Baños was a great place to either chill out or seek adventure activities if you so wished....I opted for a relaxing schedule with several walks but mostly recovering from a head cold and all the exercise of the previous weeks. Soon however my feet started to itch from the travellers bug again and it was time to head for the land of the Incas, Peru. One must understand when it comes to travel in Ecuador that things don´t happen quickly and what I thought would b...

So, after my summit of Cotapaxi it was time to do touristy stuff and so off I went to see the Equator with a spanish couple on their honeymoon and Andy a kiwi chap. There are two equator sites as one is in the wrong spot following a gps survey by the US government some 15 years ago but this only meant that we had to get photos of having a foot in each hemisphere at both sites. Possible a ploy to get more tourista pesetos. Anyway, in the process we saw shrunken...

So out of the Amazonas and into Quito, the Capital of Equador. I´m really happy to be in a Spanish speaking county as I speak loads more Spanish than Portugese, which still isn´t much. It´s much colder here (at 2800m) but a welcome change to the Amazon. I spend the first day wandering around the new town, which is apparently super dangerous at night time with numerous stories spreading around the hostel about muggings.....maybe chinese whispers, not sure. ...

Into the jungle we go. Well, not to start with extactly but the first day is spent in Manaus (very central Brazil in the middle of the Amazon rainforest). Ï´m travelling with Dan the geeza from Woodford, London again and he proves still to be a great travel companion. I need to speak next to nada Portugesse as he loves using his bilingual skills. So, first day we manage to book a five day tour into the jungle some 280km away from Manaus and then proceed to the ...

Feeling refreshed from the bus ride we took a taxi to the nice part of Itacare where all the pousadas face the beach.  A we were told that 10 reias is the taxi fare anywhere in town even if you've going shorter distances.  Tourist BS i reckon....we're finding brazil to be very expensive and so for that reason look forward to leaving.  However, we managed to discover a gem of a pousada that was 50m from the beach with a huge balcony overlooking the scene below....