Hola de Antigua, Guatemala! Obviously I'm really excited to be here, but can't help but to feel a little sad as well.... It is very odd to be without the group of people who came to become my little family for the last four months. I was also very sad at having to leave Ecuador - a place I really took to, and hope to return to very soon to see a bit more. As well as being stunningly beautiful, their people have to be the friendliest and warmest in South America.

Still, it's ever onwards, and I have a new, if somewhat smaller group of people to meet, who will be with me for a month. So, what has been going on in the last few days? As ever, plenty! Last time I wrote I was in Otavalo, which was fairly uneventful, except for the market there. But from there we headed for Quito and the Equator. There was a small museum at the actual equator, where we all did the mandatory 'one foot in each hemisphere' pose, but also did the experiments proving that there is less gravity there..... balancing an egg on a pin-head, walking like a drunk person along the actual equator line, etc. After this, we headed straight for the city centre, where I only had one night and one morning before going to the airport for my flight.

Our last night however was brilliant. Our driver extraordinaire, Tony kicked off the evening by enlightening us with some facts about our journey. Some are really interesting, others are a bit geeky, but I thought I'd share them with you anyway....

• Rio de Janeiro, Brazil to Quito, Ecuador (via Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Bolivia and Peru) is a total distance of 20,767 kms - that's about 13,000 miles!
• It took us 105 days to complete the journey, which is 2,520 hours in total.
• Of these hours we spent 840 asleep, although since I was presented with the 'Sleeping Beauty' Award I must have slept for at least 1,000!
• A massive 47 hours were spent peeing by the side of the road!
• There were 296 hours spent on the truck driving - that was done over 47 days, but it would have been only 12 days if we'd have driven continuously.
• We averaged 442 kms per day. The longest driving day was in Patagonia from San Julian to San Sebastian, when we covered 852 kms. The shortest day took only 30 mins and was the 11 kms between our rainforest lodge and Tena in Ecuador.
• Here are the really geeky ones.... Tony our driver changed gear a total of 41,534 times, and one of the front wheels made 10,383,500 revolutions!
• We got through 5 new truck tyres - 2 due to punctures and 3 crappy ones that just broke!
• The journey used 8,306 litres of diesel which cost a hefty $6,000 (although probably nowhere near as hefty as if we'd have been buying the fuel in the UK!!!).
• During the trip there were 8 hospital visits - amazingly none of them involved me!!

After being baffled by all this we went to the pub! There we met up with some of our Ecuadorian guides who were with us in the rainforest and for white water rafting, and also some of the guys from the other trucks who we've bumped into on numerous occasions. There was much drinking, dancing and merriment until the wee hours (well, 5 am to be exact!). It was such a good night to remember as our last in South America.

The following morning I got up at 7.30 am (yes, that's right!) to get in a good breakfast to set me up for a morning of hardcore sightseeing before my afternoon flight. I definitely need to return and spend more time in Quito - it's a gorgeous city!

So, here I am now in Antigua, where I have had a couple of days to just chill out and recover. Yesterday was spent doing very little, but today I got up super early to climb the Pacaya Volcano - yes, that's the one in the photograph! Thankfully it wasn't quite as live as this today, but it was amazing to see red runs of lava spilling down the side of the mountain. It was so hot up there, the treads on my trainers started melting! I have been fascinated by volcanoes for ages now, and it was great to see one in action so to speak.

I was also reminded yesterday that I am in one of the most seismically active zones in the world..... While lying in bed contemplating getting up, the room started shaking! It was only a small tremor, and wouldn't have registered as an earthquake, but it was pretty cool to experience - you could physically feel it for nearly a minute, and the things hanging on the walls were moving around!

So, I'm going to finish babbling now and try and upload some photos from the last few weeks - fingers crossed my computer behaves itself!
***  Sadly this computer is blocking the uploads, so photos will have to wait for another day...

Until the next time, take care and stay in touch.

Lots of love
Nikki xxxx