We left Quito in search of a tiny village called Quilotoa where there is a beautiful crater lake. The journey was relatively long but not too traumatic except for a very long taxi ride at the start that had us all a little worried we were going the entire way by taxi (costing $70 compared to $4.50). We made it to the very small village and found some accommodation! It was a "nice" little room with a stove they would only light in the afternoon and as it...

We got back to Quito in the afternoon and had enough time to organise a trip for the following day to Mindo cloud forest. We then met Moriah, Nick, Val and Robert from our Galapagos trip for dinner. We had a nice dinner followed as always by a drink or two! The following morning we got up for our trip to Mindo. It started with a visit to a butterfly house which was nice! We got to see lots of butterflies and some hummingbirds. From here we headed up to one of the...

I apologise in advance for the length of the Galapagos blog - but I did it as we went along and we saw so much I really wanted to share everything!! It was an awesome experience - I think I took as many photos here as I did in the 3 ½ months preceding so there are a lot of pics in the album too. By the way anyone who ever plans on coming should get an underwater cover for their camera - I bought mine for £25 of amazon and it was awesome!! Day 1 So it was time...

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...