We left Cuenca with Guy, Lars and Louise and all headed to Vilcabamba which is a small town in the Andes, situated in what is called the valley of longevity as people are alleged to live to very old ages. I say we all headed to Vilcabamba, Lars didn't actually make it as having spent 5 hours on a bus to reach Loja he had to turn aroun d and go back to Cuenca to pick up his and Louise's passports, meaning he spent 16 of 24 hours on buses. I could empathise a little as getting from the Galapagos to Cuenca had actually involved a taxi-bus-boat-bus-plane-bus-bus-taxi-bus-taxi effort.

After travelling most of Friday we got up on Saturday morning and did a 5 hour hike to a local waterfall, this was a pretty steady hike compared to our others but 3 days of idleness in Cuenca meant we found our breath was a little shorter than it should have been. We've spent the rest of our time here sampling the local cuisine and beverages while of course playing cards and perudo.

Tomorrow we head off into Peru again we'll be travelling with the others who are also headed that way, it's been nice to travel in a group for a little while as it's the first time we've really done so. It was two weeks ago today that we met for our Rumba trip although that seems like an awfully long time ago.

Of course we also watched the Copa del Mundo Finale, a pretty disappointing tournament I'm sure you'll agree but the best (if not the most exciting) team won. One interesting aspect of watching it in South America has been that here in Ecuador the locals, and other South Americans, all really root for other South American teams, not quite the same as in Europe where we probably want our neighbours to win least of all.