In my backpack I have two books. One is a guidebook for Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia. The other is a leather-bound notebook I bought in Madrid airport to write stories, record email addresses, make grocery lists and generally doodle. Neither are recreational reading materials. I made the decision to use hostel book exchanges and to abuse the kindness of other travellers to accumulate my novels. My plan has spectacularly backfired. As a consequence I have now r...

The month of August has been a month of contrasts for me.The first part of the month was spent in San Francisco de Quito, the beautiful Pichincha city of Ecuador and the world´s second highest captial after Bolivia´s La Paz. It was here that I crashed a wedding. Not perhaps in the style of Vince Vaughan or Owen Wilson, as I actually managed to secure an official invite before proceedings kicked off, but a crash in that I knew no-one at the wedding wit...