This blog entry details our journey from Vilcabamba in Ecuador to Iquitos in Peru. It is not a very common route and is definitely off the Gringo Trail. Backpacking at its best! For other tourists, we have a summary of where to go, duration and costs below the bulk of the entry. The two of us and Darran left Vilcabamba at 7:00 in the morning on a bus headed to a town called Zumba close the the Peruvian border. This leg of the journey took us through beautiful green valleys and ridges. We stopped for a small brunch of rice, beef [View Full Entry]

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From Cotopaxi we travelled to Baños via Latacunga. The seven of us took a double cab pickup truck (bakkie for the South Africans) from Secret Garden to Baños. Three people had to sit at the back with all the backpacks and it was very cold. We were exempt from this duty, as we were bloody sick at this point. We drove through many hills alongside local farms. A very scenic journey. One of the highlights was passing a bus with a dog chained on top. This would have been disturbing, except for the fact that the dog really, really looked happy, [View Full Entry]

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Quito Since we are so far behind in our blog publishing, we have decided to combine two destinations for this entry and the next. As stated in the previous entry, we spent a couple of days in Quito, went to the Galápagos and returned for a further three days. Quito is an old city that originally formed part of the Incan Empire. It is now the capital of Ecuador and while it is on the equator, it is quite cold because of its altitude. It´s a charming place, filled with colonial buildings and such, but one of the more dangerous cities [View Full Entry]

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Before flying out to the Galápagos Islands, we spent a week in Quito, the capital of Ecuador. We will add a separate blog entry for Quito after our Galápagos entry. The Galápagos Islands were most definitely the highlight of our trip so far. While being expensive, we think that they were worth every cent. The Galápagos is a surreal place, with strangely tame animals lazing around everywhere. The animals are the main reason for visiting the Islands; they indirectly made the Islands famous by being so unique and influencing Charles Darwin to develop his theory of evolution. It was specificall [View Full Entry]

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Salento The road between Bogotá and Salento was a nightmare - not as a result of unsafe driving, but rather cockroaches and a million trucks on the road. We finally found out why bus drivers always turn the air con up high, this keeps cockroaches out of the bus! We coped by singing La Cucaracha! Salento is one of the little towns in the Zona Cafeteria, the Colombian coffee zone. There are hundreds of coffee farms in this green, picturesque part of the Occidental Andes. The Andes split up into three ranges in Colombia and this range is the western-most one [View Full Entry]

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Bogotá Arriving in Bogotá, after a twisty journey through many mountain passes, we followed the advice of Shaun, our previous host, and stayed at the Cranky Croc hostel in La Candelaria, the oldest neighborhood in Bogotá, the Colombian capital. Our next week in Bogotá was to be one filled with awesome sights and many ¨rumbas¨(the colombian word for party) as described below: Walking tour: Our Lonely Planet guide contains a walking tour of downtown Bogotá. We decided to follow this on our first day. We headed south to the Plaza de Bolivar, surrounded by some old and [View Full Entry]

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The trip to San Gil took 14 hours on the bus. This included a change of bus in a city called Bucaramanga. The bus trip in itself is an adventure and you need nerves of steel. We checked in at a hostel called Macondo, owned by a very friendly and helpful Australian named Shaun. This was to be our home for the next 10 days. San Gil is located in the Santander province of Colombia (The heart of Colombia, as the inhabitants of Santander like to say) and is situated right on the edge of the Andes. There are many parks [View Full Entry]

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Cartagena After the beaches in Tayrona we took a shuttle to Cartagena on the 21st of September. Cartagena is an old city (founded in 1533) and is very beautiful and charming (at least, the historic town is). It was an important colonial port town in the good old pirate days of the Caribbean. Because of its importance and prosperity, it was constantly attacked by pirates (Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake, to name a few of the English sirs) , marauding bands of savages, etc. As a result of these many dramas, they surrounded the old town with fortress like [View Full Entry]

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After lounging on beaches for some time, we decided we needed some physical exercise and booked for the Ciudad Perdida hike. Ciudad Perdida (Lost City) is an archaeological site of an ancient city in the forest of the Sierra Nevada. This city was apparently built in 800 AD and was only discovered in 1972. The hike takes 6 days in total and is about 40 km of walking (round trip). Our hike started on the 11th of September. Our group consisted of the following: Us, 3 British people, 3 Irish lads, 2 Israelis, 1 Kiwi, 1 Swede, 1 American - a [View Full Entry]

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Santa Marta We reached Santa Marta after a very early departure (4AM) from Maracaibo, Venezuela. The trip was uneventful, except for police blockades, many passport checks and a maniac driver in our Por Puesto (Shared taxi) - basically an old Chevy or Ford with a 5 litre engine. We booked into a very nice hostel, called Hotel Nueve Granada. This is probably one of the nicest places we have stayed up to date. It has a small pool and palms in the courtyard, with friendly, helpful staff and a very fat cat. We booked in early and wandered around Santa Marta [View Full Entry]

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