We landed in the Galapagos and any doubt about the temperature were quickly disbounded because it was a toasty 30 degrees as we got off the plain. Mathilde and I went through some more rigerous baggage security and paid our 100US dollar fee to enter the national park. We caught a boat across the small distance to Santa Marta island and then began the 1 hour bus journey to Puerto Ayora on the Southern tip of the island. Once in town we wasted no time and immedia...

Our time in Guayacil was brief, which is probably just as well as it doesn´t have a great reputation. However, it was a necessary stop because all flights to the Galapagos go via the largest city in Ecuador. We arrived around 9.30pm and had some food at one of the restaurants inside one of the biggest and most pleasant bus terminals I have seen in South America. Fed and water we left and after refusing to take a taxi for 3 dollars accepted a lift off a man with ...

We arrived in Cuenca at 7am and went immediately to the hostel where Luke had arranged to Mathilde, his friend from the Machu Pichu trek that we met in Vilcabamba previously. They were nowhere to be seen at this hour, but after the horrendous journey we endured we were in no mood for socialising either so went straight to bed. We woke up several hours later although i was still not feeling well from the night before. However, rather than waste the day we decided ...

After a lie in during the morning we went for brunch with Susanna and Olivia in town. Not long after we waved them off and it was time to do something with our day. We wasted no time in booking a canyoning tour for an hour later. None of us have ever been canyoning before so were not quite sure what we had let ourselves in for. In brief it involves wearing a harness, getting very wet and navigating your way downstream - it could be swimming jumping off rocks or ...

Banos is a city famous for its adventure sports, its awesome scenery and proximity to mountains, volcanos, jungle and just about everything else. We had arranged to meet Olivia, who we had met in Mancora in Banos and she had booked Jonathan, Luke and I on to a 2 day tour of the area with herself and her friend Susanna who we had not met previously. We were told to be ready for collection at 9am and after a brief delay were ready to hit the road around 11am wit...