Vern: Another early start. We took a five-hour bus south to Loja and then switched to another which after an hour delivered us to the lovely little hamlet of Vilcabamba. The little town sits in a luxuriant green bowl with high mountains all around it and blue mountains on the horizon - 360 degrees of rocky brilliance! It is full of expats, mostly German and French it seems, and is supposedly famous because people say that its residents don't kick the bucket. The...

Vern: We woke up just before 5am in our sparce but comfy room on the Quilotoa crater crest. My watch-arm was buried below three alpaca wool blankets and the alarm only sounds for 30 seconds so we'd slept through this, but luckily Andrea's body clock had roused her (isn't it amazing how we can do that) and she threw off the covers and initiated our morning routines. We were packed, ready and waiting by the time that the bus driver and his son - who were coinciden...

Vern: A fellow passenger was on her phone talking in Spanish, "I'm in Pasto, we're leaving the bus station now." "In a bus?" we presume that the person on the other end of the line asked. "No! In a KIA!" she exclaimed in an indignant tone. Andrea and I burst out laughing, and shoulder-to-shoulder, thigh-to-thigh with the unimpressed woman and 6 other Colombians we puttered off toward the borded in a snug Korean built minivan designed for a small suburban family. ...

Vern: After our amazing Galapagos cruise, and a 5-hour layover in port town Guayaquil's airport, we flew back to Ecuador's capital, Quito. The tourism department, ever keen on superlatives, advises that Quito is South America's oldest capital. We'd been here for a few hours between the flight into Ecuador and the flight out to the Galapagos and fell victim to bed bugs in a cheap hostel dorm, so this time we chose another hostel and were quite happy with it. We we...

Vern: On our first day with the new group we visited Santa Fé island and were greeted by a beach full of sea lions. The newbies were very enthusiastic and we stayed on the beach for a long time while they took lots of photos. I entertained myself following a hermit crab who was scuttling around and retreated into his shell every time my shadow spooked him, then crept out again and hurried away when he felt safe again. Finches hovered around us as if we were Disn...