Today we woke up early to get the bus to Cuenca. After lots of waiting around in the pouring rain and 8 hours on the bus we arrived. We checked into our hostel which was nice and clean and had a friendly owner with two young sons. Afterwards we had a quick walk around the surrounding area looking for spanish schools. The first one we went to from the lonely planet guide didn't exist anymore, but we found another and were told to come back the next day. We put ou...

Today we climbed up the highest active volcano in the world called Cotopaxi. It is a total of 5897m above sea level however we did not climb all the way to the top as this involved setting off from base camp at midnight and we had only had 2 days of being back in Quito so had not adjusted to the altitude yet. The last time it erupted was around 120 years ago. On our climb up there was really harsh winds and snow. I was being blown all over the place! It was one s...

Today was a jam packed day! We began by picking up our transport to take us rafting, we went on a Chiva bus out through Baños to get to the river we would be rafting on. The views were incredible and there were waterfalls everywhere! We arrived and changed into the wetsuits - Browny's was massive on her, you probably could have got two of her in it. We then had a demonstration of what we had to do. We were taught commands for forwards paddling, backwards paddlin...

Today we began our two day tour, we got picked up from Q bar in Quito where we were given a free coffee included in our trip. However they wouldn't give us even a tiny bit of milk and so Kat and I didn't drink ours. We then headed to the market at Pujilí, here there were lots of different stalls selling fruit and vegetables as well as meat stalls where they had pig, cow and chicken heads! Browny took some pictures of the egg stalls as research for happy eggs an...

Today we had a bit of a lie in and then made our way up to Otavalo market, which is north of Quito. It is meant to be at its best on a Saturday and as we had a spare day before our planned trip to Cottopaxi we took the opportunity to go. This took a few changes on buses and a lot of waiting in queues til we finally got on the 2hour 15min bus to the market. At the market we bought wooly hats and gloves in preparation for hiking up to the glaciers at Cottopaxi. Ed...