Nora the house owner took us to get a bus to Tyrona Park in the morning, we woke up to "vamos chicos!!" at the crack of dawn as the kids go to school at 5am and finish at 1pm because of the heat! They also had a guard dog which barked whenever there was movement outside, and a parrot which squawked every time the dog barked! Once we were on the bus to Tyrona Park we could laugh about the situation, and when we arrived at our hostel they said they wouldn't charge ...

With only half a day to Spend in Cali we had an early breakfast and looked at to do things nearby. Rated highly on Trip Advisor was 'Parque del Gato' so we headed there. We had a mixed first impression of the city - on the walk to the park we past small, brightly coloured houses, more developed buildings, run down areas and incredibly busy roads. Some of the smaller streets had brightly coloured graffiti and paintings which added to the character! The park was re...

Crossing the Ecuador-Colombia border was hassle free, we left about 7.30am as the bus to Cali is 10 hours. We did get conned into buying Pesos as we were told we needed them for the taxi to the bus terminal on the Colombian side which we didn't in the end, luckily we only changed less than US$2 worth (3,000 Colombian Pesos). We managed to haggle the price of the bus to Cali slightly as it was leaving within 20 minutes so they wanted to fill the spaces. The first ...

The last day with the girls today was spent visiting Cotopaxi- the highest active volcano in Ecuador. Leaving at about 8am we travelled 1 1/2 hours in the mini bus to get the car park of Cotopaxi at 4500 meters. It was incredibly windy but we were just about prepared with all our layers, hats, gloves and scarves. Nathan had refused to buy any extra warm stuff (as we are soon going to be in 30degrees) but was lucky that someone we met yesterday no longer needed hi...

Our two day tour started today, we left Quito at 7am on a minibus which took us a couple of hours to a market selling mostly fruit, vegetables and meat, we didn't buy anything other than Kat bought one banana for $0.10. It was probably more interesting that Otavalo market as it was for locals rather than tourists. On the drive there we had all kinds of animals running out in front of us - llamas, dogs and cows! A police car pulled up in front of us to move a dead...