Another early start. A 5am bus to make the most of one the one day stop in Guayaquil, Ecuador's biggest city, before we fly to the Galapagos islands. It's a big ol smelly city, and we experienced the usual combination of super friendly and pretty sullen encounters with people who live here, including my encounter with the man (i.e not woman) who did my bikini wax. Not something I was entirely comfortable with but we discussed football and acne and I got through ...

so, the photo attached is not one of ours. The reason to go to Montanita was to have some quality beach time and do very little but hang out in the sun. Unfortunately though it pretty much rained the whole time, when it wasn't raining it was overcast and grey. I'm sure all your hearts are bleeding for us. Montanita is a nice little surfer town with lots of western food and drinks, so we spent some choosing breakfast, lunch and dinner each day and played cards and...

More hairy bus journeys encountered both on our way to and from Quevdeo unfortunately. Leaving Quilotoha we thought we would go to the coast and enjoy some sangria time which we felt we deserved after the previously mentioned volcano climbing. Err, did I mention we walked up a bag with 45 kg on our backs... Anyway, the bus gods must have been against us as our bus down the mountain was delayed every ten minutes or so by road building. I guess they have decided...

We decided that to head directly from Quito to the coast would mean missing out too much of central Ecuador so we decided to head to the town of Latacunga from where we could reach the laguna Quilahtoa which sits in an extinct volcanic crater. This turned out to be another interesting journey with another hike which we made as difficult as we could for ourselves. Arrving in Latacunga we found a bus which was heading to Zumbahua where we could then head to the vo...

We left Otavalo on Sunday morning for the short trip to Quito, the capital of Ecuador, accompanied by Tobi the Swiss guy we met in Otavalo. The weather was pretty grey and miserable when we arrived so we spent the day wandering around the city and climbed up into the Cathedral tower - another example of the difference in health and safety, you´d need to keep an eye on any children up there as it would be quite easy to walk off the edge. Quito´s old town has lot...