We have done a lot of travelling in the past couple of days - first from Lago Agrio to Riobamba, then Riobamba to Cuenca - a total of about 12 hours on buses.

The plan was to get to Riobamba in order to get the train to Alausi and then on to Cuenca. The train goes down from Riobamba, through the ´valley of the volcanoes´to the ´Devil´s Nose´where it zigzags up and down the side of a cliff. That´s the theory anyway. We got to Riobamba to discover that the train no longer ran from there - it now only does the zig-zag bit for 20 bucks each. We later saw bits of train track randomly throughout the town - guess that´s why it´s not running.

So we got the bus to Cuenca this morning instead. The bus journeys here alternate between excrutiating to hilarious - depending on your mood. Generally, we get to the bus station, pay our full fare and get on the bus. It then spends half hour touring round the town where all the locals get on for a hand full of loose change. The journey then gets under way - stopping at least every 10 minutes to let on passengers, beggars or people selling food.

There always has to be a minimum noise level - be it phones, music or a film. Inevitably, someone will get on with some livestock - a chicken in a bag, parrot in a box of puppy in a nappy - so this is added to the noise and smell. This continues for 5 hours, by which time we are bursting for the toilet and some peace and quiet.

Despite all of this, the last couple of journeys we have done in the day so the scenery has been quite spectacular. From Lago Agrio we drove through hundreds of km of dense jungle, which slowly turned into mountains. And from RIobamba we got a beautiful view of Volcan Cotopaxi - the highest peak in Ecuador, shown in the picuture - followed by the rolling hills of the Andes and lots of little villages full of people in traditional dress.

We are going to spend a couple of well-earned rest days (cos all of the sitting on buses is sooo exhausting) in Cuenca before moving on.