2800m Well, I thought that yesterdays breakfast was interesting. Today we entered the same dining room as last night, again with a distinct lack of patronage and was soon informed that breakfast would be in two stages. Stage 1; we would be served fruit salad, muesli with yoghurt and fruit juice. Stage 2; we would be served eggs with a slice of ham and cheese and bread. It seemed that was only one waiter and one cook, and the stages took a while to complete. T...

2760m Breakfast was early this morning, too early. I don’t mean for us; 7am was fine, but not for the hotel staff. It was supposed to start at 6:30, we arrived at 6:45 and there were no staff present and just some bread rolls and chocolate croissants. Now I’m not adverse to a chocolate croissant, but I do like a coffee to go with it. No luck. Around 7am some bacon and a form of eggs arrived, and 10 minutes later we were served coffee. No sign of the VP eithe...

2550m Well, there are ways to start your day with cereal and toast. There are ways to start your day with eggs and bacon. There are even ways to start your day with air dried muesli with organic fruits and herbal tea (not sure why, but some do). And then there is the way of starting your day in Cuenca. With a colonel of the Ecuadorean army walking around with a nice new Glock at his hip, three police vehicles in front of your hotel with soldiers on the street wi...

2550m This morning saw Guayaquil overcast yet again with a mist and slate grey skies. Breakfast done and our driver and guide arrived to take us to Cajas National Park and on to Cuenca. It turns out that the guide and driver are husband and wife and just got back in from Utah last night and live in Cuenca. We left the city and drove along some of the wetlands spying herons, egrets, spoonbills, buzzards and even a lonely kingfisher. The sides of the road became ...

3420m Today was really a day of rest, where no one really wanted to do much. Side effects of altitude sickness tablets and sore legs from yesterday meant that this was going to be quiet. We had breakfast and handed our washing in from the last week and just caught up on reading of journals until around 11am when we finally emerged out of the room to go and get some exercise and to have lunch at Jacks. Around 3pm Fran stated that she was getting cabin fever so t...