Our first destination on our new set of travels was the beautiful town of Baños. The town is surrounded by towering mountains (volcanoes) and waterfalls. A beautiful setting. We were there for four days and spent most of those days walking through the mountains exploring the waterfalls. The first day we walked up, up, up the top of a steam mountain through lots of farms to reach the summit which provided us the perfect view of the active volcano that th...

The bus shelter With only a week to go left of volunteering in the jungle before we take a short break before we head off to the Galapgos for further volunteer work, I can honestly say every muscle in my body is aching today. I have worked 22 consecutive days here (apart from 2 days off) for the past month which will enable me to take the next 5 days off to climb Volcano Samoco. At this stage I do not know anything about it so that will be my next postcard....

Life is not just working at Jatun Sacha After a hard day of work what better way to spend the afternoon lazing about and taking a dip in a river and we have practically done this every other day. The Rio Napo (a tributary of the Amazon) is about a 20 min walk from Jatun Sacha so Bron and I have now, swam in it, tubed in it, canoed in it and as of yesterday I have also floated down it in a rapid!! Tubing Remember as a little kid getting a tyre tube an...

Just a quick update on our volunteering positions. We officially started our volunteer jobs on 14.1.04. To sum up the place here...íts hot and humid!! Actually last night was not so humid and neither is today but it is very hot today! The vol jobs are going well so far we have done a myriad of jobs including- Weeding and pruning of the foundations Amazonian Botanical Garden, Aidan worked in the organic farm trying to make the clayey soil more tolerabl...

Well since Bronwyn is busily studying Spanish I took up the challenge of doing day trips around Quito. My first solo Adventure saw me visit the Pre-Inca ruins of Cochasqui Archaeological Park. Getting there was a feat in itself as I chose to catch a local bus from Old Quito. Basically catching the bus requires oneself to stick your hand out and jump onto the moving bus. Using my best broken Spanish I had to ask the driver to let me out at LCochasquiL...