were concentrated in forests!! The landscape around here is amazing - we walked around a couple of nature trails and then headed up to a viewpoint to watch the sunset over the desert, a pretty stunning sight. We were beginning to see the appeal of Tucson!!

So the next morning we