Arriving into Quito we could hardly believe that this was our last stop in South America after so many countries and so many good times. The new city is an area full of bars and restaurants and it honestly feels like Temple Bar in some parts. We took it pretty easy in Quito, sampling the local cuisine and even finding a great Irish bar, Finn McCools run by Ursula from Armagh. We did take a wander around the Old City but to be honest that was as far as our cultu...

Banos (yes a town named after the Spanish word for toilet!) is a beautiful place just 7km from an active and continually erupting volcano. In fact after we arrived we discovered that the Irish government states that you shouldn't travel there because of the danger. Oops!! In 1999 the volcano Tungurhua started erupting and the entire town was evacuated for 3 months before all of the locals returned and slowly so did the tourists. Now 9 years later its still erupti...

Yet another nightmare bus journey on awful Ecuadorian roads with huge landslides, smelly passengers and hours spent bumping along without any air conditioning, and then we arrived to Riobamba.Riobamba is definitely not the most happening of places we´ve been. In fact on a Friday night we couldn´t find a bar with anybody in it! But we did pass literally thousands of teenagers all spilling out of teenage discos with blazing music at 5:30 in the day! Weird! Ho...

Funnily Cuenca in Ecuador is in fact the home of the Panama hat! Long story but basically the hats were exported via the Panama canal and the locals in Panama started wearing them and so they got their name. Anyhow Gareth and I had a great time watching them being made and trying them all on!One of our main reasons for coming to Cuenca was to visit the most important Inca site in Ecuador, Ingapirca, but only when we arrived into Cuenca did we find out that its a...

After almost 48 hours on buses in the last 4 days we finally arrived into Ecuador and a sleepy little town called Vilcabamba. Vilcabamba is located in a beautiful valley surrounded by mountains covered in cloud forest and the scenery really is breathtaking. The valley is overlooked by a mountain called Mandango, the Sleeping Inca, and the locals believe that the spirit of the sleeping Inca protects the area from earthquakes and other natural disasters. We made th...