Slept in, read my book in the the hammock, swum and just relaxed before a 7 hour bus to Chiclayo. It took so long I managed to finish my book, Lone wolf by Jodi Picult, and watch Malificence, plus have many hours of pure boredom. Along the way we had to stop at police checks and have our bus searched, plus were all videotaped getting on the bus to prove/identify who was on the bus.  It is all because they are trying to stop so many buses from getting robbed wh...

Off to the next place and next country. Watched the Water Deviner and observed thousands of Banana Tree plants along the way in the bus. Before we had to cross the border from Ecuador to Peru. This also meant we left Johanna behind (little bit sad as she was pretty cool) and got a new guide called Patricia. Quite a weird experience crossing the boarder. Ecuador and Peru had a fight about the buildings so now there are two exactly the same buildings 3 km apart. On...

Here we are at the last stop in Ecuador. It took a 9 hour trip to get here. I am already getting a bit over the long trips. Today we played I spy and watched 'If I stay' which resulted in Rebecca sobbing so loud our leader had to ask what was wrong. Began our visit of Cuenca with a walking tour of the city which included the Panama hat factory. Here we seen exactly how they make the hats and learnt Panama hats are actually from Ecuador and are called Paja Toquil...

Travel for 4 hours to Baños, which is translated to toilet town. Such a wonderful little town of 20,000 people. Definitely aimed at tourists but still pretty amazing. It kind of reminds me of Queenstown. I was well and truly ready for some food that doesn't include rice, it seems that every single traditional dish (even steak and chips) includes rice! Tried a massive chocolate pancake that was bigger than my plate, a hamburger that tasted like off meat, and ...

After a fabulous start in Quito, I was quite excited for the next part of the trip. It began with a 5 hour bus, to cover only 180km, to get to the Shiripuno community near Misahuall in the Amazon Basin (30 mins from Tena). Cute little community which has a tourism lodge built out the back where we stayed. An incredibly difficult climate. It's around 100 percent humidity with so many bugs that you have to wear long clothing all the time. But what an amazingly rela...