We decided to leave Baños soon after our walk and head towards Riobamba to take one of the surviving train routes left in Ecuador. We arrived in Riobamba to find that the train was not running due to line problems so it was back on a bus to Machala (the self proclaimed Banana Capital of the World). There really was nothing there to write about apart from a glut of banana producers and some houses that banana wealth has built. After a comfortable but surprisingl...

Baños is a small town named after its thermal springs. It sits in a valley at the base of a volcano which has been continuously mildly erupting for the last 8 years of so. Although the town and surrounding villages are on high alert it is thought that there is plenty of evacuation time should it decide to blow. We arrived in the town and settled into the first reasonably priced and clean hostel we found, though there were plenty to choose from, this being a hot ...

At last… I am back on two wheels. Today we went mountain biking down the side of Cotopaxi which is classed as an active volcano. It was an early start with a 2 hour jeep ride to the refuge at 4600m. There was only myself and Katie doing the ride on this day so our guide was having to follow us down with the jeep rather than leading us down on his bike so it was up to us to follow the correct path and not ride off the side. Luckily for everyone involved it was...

Arriving in Quito we were struck by it´s location tucked into a long valley and the surrounding mountians. It´s a very beautiful setting. Unfortunately it was poring with rain and the mountains where hidden by cloud but we caught some wonderful glimpses in the three days we were in the city. It has two centers, the old town, which is full of colonial buildings, plazas, churches, and monasteries. Then the new town which is where most of the money is, with new bu...

Just a quick note to let you know that we have just taken the scariest bus ride I have ever been on. We have uploaded a video of the trip but it does not do it full justice. We were travelling from San Agustin to Pasto near to the Columbia-Ecuador border. The bus looked like it should have decommisioned many years ago and the roads were just about wide enough for a car. The road surface was broken rocks and gravel and we losty count of the amount of waterfalls t...