Quito...the last stop on our trip. The capital city of Ecuador and the place where you can visit the Ecuator line, which we did yesterday. Nothing particularly special to report, just nice to say I´ve been there and done it. Went out for our last meal last night. Unfortunately after our four bottles of wine it got to be midnight, which was when it was 3 martinis for $10-so of course we had to go through the whole martini list...it got very messy, and involved a...

Our last GAP activity...the jungle trip into the Amazon Basin. We left Quito at an ungodly hour (around 7am) to get to the airport to fly to Coca, from where we would be getting picked up by our lodge people. Right from the start we got VIP treatment...this was going to be a good end to our trip. We sat in the VIP lounge at the airport taking advantage of the free drinks and canopes! We had a 25min ride to Coca, mainly an oil mining town where we met our guides...

So here I am in Banos, the penultimate city on my trip. This place is supposedly famous for hot springs...cant be arsed with any more of those. Luckily it also has an active volcano which you can horse ride around, which is what I did this morning. We went up some of the slope of the mountain, you can still see where the volcano errupted in 2006, and where the lava flowed down making a deep cut in the valley, where the lava has stained the rocks orange and there ...

One of the easiest border crossings so far! They even have elctronic print outs for the vias in your passport-very snazzy. All was going well until we changed buses over the border from Tumbes, Peru...now I know why there are so many bus crashes in this country. I could have done a better job...teh driver did not knwo what breaking around a corner was, and when he did find the breaks he slammed them on so hard we all nearly flew off our seats! Anyway we eventua...