I travelled to Banos up in the Andean Mountains with Rich & Gill, the British couple I met in Guatemala and then caught up with again in the Galapagos. They are Couch Surfing experts after many trips around Europe and I decided that it was time for me to try Couch Surfing for myself with them in Banos. For the uninitiated, Couch Surfing is a website that matches people looking for somewhere to stay for a night, with those who have a spare room or couch to offer. I'd always been a little hesitant about this, I think I'm just a bit too British and struggle to get my head around sharing houses with complete strangers. However, with three of us, two of whom were Couch Surfing old hands it seemed like a good idea to give it a go. When we arrived in Banos, we called Juan the host and went to meet him at his work and the four of us went to his house. It was a reasonably sized 3 bedroom detached house up the hill a little way out of town which he shared with 2 friends. When we arrived there were 3 guys sitting in the lounge playing the guitar and we headed upstairs to settle in. Rich & Gill's lodgings for the night was a tent on the first floor terrace, mine a bean bag bed on the floor of Juan's own bedroom. I asked Juan which of the 2 guys downstairs were his housemates, oh no he answered, they're not my housemates, they're couch surfers too! So Eric the American was on the large sofa, and the 2 Argentinean guys were in their own tent in the front garden, quite a houseful! The bathroom was, well as you might imagine with 6 boys in the house, more like a student bathroom, and given my phobia of hairs, something of a test for me. Fortunately one of the guy's Mother turned up and then cleaned the place, I'm not sure if this was due to the fact that a couple of girls had arrived and they were shamed into action, I don't care what the reason, it was significantly improved. Rich & Gill assured me that this was not normal in their couch surfing experience, but we didn't really feel like we could walk out as Juan had been nothing but welcoming, but I thought I'd left my student days behind me long ago. Besides the Argentineans downstairs were treating us to a bit of a session, they are busking their way around South America, and actually were pretty good. Eventually they went 'off to work' for the evening shift in the eateries of Banos, and Eric, Rich, Gill and I went out for dinner and agreed to meet the others later for a few drinks.

Friday night Banos was fairly lively, and whilst I'd expected it to be rather touristy, was mainly locals. We met up with the others and a couple of Juan's friends were also out. At the end of the evening, Juan invited 3 people back to his for drinks so the house was really rather full by this time. My 'bed' was commandeered by a couple of Juan's friends and I was relegated to the small sofa in the living room. Eric was practising his guitar until dawn and as I didn't really fit on the small sofa, I was left very short of my much needed 8 hours beauty sleep. Rich & Gill had an equally poor night's sleep on the terrace with company in the hammock besides them, and when we got up the following day, the priority was to find a nice quiet hostel to check into as soon as possible. After a couple more hours sleep, we treated ourselves to a massage, it had been a difficult night after all, and felt significantly refreshed after a fab bit of pampering to work on 3 months of backpackers shoulders and calves.

The next day we hired bikes with our German roommate, Julien and cycled down to Rio Verde, a village a few miles down the mountain along the stunning valley road. There was a little bit of pedalling involved, but generally got to enjoy lots of downhill freewheeling, taking in the views of the valley and the waterfalls along it. One of the villages we went through was just about to start a race which involved about 12 blokes, running 1.5 km up the river valley with large inflatable tubes round their waists and then had to float down the river back to the start, climb up the river bank and paddle across the boating pond with their tubes. All a little random, but entertaining never the less. We set back on our way and ten minutes later the grey clouds gave way to torrential rain. We took shelter against a brick building, but as the rain got heavier, the shelter offered by the overhanging roof got less and less. It was at the point that we were all squashed up against the wall that a local came and opened the door of the building, it happened to be a bar that he'd opened for us to shelter in. He even sold us beers and put the stereo on for us. The four of us sitting at the window watching the storm from inside, with Guns N Roses belting out, it was another random, but very memorable moment of the trip. The rain stopped and we were on our way again, finally reaching our destination and climbed down to see one of the many waterfalls at closer quarters. Rather than cycle back uphill to Banos, we got a lift in a truck, it was essentially a passenger truck with benches in the back, thumping latino music and a kind of rack on the roof for the bikes, but a great way to finish off the day. A fun day out, it was almost worth missing the Man United V Arsenal game for!

Julien decided to join us to Cuenca, Ecuador's third largest city which was to be our last stop in Ecuador en route to Peru. The most attractive city I visited in Ecuador, but we'd pretty much covered the best bits in a couple of hours.

Rich, Gill and I then took the overnight bus to Peru that was due to take 8 hours, all being well. The couple of caipirinhas that we had beforehand helped us drop straight off to sleep and it didn't seem too long until we reached the town near the border where we had to change onto a different bus. When we got to the border we all trooped off to the office to get our exit stamps from Ecuador. The driver then told us we shouldn't queue there, we were going to a different office. Slightly confused, but trusting he knew what he was doing, we got back on the bus and went to a different building about 2 miles away. There were no immigration officials there, so we had to stand in a queue and with until they opened. We arrived at about 1.20am and they 'reopened' at about 4.30. We actually got away at 5.45 only to drive the couple of miles to the Peruvian border (they are not next to one another as you might imagine, there's a 4km no mans land in between the 2!). Fortunately the Peruvian border was significantly more straightforward and we were on our way just after 6. Shattered from having had only a couple of hours sleep I was soon fast asleep, and when I awoke an hour later, hadn't realised that we hadn't really moved anywhere. We were being ejected from our bus as it had broken down, we were only a couple of miles from the border. Another bus from the same company was parked behind us, but as they'd let their passengers wander off for breakfast, we couldn't get on as they didn't know who was sitting where. Another HOUR later we were on our way again, with half of the passengers from our bus standing, but we were at least moving. We finally pulled up in Mancora almost 14 hours after we'd left Cuenca, and couldn't get into the hostel for a few hours sleep fast enough.

I'd hoped to do some surfing in Mancora, in fact that was really the only reason I'd gone, there isn't really much else to do there. However after 20 minutes in the water in the strongest waves I've ever experienced and being tumbled unlike ever before, I was a little fearful for my life, and took my surfboard back to dry land and watched the pros instead. In fact the tide was so high that afternoon that most of the shops on the seafront were partially flooded, it was definitely a day for beginners to avoid the waves.

And so it's time to get on the move again, this time a planned 18 hour bus journey to Lima. This blog was actually brought to you from the bus, Peru has a different level of buses altogether, it's more like taking a flight, with hot meals served at your seat, reclining seats, films and even WiFi. However given that we've not actually moved for the last hour due to an accident further up the road, I'm not confident that we'll be there within 18 hours....

Fingers Crossed!