Our first South American camping experience was near Baños. We stayed in a small place called Rio Verde as the foreign office don't recommend people to actually stay in Baños as the nearby Tungurahua volcano is active. The first day I spent in Baños while Martin went Canyoning. Canyoning is a sport where you navigate down a river with waterfalls by a combination of abseiling, jumping if the pools are deep enough and using a zip-wire. The highest jump he did wa...

We joined up with our Dragoman trip in Quito, there are a good mix of ages and nationalities and we have Darren and Sean as our trip leaders/drivers/mechanics for the next seven and a half weeks as we travel overland by truck. First we headed north to Otavalo, this is a town famous for it's market which sells all sorts of crafts, weaving and embroidery. Many of the people there wear traditional dress. Men have their hair long and plaited down their backs, they w...

Our time in Quito has been over two weekends with our Galapagos trip inbetween. We have been fortunate both times to meet up with Michael Hassett, Rob Peterson and friends in this city. Quito is at high altitide and consequently it takes longer for planes to take off due to the reduced oxygen. A jumbo jet could land here but the runway isn't long enough for fully loaded planes to take off, so just about all flights out of the city land in Guayaquil to be fully l...

We have just got back from our 5 day cruise in the Galapagos Islands which was a great experience - apart from the sea sickness one day! Our boat would usually move from island to island during the night and our first night crossing was a particularly rough one. Apparently this time of year is the cool/dry season and the seas can be a little rougher, unfortunately we didn't have any sea sickness pills with us but another passenger gave us some so we were ok after...