Despite little sleep we woke up super excited about commencing the Inca Trail. We caught a taxi to Peru Treks office where the bus picked us up. A few people were already on board then we proceeded to collect the remainder of the group. We were quite annoyed when the bus collected other passengers only a few blocks from our hostel given they had made us get a taxi! Nevertheless we were on our way! We drove initially to Ollantaytambo, an old Incan town nestled in...

As our taxi driver approached our new hostel, he warned that the area can be dangerous at night. Hostel Piuray was a couple of blocks past the edge of the Centro Historico, but we had booked it partly for this reason, and because the online ratings were good and mentioned pancakes for breakfast. When we checked in the owner Aydee was really lovely, allowing us to choose our room. She mentioned one had a new mattress so we took that. Aside from a few passing tra...

Arriving in Cisco was particularly exciting as we would be meeting up with Lindsay's parents! We had booked our Inca Trail Trek months ago to coincide with their tour around South America, giving us 2 nights to spend together. They even put us up in the Novotel where they were staying, which was luxury we hadn't experienced through our travels. When we arrived at the hotel we asked the guy at reception to call their room, and to our surprise they were already ba...

When we arrived at Colleen's place at around 8pm, she had just pulled a delicious home made pizza out of the oven with another soon to follow. We had only minutes before in the taxi commented that a nice pizza would be great for dinner so we were absolutely thrilled after a long day of travel. We had met Colleen earlier that month in Mindo and she offered to have us stay with her, which was fantastic. Her place is lovely, in a nice safe part of town with a nice...

Our first morning on Isabela island we went for a snorkel in the bay. The manager of our hostel, Joseph, took us and another 2 girls with the promise of seeing sea turtles. While he did charge us it was cheaper than going on an organised tour. He rented us some gear and we walked down to the jetty and jumped in. We were surrounded by sea lions that were both very playful and irritating consistent swimming in our path. Not long after we entered the water we was a...