I arrived into Quito (the capital of Ecuador) on Sunday afternoon. I reached the hostel I was staying at and chilled watching the TV in the common room for a while. Then along with four others I went in search of a curry, however Ecuador being a good Catholic country closes up most of it's restaurants on a Sunday evening. We did eventually find a curry but were unable to obtain a beer or even a glass of wine. Unable to believe that you really couldn't buy a drink...

After the jungle I toyed with the idea of going white water rafting but the time constraints and long bus journeys put me off! Instead I decided to visit Otavalo where I could see South America's largest market and hoped to do a little hiking! I arrived on Saturday morning after an overnight bus from Lago Agrio to Quito and another bus from Quito to Otavalo. In true traveller style I hadn't booked accommodation and because it was a Saturday morning struggled to f...

One of the things I was really keen to do in Ecuador was visit the jungle. Again this is something that I thought might be more difficult to organise on my own. I decided to visit Banos to organise the trip as it's on the way towards the Oriente (eastern Ecuador, the area containing the Amazon not where China and Japan is) and has many travel agencies. I decided to try the more reputable travel agencies (according to lonely planet) and ended up booking a trip in ...

I managed to get up relatively early on the Saturday morning and with only a mild headache I was on my way to Riobamba. Riobamba only has a little to offer tourists, it's a really nice city, there's some remnants of an old train route that brings you over a part called the devil's nose which is meant to be stunning - however the train no longer runs there! Other than that there is the option of walking or cycling on Chimborazo, a nearby volcano, and the highest m...

On the 3rd of Jan I was starting to feel better so I started my trip to Cuenca in Ecuador (country number 2 in South America, country number 7 of the trip). The bus trip to the border was hassle free, then just over the border we entered a town and I was told this is where I was getting my connecting bus to Cuenca, Nothing strange there except I still didn't have my passport stamped for entering Ecuador. I was reassured that this would be done later (well I think...