We had heard mixed reviews about Otavalo Market but decided to give it a go as we had a free day to spend around Quito. The bus station was incredibly busy, and we had to catch 3 buses to get there which wasn't ideal. We were very happy for Kat's Spanish as the people at the bus station weren't being very helpfulI! It was all similar stuff to what we had seen in Bolivia and Peru - alpaca jumpers, hats, jewellery etc. Kat, Eddy and Browny bought wooly hats and glo...

Today was a long day travelling, we left Galápagos at 9.30, got a taxi, boat, bus, plane, and another taxi and are now tucking into a McDonalds in Quito which we've been dreaming of all day. We didn't have accommodation booked but turned up to a hostel recommended in the lonely planet which turned out to be a bargain, $7.50 a night including breakfast. We went straight away to book our weekends activities, a two day tour starting Sunday to the Quilatoa Crater a...

We had another rollercoaster boat ride at 6am back to Puerto Ayora. To our horror when we boarded mrs sicky from last time was sitting opposite us again. She was ok this time though, unfortunately for the people at the back of the boat 3 American girls all had to run and throw up into the sea. One poor girl was ghostly white from the start and was truly hating life the whole way. The co-captain was running up and down handing out tissues, plastic bags and water, ...

We met Andreas at 8am after grabbing some chocolate bread and biscuits for breakfast. He took the four of us around in his pick up truck, firstly stopping at a lagoon where lots of flamingos were feeding on shrimps. It was a completely different climate to where Nathan and I saw flamingos before (on the salt flats in Bolivia). The second stop was another tortoise breeding centre, this was more exciting that the one we had been to in Santa Cruz as it was feeding t...

After our 5.30am wake up we went on our last walk, this time we saw more blue footed boobies nesting and a pair doing a courting display. There were loads of frigate birds which we had seen before but this time they had their red pouch Inflated (the blue feet and red pouch were fun to experiment with using the colour effects on my camera- photos to follow). As on all the islands there were plenty of sealions including some very cute pups and lots of lava lizards ...