I think this is going to take a bit of explaining, but let me first say that I have nothing against hippy Porteños per se, there's just so damn many of them.
Every year, around January time, the time of the summer holidays in Argentina, an exodus occurs. From Buenos Aires hordes of hippy Porteños stream from their homelands further north, for... actually I don't know what for, but that's what they do. It's probably a spiritual thing, man. Of course the further north you come, away from their natural habitat, the thinner their numbers become. At Humauaca, one of the northern most towns in Argentina, you could have given a blind man a bullet and he could not have failed to kill at least three, and maim several others. Heading up through Bolivia there were still a disappointing amount, the streets of Copacabana were lined with them and their hand made wares and Dan was attacked mercilessly by one in a bar in Cochabamba, and was forced to part with a far wad of his money for two worthless (and very badly colour coordinated) bracelets after some merciless flirting. By the time I met Dan again in Ecuador we thought we had lost them, but in an Italian restaurant in Cuenca a three piece turned up, in suspiciously short trousers, our Porteño radars started pinging, and sure enough, they were from Beunos Aires.
Porteños can be spotted easily enough by their Inca/Israeli/Porteño trousers (notice I use the American "pants" in the video) which are baggy, striped and always too short, at least one in a group will always have a guitar, usually in an Inca case, if it's out of the case it is usually playing Redemption Song, a couple in the group will usually be juggling, badly and most of the group will have at least one dread lock, often with some sort of thread and bead attachment.
Anyway, the point is that I tracked down some of these hippy Porteños as shockingly far north as Colombia, see my videos, Porteño Hunter,
Part I and
Part II. Their call is very quiet, perhaps to avoid attracting predators, so you'll have to turn your sound right up.
I spoke too soon about the insurance, they are saying that I am under insured. The truth is that their suppliers are ripping them off, and I have not hesitated in telling them so. You could actually buy all the equipment for £200 less than I insured it for, money that would be the insurance company's saving.
I am off today to the holiday home of some Colombians that I met in Valparaiso so again, don't worry if I'm late in responding to emails, I haven't been captured by guerrillas. Maybe.
I am on the Caribbean coast. It's hot. I am going to the jungle for 6 days to trek to The Lost City. Yes, very Indiana Jones. So far every time I have said I will be away I have managed to find a computer somewhere. So knowing my luck I will bump into a villager with a satellite or something :) Chau for now.
Being ill really sucks when you're travelling alone (or "independently" as some prefer). You have to go out and get things yourself, like dinner. But at least I am reminded of how lucky I've been to stay so healthy. 
I find it weird too how you don't like to eat when you're ill, I always feel so much better once I have, why, when your body surely needs it most, would your brain tell you to reject nutrition? (btw, I think it was the meal between the two pictured that got me.)
Lots of people complain about bus journeys in Bolivia and Peru, but I haven't had any to complain about yet (excluding my camera loss). That all changed with my first Colombian bus journey yesterday, I won't bore you with the details, no, I will, it was a lot longer than stated, my first seat had zero leg room, my second tilted forward so that I slipped off if I went to sleep and actually seem to have bruised my bum from friction burns or something, I didn't have enough money to pay for it so the driver was supposed to stop, but forgot, despite my reminder (ok, I was partly hoping he'd forget totally), then 
the cash machine at the bus station was out of order so I had to give him my MP3 player as a deposit, and have to go back now to reclaim it and pay what I owe. So we arrived past midnight and there were no places at the cheap hostels, or the expensive ones, so I eventually stayed in a hotel and the taxi driver charged me for all the mucking about.
It had all started so well too, I managed to pay a visit to this church built on a bridge against a rock face where somebody had seen the virgin years before so that the same rock face is now the alter of the church.
The further north I have come the more friendly people have become, Colombia being the friendliest yet, in fact a but too friendly, I was a bit worried I might get molested on the bus last night. And I ended up sharing my banana sized and shaped snickers type goo with half the people on the bus, I couldn't have finished it on my own.
It only occurred to me as I was plotting Otavalo on my map and noticed that I had gone from negative to positive latitude that I have crossed the equator.
Here, as in the US, they don't ask about the toilet, they ask about the bathroom, so I always think of "baño" as "toilet", and so in turn I incorrectly translated "baños" to "toilets", but of course Baños is called Baños because of all the thermal baths in and around the area.
So I managed to get the train, it was a little bit of a let down, I think I've been spoiled for sheer hills, valleys and clouds recently and there were no derailments or decapitations :( I found out why no one had heard of Sibambe, where I originally tried to get the bus to, it consists of the shell of an old station and the shell of an old church. Saw asparagus in the wild, it was 3-4m, really. Though I think it's a slightly different variety to the one in Mum's garden as at the bottom of these there were cactus looking leaves.
