Sharon and Andy's World Tour 2006

Sunday 23 - Monday 24 July

A short bus ride away from Colon, we arrived for a couple of days' stay at La Aurora del Palmar, a private wildlife reserve just across the road from the Parque Nacional el Palmar.

La Aurora del Palmar is home to the largest remaining area of Yatay palm trees outside the national park, and provides a natural habitat for a diverse range of flora and fauna.

During July, the state of Buenos Aires has a two-week holiday when a large proportion of the five million denizens of the city disperse themselves over the rest of Argentina. Thus, the reserve was packed with holidaymakers and for our first night we had to take the only available accommodation; an enormous chalet-style affair with two floors, five beds(!) and an en-suite bathroom - luxury!

A number of activities are included in the price of a stay here, and so on Sunday afternoon we set off for a relaxing canoe trip up the El Palmar Creek. We shared the trip with a bunch of friendly Argentinians, but conversation was limited due to our respective lack of language skills. The bandying of phrases such as "Margaret Thatcher - stupida" and "Maradonna - Hand of God" broke the ice though, raising laughs all round.

Monday 24 July

This morning we moved into accommodation more befitting of our budget; a train carriage cunningly converted into an en-suite double bedroom! This took us back to our time in the "Santos Express", another converted train on the beach in Mossel Bay, South Africa.

Our first activity of the day gave me my second taste of horse riding this year, as we took a leisurely two-hour ride through sunlit orange groves, across a river and into part of the palm forest.

Whilst riding, we struck up a conversation with an American schoolgirl called Rebecca who was on holiday with her Argentinian mum. Her dad is a lecturer on films and so we talked endlessly about our favourite films, directors, what made us laugh and so on all the way back to the camp. Shortly afterwards, Rebecca's mum invited us to a barbecue lunch with the family as her daughter had so enjoyed our company!

We parted comapany at 2 o'clock to take a jeep safari into the heart of the palm forest. Here our guides explained that because of the pressures from cattle grazing and commercial forestry, the palms are struggling to thrive in new habitats, hence the need for privately-owned reserves such as the Aurora del Palmar which take the proceeds from ecotourism and use them for conservation initiatives.