You’ll cross several subtly different cultures, some with strict gun laws (others less well policed), and encounter a confusing array of jabs and pills to ward off strange diseases before travel, during, and after. My first night was spent wondering who could possibly be angry (or perhaps drunk) enough to fire seven times at somebody or something nearby at 3am, whilst trying to keep an eye on the huge cockroaches which emerged from every crack at dusk.

It gets better though, beyond the confusing unrelated currency of each country (I tried to work out local prices by converting to my original currency, the Costa Rican colón, then via the US dollar, and finally back to the pound usually with serious errors). The people I met were always welcoming; spending a night with a family, cooking, playing games with the children, and sleeping under their roof was a definite highlight.

Over the month we alternated between luxury flats and camping in midge, cockroach and toad infested swimming parks (ok, park, just one was this bad), and cooked our odd recipes from whatever the food markets could offer us with only the beer cooler guaranteed to be full. Market day varied between towns, in some a daily bustling, brightly coloured, exciting experience with overflowing stalls of impressive handmade goods with leather workers, carpenters and fabric sellers doing roaring trade, others a weekly dull and dusty affair with a few stalls selling some very sorry looking veg.

Border controls were always hit and miss: sitting for hours to wait for signs of activity, having your precious passport taken and given back several times by very unofficial looking border workers, being told not to cross the bridge to not-quite-politically stable El Salvador without permission unless you enjoy being shot at by border guards, only to be firmly gestured across leaving one of your number passport-less on the wrong side.

The museums were always a bit sparse or simplistic (the result of a childhood brought up on the incredible London museum collections, with the one exception - the Panama canal’s museum), but the outdoor activities and experiences available over a month travelling with a loose agenda and a group of likeminded people seems impossible to rival. Wandering through rediscovered Mayan ruins in Honduras, snorkelling or scuba-diving in clear waters off Roatan, toasting bread on lava from an erupting volcano in Costa Rica, camping in a graveyard at a former Guerrilla training camp in El Salvador, speed boating among the millionaires’ islands on lake Nicaragua, drinking from a coconut on a blisteringly hot beach (take your pick of countries), and finally the sheer scale of the Panama canal.

My knowledge of modern languages is terrible, but I’ve rarely found it to be a problem during any of my travels, so don’t let the barrier stop you; guides all speak English, and if you think you’ve seen all you needed to in South America or Spain, I must urge you to give this less travelled route a chance.