Hello everyone. We are safe in a small town called Vilcabamba which is located a couple hours north of the Peruvian border, set in a valley in the Andes Mountains, and is famous for the longevity of its Ecuadorian residents. The area in general is beautiful, the water is clean (at the hostel, we can actually drink the tap water), and we hear more crickets and birds than cars. Our hostel is very beautiful. It is located 2km south of town on a hill that overl...

It is 3:45pm, we are in Cuenca, Ecuador. It is a bright sunny day, much warmer than we expected as Cuenca is at an altitude of 2700ft plus. Cuenca is the third largest city in Ecuador... very old like Quito, but with much more charm. The streets are clean, there is significantly less poverty, and the buildings are beautiful. On the flip side to this, the cost of living is a little more expensive. We are currently paying 20 dollars a night for our room, almos...

Hi everyone! We just wanted to let you know that we survived our first white water rafting adventure. Here are some brief details from our trip. We left our hostel early in the morning and met up with our friends Steve (from Wales) and Danny (from the Galapagos) and headed to the rafting company´s shop. Here, we met the others who were to accompany us on the adventure: a dutch couple, a swiss girl, our guide Patolin, two safety kayakers (Ecuadorian broth...

Hello again. It is now Tuesday. Sorry for the delayed blog update. We left Otavalo on route for Banos around noon on Sunday (having to transfer buses in Quito). The trip from Otavalo to Baños was uneventful with the exception of three things. The first was a major accident on the highway just out of Otavalo. Not sure what happened but two cars and one bus went down a 20ft embankment into the front yards of some surprised looking Ecuadorians. The accid...

Hello from Otavalo! We left Quito on Friday afternoon and made our way to Otavalo (a 2 hour bus ride that turned out to be 3). Otavalo is a small farming town (north of Quito) that is famous for it´s indigenous Saturday market. We arrived at dusk. Braden was in a panic because a friend of ours from the language school in Quito was robbed (at gunpoint) outside of his hostel the night before. A general rule of thumb: don´t stay out late at night kiss...