Hola! This last blog entry has been a long time coming. I guess I didn't really want to write it as it is the last thing holding us to our amazing travels. But with Gen at work and me job hunting I guess the dream is definitely over and we should conclude the story of the final part of the most amazing 10 months ever!

Last time I wrote we had just left the Galapagos, a definite highlight of the trip, and were sitting in a very nice hostel in Quito. We actually spent 3 days stationed here and definitely made the most of it. Aware that our time was running out we packed in as much as we could in this short space of time.

First we headed off to the Otavalo market, the biggest open air market in South America. My initial reaction to this suggestion was "great, another bloody market", and while we were sitting on our cramped bus in the middle of some road works for 2 hours my enthusiasm for this place waned to near zero! I am pleased to say that I well and truly ate my words as it was probably the best market we had visited. Aside from being absolutely huge, even though the merchandise on sale contained a lot of what we had seen before there was also plenty of new items to keep our interest up. We actually spent quite a bit of money here (relatively speaking for Ecuador, where you can eat like a king for £2) on souvenirs, presents and good old street meat! After several hours of wandering round and trying not to get too lost we headed back to Quito and went out that evening to the oldest street in the city, La Ronda.

As it was a Saturday night it was very busy and there was a lot going on. Strangely though, it was mainly packed with locals, enjoying a lot of live music and plenty of drink. We sampled quite a bit of Canelazo, a popular hot, spiced rum drink which was extremely strong! After a few of those it made sense to try their version of mulled wine, which was very nice and went down a tad too easily. We had an excellent night wandering up and down this street and checking out the live bands that were playing in nearly every other building. Gen even managed to get her photo taken with 'Trio America', 3 old Ecuadorian men playing their hearts out to an empty restaurant. Safe to say they were more than happy to pose for a photo and play us a few tunes.

With slightly worse for wear heads the following morning, we set off to visit 'la cuidad Mitad del Mundo' - the middle of the world. We had to take several public buses on which we ended up standing for about 2 hours until we reached a small theme park where you can stand on the equator. We thought this place would be abuzz with tourists and quite fun. We were mistaken. It was fairly quiet with the only other visitors there being Ecuadorian and to top it all off it was one of the hottest days we had experienced in Ecuador so far and there was very little shade! We also found out that the monument built on the equator, and the equator line, were not actually geographically correct! All in all, I would not recommend visiting this place, but it does make for a funny photo!

From Quito we bussed it down to Baños de Agua Santa, a town famous for it's hot springs and beautiful scenery. We were not disappointed. We spent a very relaxing and enjoyable 3 days here trekking round the surrounding mountains and enjoying the amazing restaurants and bars that the town has to offer (café hood - their tag line being 'where the food is good', café good - their tag line should be 'where the food is not good', and casa hood - where we watched an excellent Colombian movie while drinking smoothies and eating chips, good times). A lot of people come here to take part in extreme sports from mountain biking to canyoning, but we were more than content to take it slow and chill out in this beautiful town.

To get out of Ecuador we had to stop off in the city of Cuenca (full name Santa Ana de los cuatro ríos de Cuenca!) where we booked our bus back to Peru. Unfortunately we had to wait a few days before our bus left. I say unfortunately as Cuenca is not a great city to hang out in. After the first day, we had pretty much seen the whole of it, and were not that impressed! We did have one particularly hairy moment when we were walking through their main plaza one night and they were having a celebration for Corpus Cristi (I am sure they celebrate this far too often!). This party included a parade, a lot of street vendors and lots of fireworks. However, due to the rain, the fireworks didn't quite go off as planned and some ended up not firing at all. We only found this out as while we were leaving a firework went off about 2 feet away from us in a crazy direction, luckily away from us, and we were then showered with red hot bits of firework as it came down! No one around us seemed too bothered that there were about 20 unexploded fireworks sitting in close proximity to all the party goers! We made a quick exit to a safer area of town.

To get back to Peru, our bus dropped us off back in the seaside town of Mancora, where we had already spent 4 days on our way to Ecuador and had booked to spend another 2 at the same hostel. It was a beautifully sunny evening when we arrived and the guys recognised us from before and gave us a very warm welcome. It very much felt like we belonged there and had we more time I have no doubt that we would have spent a few weeks working behind the bar with them and enjoying this town. This time round, the waves were slightly higher and I managed to get in some surfing one morning, I hadn't lost it! It was great fun not only catching the waves but sitting out in the sea, surrounded by thousands of tiny fish jumping out the water! We went out one night we to a party on the beach and after a lot of local beer and plenty of crazy dancing we were just about to head home when Gen heard a song she liked in a bar we were passing, at 3am, so we obviously had to go in and join the 4 English guys and 2 Peruvians that were alone in this bar! We ended up spending the next few hours in here and only stopped dancing for 2 minutes when the police walked in and told us to be quiet. The bar lady looked quite affronted and as soon as they had left she locked the doors and the party continued!

Saying goodbye to Mancora was tough as we knew it was our last place where we would be garunteed beautiful sunshine and soaring temperatures. But before we went home we wanted to be surrounded by snow capped mountains one last time, so we headed for Huaraz. Huaraz is 3100m above sea level and is surrounded by white topped mountains all year round. It is a trekkers paradise and to top it all off we stayed in one of our nicest hostels so far. We had taken a night bus there and had seriously underestimated what the temperature would be at 4am in a mountain town! I was still in shorts and flip flops and gen was only slightly ahead with leggings! We were freezing but fortunately our room was ready and we were able to get into bed straight away. Even though we were tired we wanted to make the most of our short time and so immediately headed off to explore the town and book some trips. We did find a fantastic café with amazing mountain views to relax in at lunchtime and even found an English run curry house called 'Chilli Heaven' for that evening. I can safely say it was the best curry we have had since being away, still not a patch on ones at home, but my standards had dropped a lot so I was more than satisfied!

The following morning we were up at 6am to head to Laguna Llaca. It had been recommended by a friend of ours as well as being recommended by our hostel as a good place to acclimatise to the high altitude. The weather was perfect with blue skies and a nice hot sun to see us on our way. The lake was stunning, an amazing turquoise colour with a beautiful blue glacier at the end of it. We sat and ate our packed lunch by the lake while admiring the glacier, one of the best lunch spots for a while. To make it even better we did not see a single other person that day so it was extremely peaceful. We absolutely loved it.

We were up at the same time the next day to head to Laguna 69, a popular, tough day trip to a lake in the mountains. This time we saw a lot more people attempting what we were told would be a 7 hour trek and our luck with the weather had run out. It was cold and cloudy to begin with and after about an hour of walking the rain came and quickly turned into snow, battering our faces thanks to the strong winds in the valley! Thanks to our now fairly good levels of fitness, the 4 hour walk to the lake took us only 2 and a half and our reward for making it to the top was another beautifully blue lake where we sat, huddling together to stay warm, eating our lunch. We would like to have stayed there longer but to sit still was to get cold and so we were soon on the move back down. All in all, it only took us about 4 hours so our ride back to the hostel was nowhere to be seen for a bit, fortunately for us he decided to come a bit early so we jumped in and made him put the heater on.

As it was our last night in Huaraz, we treated ourselves to another curry and on our way back to the hostel we stopped off to watch a brass band play Peruvian style music in the middle of a street. They were surrounded by quite a lot of locals all dancing and drinking, and when they saw us watching they rushed over, offered us a lot of beer and asked to have their photos taken with us! We ended up dancing the night away with them and being one of the main attractions of the street party! They were all so friendly and generous, it was a great night and when it came time for us to leave there were a lot of hugs and kisses and kind farewells for us.

Our bus back to Lima took us 8 hours, which considering some of the buses we have been on, was absolutely nothing. Our hostel in Lima was nice enough, run by a very friendly Englishman. Lima is a nice city, although it gets a lot of mist from the sea and that mixed with the ever present South American city smog means that you rarely get to see the sun even though it is quite hot there. Our last few days in in this wonderful continent were spent trying to get the enthusiasm to do some sight seeing. We found it quite hard to get excited by anything due to the lack of sun, the fact that it was just a big city but mainly because we knew this was our last stop before heading home. We found a park in Miraflores that was similar to the iguana park in Ecuador except this one was home to hundreds of cats! Gen loved it. We walked through their main plazas and drank our last pisco sours in a fancy hotel bar in down town Lima. We got a lot of funny looks as not only were we the only gringos in there but we were the only ones in there not wearing suits and dresses, in fact we were in flip flops and jeans. Still, it was our last day and the pisco was flowing so we didn't care at all.

Our flight left in the evening and it was about 17 hours before we were walking through T5 at Heathrow, exhausted and deflated but satisfied that we had made the most of the time we had away.

So, after 9 countrys, 294 days, 332.5 hours (that's just under 2 weeks) on long distance buses, 27.5 hours on ferries (and 96 hours on a cruise ship), 78.5 hours on planes (11 of them), 12.5 hours on bicycles, 5 hours on trains, 10 minutes on a motorbike, 7371km in a campervan, 1 bear bite, 1 Chilean TV interview and 1 jelly fish sting, it is finally over. We can safely say it has been the most incredible time of our lives and would go back and do it all again if we could.

Adios and thank you for reading!

Quins rule.