After not selling the car, we have to take it back to Texas. We started the return journey at speed: six countries in seven days (it might sound tedious, but bent cops, missing bridges and other hazards make this a different kind of road trip). Then, a little more tourism on Mexico's gulf coast before crossing the border to Texas. This message comes from an Austin motel, where we're waiting for someone (anyone) to buy the car.

Picture of the week. A little ford along the Honduran highway. The main road to the capital of the country, and it's rather substantially incomplete.

Obviously it's even longer than that: but the next update will explain what's happened since 5th March. The summary is that we could not sell the car in Panama, so we are now involved in a mad dash north toward Texas where we will hopefully have more luck. This is nowhere near as boring as it might sound, and we will be updating shortly with a number of tales of bent cops and even benter roads.

We spent a few days in the Honduran capital of Tegucigalpa before moving on to a cloud forest at La Tigra. Whilst in Tegucigalpa, we spent a day doing jobs: not that interesting, but if anyone wants to know what we do when we're not photographing things, then this may offer some insight.

Then we slipped over the border to Nicaragua, where we started off with the motor-mouth people of Léon before moving on to Managua and Granada. Nicaragua is just about the friendliest place we've been yet, a charming and relaxing ambience and people who love to talk.

The last country in this update is Costa Rica. We started with a visit to the giant turtles at Playa Grande, and then moved on to the beautiful cloud forest nature reserve of Monteverde. From there, we wandered through eastern Costa Rica, including bird watching at 8,000 feet, Costa Rica's capital - San Jose - and an idyllic tropical beach at Manuel Antonio.

Picture of the week. Holey road, Nicaragua. This should give you some idea of just how bad an idea driving through Central America at night would be. The rainy season finished months ago, but so far they've only filled in the really big holes.

Then we turned south. It took three days to get the whole way across Mexico and Guatemala and two more days to zip through El Salvador and on into Honduras. This involved crappy roads and bureaucratic nightmare border crossings. The second border crossing (including the second bribed policeman of the trip) is instructive.

Our first posting from Honduras covers the small but nice colonial town of Santa Rosa de Copan and the last of the Mayan sites at Copan. After that, we headed for the north coast and some tropical relaxation at Tela.

Picture of the week. Two this week. Mangrove roots in the Refugio de Vida Silvestre Punta Izopo, Northern Honduras, and a beautiful sculpture from Copan

Also we have a last word on the delights of the Yucatan, and yet more ruins at and around Palenque.

Picture of the week. Door lintel, Yaxchilan. Stunning carvings abound on the underside of door lintels throughout this beautiful Mayan site, deep in the jungle on the Mexican-Guatemalan border.

Picture of the week. The face of Chac, the Mayan rain god. I've seen this face literally hundreds of times, often on the same temple. Still, when a civilisation of 8 million or so people decides to live on a riverless limestone plateau, you might expect rain to assume a lot of importance.

Picture of the week. The market at Chichicastenango. A vivid sprawl of people sporting their traditional dress, not to mention just about anything that anyone might conceivably want to buy.

Also, whilst in Antigua, we've found time - mostly at the weekends - for some trips out of town. This article also has most (if not all) of this update's best one-liners.

Picture of the week. Exploding volcano. Not one of the great pictures, but the sight of red hot rock spurting out of the ground makes this one unmissable.

First, Mexico's third city: Puebla. From there, we went east to Oaxaca, a name which is pronounced "WaaHAAcaa" (and don't bother asking for directions if you don't know that). From there, we went past various attractions including a seriously overweight tree onto Tuxtla Gutierrez. Next stop San Cristobal de Las Casas, for a little Mayan culture.

Finally, the big border crossing into Guatemala, and our first night there in Huehuetenango.

Two pictures of the week. First, Fun prehispanic pottery. The most notable thing that disappeared from local art when the Conquistadors arrived was the sense of humour. Second, Pomegranate. Yum yum.

Public Health Warning from Jan: 'The camera can lie'. David has become very good at 'doctoring' photos. Mainly this means improving them no end. But I am afraid where this will end...

*More about that brief interlude. As our regular readers will know, we've been selflessly blazing a trail through the U.S. and Mexico for some time, just to bring you these pages. Well, this has been such hard work that we felt that we deserved a holiday from the holiday. So there.

Pictures of the week: Voladores rite

After we crossed the Mexican border, our first two nights were spent in the town of Hermosillo, where we recorded those all important first impressions of this country. Since then we've moved on through the US retirement home of Alamos, to the splendid Copper Canyon, then a whistle stop tour through various towns and adventures from Los Mochis to Zacatecas. There's also a few reflections on driving in Mexico.

Entries have been pouring in for our second competition, so check that out. The closing date isn't until approximately when we say so, so there may still be time.

Finally, two for all the geeks out there.

First, ever wondered how useful those image manipulation programs like Paint Shop Pro are? Take a look at Alamos Church, which is linked to the picture before I reprocessed it. Pretty scary stuff.

Finally, check out the new maps page,complete with graphical index.

In summary: a quick visit to (yet) another slot canyon, this one called Wire Pass. Then we moved on to the heat of Mojave Desert and then Death Valley. The article about these deserts is not only amusing (I think), but also contains our latest competition. Don't miss it.Thoroughly cooked, we exited stage west for the High Sierra of Lone Pine, Yosemite and King's Canyon. This all ended with a little meditation amid the trees of Giant Sequoia National Park. 

Photo of the week: rock textures from Wire Pass. Let's hope this goes a little way towards explaining our slot canyon fetish.

Now, the last time I posted something intended to annoy*, I got just one response, and that was agreement. This just isn't good enough: either no-one's looking at this or it's too hard to find the good bits. Hence the new-look front page.

*this was the middle-sized town America bit: perhaps you do all agree....

The full story: first we went to Dead Horse Point for a sunset, and were so taken that we drove under it the next day. That took us to Canyonlands National Park, where a nail-biting dirt road led us to our first slot canyon. After that, it was on to Capitol Reef National Park, another slot and a host of beautiful vistas. And finally to Escalante, the USA's newest National Monument, for yet more slot canyons, and other bewitching rock formations.

Last but certainly not least in this episode, a couple more entrants in Pedants corner (thanks to Neil Evans for nitpicking and classical references, and to Mark Leonard for comprehensive research on a small but vital grammatical issue).

Also new in this episode is a new rant on the subject of middle-sized town US. Nothing very offensive has appeared on this site recently, hopefully this will go some way to rectifying that

Our more eagle eyed readers may spot that that activity doesn't quite fill the elapsed time since our last posting. The reason for this is quite simple... you may remember that we had taken the car in for a quick oil change a week earlier in Boise. The full story is rather tedious, but suffice it to say that should someone called Sheldon ever volunteer to change your car oil, just say no. If he insists, remind him that any plugs he plans to remove should be screwed back in carefully, particularly if they are designed to keep oil in the vicinity of the rear differential. The rest is history, but at this time we would like to commend Dave and Mike of Flat Creek Auto, Jackson, without whose expert assistance we would be rather more days later than we already are.

It took 6 days to get from Redwood NP, across Oregon and Idaho, to Grand Teton NP. In between, we had a few days' R+R in Boise, whitewater rafting nearby, a visit to the "Craters of the Moon National Monument", and a lot of beautiful scenery, notably the Sawtooth Mountains. Click here for the full story of our own private Idaho, not to mention movie reviews.

As well as all that, I've added some more information to the car page, in response to various questions from our readership. This includes a small discussion with one Mark Leonard about the role of the car in popular American culture.

There's also new stuff on the Readers' comments page, including questions about who writes what, the technology in use, and finally our first readers' trip joke!

Finally, we declared the competition closed. After much deliberation, we've decided to award first prize to Amanda Brainyperson for getting the answer correct, even though Paul Smoothtalker was more sycophantic. So Amanda, please collect your $100 prize whenever you next see us in person (offer expires on December 31st).

Step one in that tour has been the purchase of a splendid vehicle for the journey.

We had a few more general reflections on our six weeks in Alaska. You can get at these from the odds and ends section.

We also added a couple of new photos to the old Fairbanks to Valdez page, one of the trans-Alaska pipeline and one of the Worthington Glacier.

Finally, don't forget that one way to see the summary of the Alaskan trip is to look at newly working clickable map.

Health warning: a lot of that isn't that exciting. We had a whale of a time with the scenery, and the animals, and the local colour (i.e. bars) but you may not.

We also finally got the clickable map working, it's a doddle this html stuff.

Also, by popular demand!! The readers' comments page! (well, when I say popular demand, I'm really talking about a few terminal geeks who find this interesting. Anyway, there it is).

Competition update: see the readers' comments page.

Our more eagle-eyed readers may have spotted a dearth of information about the events of the 9th and 10th of June. Well, Well, the 9th was spent touring Juneau city, fairly unremarkably: the museums there are especially unremarkable. The 10th was yet another hike: hugely enjoyable for us, but do you really need a description of a Porcupine up at tree? I think not.

Our competition is generating keen interest: three entries already. One is clearly correct (hi Amanda) but needless to say that isn't necessarily enough to be a winner. Entries will be accepted "for a while".

A popular addition from the last update was Alaskan boat people. Alternatively, refer to either history of previous updates, or the day by day and odds and ends buttons at the top of this page to get at previous articles.

This update comes from Skagway, gateway to the Goldrush of 1898. There are two pages about our adventures in Skagway: hiking and cycling first, and then a trip on the White Horse and Yukon Railway.
There are also two new general pieces about Alaskan boat people and the difference between travellers and tourists.

Another addition is a history of previous updates, useful if you haven't looked here for a while and want to know what's changed.

Finally, question time. Are there any amateur meteorologists out there who might want to hazard a guess as to what this is?

In the meantime, there's a couple of new photos on the Ketchikan page, and a new page about Sitka.

We also added a picture of a totem pole to the Ketchikan page.