After spending 10 days in the tranquil setting of the Galapagos islands it was a bit of a culture shock to arrive back in the city, this time Guayaquil which has a reputation for being hot and violent (our room had a TV and on it we watched the local news regarding a shooting in the city captured on CCTV shown repeatedly). It is the Ecuador`s largest city and economic powerhouse, tourism is not high on its agenda. We were really only in the town as the choice of ...

We had always hoped that we'd have both the budget and the time to visit the Galapagos Islands, who wouldn't, but as our trip had progressed it looked less and less likely that we would actually be able to visit those magical islands. We had heard some reports from fellow travellers about how much cruises would cost and that had made us certain that we wouldn't be able to go. Whilst in Quito we had visited a couple of agents and one had been able to quote u...

Our jungle adventure started in the Cuyabeno reserve, in Ecuador`s Oriente, on the Rio Aguarico. It was quite an adventure actually getting to the reserve as we had to catch an 8 hour overnight bus to the ugly oil town of Lago Agrio where we met up with our group of 10 other travellers. Once we had all met up we then had a mini bus journey to the river where we transferred to a small motor boat for a 2 ½ hour journey down the river. Our guide for the trip would ...

Our original plan had us staying in Ecuador for maybe a week but in Quito we booked trips around the country which would take around 3 weeks to complete. The first of our trips were ascents of Ilinizas Norte (5128m) and then Volcan Cotopaxi (5,897m). For our expeditions we moved outside of Quito to a lodge called Papagayo which can best be described as an establishment modelled on Fawlty Towers, its only redeeming features (to make up for the slapstick servic...

After the shenanigans on the bus we were relieved to reach Quito where we were staying in the lively Mariscal area of the new town. We were immediately struck by by how vibrant the streets were, there were so many bars restaurants and night clubs and we were right in the middle of it all. The sign on our bedroom door telling us that Quito was a dangerous city reminded us to watch our step. We would be in and out of Quito on a number of occasions using it a...