The last few days since leaving the chilled out salsa beats of Cuzco behind can be summed up pretty easily:

Sunday: lie in in Cuzco then 22 hours on a crap bus sat next to a big smelly local guy who snored. Result = arrive in Lima with next to no sleep!

Monday: walk round the bohemian area of Barranco. Then spend the evening at the artesan fair where a friendly Colombian family clearly thought I was sone kind of pimp! Cake!!

Tuesday: to make use of the stopover in a proper bed in Lima, lie in then after bumping into Ana and Virginia for the third time, get on bus for 29 hours to Guayaquil in Ecuador made interesting by the slightly crazy but nice local girl sat in front who was in tears after leaving her boyfriend behind. Arrive late but score a dream ticket by being able to all dive in a minibus straight away to Montanita on the coast - 3 more hours driving!

Total of all the above: 54 hours travelling over 3 days to get to the coast in a HUGE deviation from the spreadsheet!! Cuenca had proved pretty inaccessible to get to from Lima and so to make life easy we had decided to go for a direct bus past it to Guayaquil and change the plan a wee bit.

Shooting along in the minibus to Montanita though it felt good to be in a totally new country and to have warm air blowing in your face, even if I never wanna see the inside of a bus again!!

Unfortunately the weather in Montanita was drizzly with no sun, with the trend set by arriving in the rain on Tuesday night. The hostel we went for on Tuesday had at best joinery which allowed anything to fly into the room and at worst bed bugs, so we switched to a better one on Wednesday morning, albeit with the worlds thinnest mattresses and creakiest bunk beds!

With not much to do with the weather as it was, the girls started a drinking session whilst I was disciplined and went for a mini work out on the beach!

On Thursday we went whale watching off the coast of Puerto Lopez. Whilst it was a good couple of hours and we did actually see some whales, I was concentrating more on my sea sickness and avoiding a repeat of 'Tenerifegate'!

It was a shame that the weather wasn't better in Montanita as you could tell it would be a really cool place to hang out at if it was sunny, but at least we had had a couple of days not doing much, even if we were leaving with plenty of bites!

By now we had withdrawal symptoms from busses and so Friday morning we got one back to Guayaquil and then a connection to Banos to catch back up with the plan!