After travelling back from the Cuyebeno reserve, we made our way to Peru on a night bus from Quito. The bus was virtually empty when we left at 5.15pm allowing us to sprawl comfortably over two seats. There were numerous stops where we picked up more passengers. Driving along I spotted jugglers performing with their fire sticks in front of cars stopped at traffic lights! On one stop an old Ecuadorian lady came out talking too loudly in Spanish trying to sell tack...

The Cuyabeno Reserve is one of the less touristy jungle trips in South America. In order to get to the reserve we had to take an eight hour overnight bus, followed by another few hour bus ride and a three hour boat ride. On our five day four night tour were three other couples. We'd previously met and arranged to do the trip with an American couple we had made friends with in Quito. During the slow boat ride to the camp, our guide was constantly spotting wildl...

Quito is the capital of Ecuador. We stayed nearer the old town as it was apparently safer than the modern area. We went for breakfast on our first morning in a lovely cafe. The decor was very religious, with paintings on every wall. Simon noticed that in one painting Mary was breastfeeding Jesus. Religious iconography in South America are very different to what we are used to seeing at home. Outside locals were shouting and selling their goods - the noise reminde...

To get to Playa Blanca we had to take a forty minute boat ride. We organised and paid to go with one tour company and ended up waiting an extra forty minutes past our scheduled departure time as we had to wait for the boat to be full of passengers before it would leave the port. Before we left I bought some suncream as I knew the combination of sea and sun is usually sunburn. However, this prompted Simon to comment on how, apart from his face, he no longer burns!...

The cheapest way to get to Cartagena on the Caribbean coast was to fly. Si wanted the isle seat and I was in the middle next to a Colombian lady who was petrified of flying. As we began our descent to land there was a little turbulence and she ended up holding tight onto my hand. Trying to comfort someone without speaking their language was quite funny and Simon, sat on my other side, kept talking about the plane crashing and falling to our death as he knew the w...