Mindo is a small town about 2.5 hours north west of Quito. The bus wound its way along mountain roads before descending into a valley, dropping us at the bus station on the main street. After checking into our cabaña we wandered the streets of town, stopping in at a coffee shop where we were joined by the cutest little puppy named Valentina. She sat with us for a while but she was more interested in our brownies than our company. Walking the streets a bit more...

Our bus took quite a while longer than expected, though that is not uncommon, so in a way its not really unexpected. It was dark and rainy when we pulled into the bus station and there didn't seem to be any taxi's, but fortunately one pulled up after a few minutes. At first we had trouble finding our hostel, so our taxi driver, some locals and us searched in the rain for a while. We ended up calling them and found them behind a barely marked door. It was a new G...

There was little information available online for places to stay in Tulcán, so we relied on a Lonely Planet recommendation called Hotel Azteca. It was a very aged hotel and we are pretty sure we were the only guests. Despite paying for 2 people we were only allowed one towel. At least it was super cheap. We wandered around the town for the afternoon, checked out the main square, and found an internet café since our hotel had no WiFi. They charged a whopping 1 ...

We arrived at the bus stop at 6am, as we had been told the day prior there was a bus at 6.30. Unfortunately there was not, the first one was at 10! There was a share taxi though, and we jumped on that having been told it would take 7 hours to Ipiales, the town closest to the border with Ecuador. The drive was beautiful, past some amazing green scenery, with patchwork fields, high mountains and gullies. We only stopped briefly a couple of times for bathrooms and...

We took a van from San Agustin to Popayán. We had read horror stories of a bumpy 8 hour journey, but the road is improving, some of it even tarred, so the journey took us about 4 hours. That was great as we only had one night in Popayán giving us the afternoon to explore. Our hostel was right on the main square, which was really nicely maintained, busy with locals, and surrounded by whitewash colonial style buildings. We set out to find some lunch, and stopped...