At Guayaquil airport we were royally ripped off by a taxi driver who charged us $3 to leave the airport gates, turn right and immediately arrive at a buseta HQ. The busetas (shared people carriers) were recommended by Jorge and our triathlete friend at the airport as they are faster than buses and evidently the way many Ecuadorians travel to Cuenca. The terrain was absolutely dead flat for miles until all of a sudden we met an absolutely enormous mountain which w...

A 4:15am alarm in Quito to take a taxi to the new airport located miles away from anywhere. As we left many of our roomates hadn´t even made it back, but that´s to be expected in La Mariscal on a Saturday night. We were quoted an hour to get to the airport but actually it took half that, so we were all checked in and at the gate far too early to justify our curtailed sleep. Luckily it felt like we were going on holiday within a holiday. The flight took 30 minu...

We returned to the bus station in Latacunga for the fourth time and without stepping foot in it managed to get on a bus heading to Ambato. During the hour or so journey a vendor boarded the bus and provided a full sales pitch for some sort of gout prevention product. At Ambato we changed buses to Baños and this time we were treated to a pitch for intestinal worm prevention... complete with photos. It was so horrific I almost bought some. In Baños we headed to ...

The Irish woke up and left around 6:15am to go to Colombia, just as I got up ready to head in the opposite direction. We took a taxi to the southern bus terminal, which is equally far out of town as the northern one was. On the way we saw Cotopaxi, which is an amazing snow-capped volcano near Quito. Obviously I needed breakfast before catching a bus, so at the terminal Alex and I enjoyed a meal of steak, two fried eggs, rice, chips and salad at 8am. It took only...

When we arrived at Quito we hardly knew it. There were absolutely no taxis in the taxi rank, so we walked to the road. The first taxi quoted us 8 dollars to the Old Town and refused to use the meter. The second quoted 7, agreed to use a meter, and was way cool, so we took him. We arrived at the Secret Garden hostel, where you have to climb 5 flights of stairs to find out if they even have a bed for you or not. The view of Quito from the bar is however, lovely. L...