We arrived at Baños without a hitch, which is a good thing given that the Foreign Office suggest that you don't go there. What do they know, eh? It turns out that Baños is a nice, chilled little tourist town nestling between a big grumbly volcano and some pretty mountains. All good really, as we weren't in the mood for ANY walking after our Quilotoa adventure. Not for a couple of days anyway. We plodded around town and checked into the very welcoming Hostal Llantoventos, on a hill overlooking Baños. I have no idea how we failed to notice the steepness [View Full Entry]

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We'd climbed a volcano. So what next? The Quilotoa loop... From Latacunga there's a fairly well trodden path around a series of villages known as the Quilotoa loop. Quilotoa itself is a stunning emerald green lake in the caldera of an extinct volcano at around 3800m above sea level. It takes between 2-3 days to do the loop, and buoyed by relative sucess at Cotopaxi we decided to give it a look. The first leg of the journey was a straightforward taxi journey to Saquisili (you see why we were having trouble with the pronounciation?!) along with Rein & Char, two [View Full Entry]

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Yesterday we finally managed to break free of the gravitational pull of Quito and the Secret Garden hostel and make our way south to Latacunga. It's nice to be out of the big city, the noise and pollution were starting to get on our nerves. Latacunga is a completely different kettle of fish. True, they also have a severe vehicle emmisions problem here, but since there are less cars and trucks it's less of a headache. Also it's much safer here which is always nice. We travelled to these parts for two reasons: to have a climb of the tallest active [View Full Entry]

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Diving in the Galapagos Islands - if you're a diver you already know why that's such an exciting proposition. We were lucky to be able to do so, as all of the dive shops in Puerto Ayora (on Santa Cruz island) were pretty much booked solid. Finally though we managed to arrange two days of diving, albeit with two different companies. The first day of diving was at North Seymour island. There was some current (usual for the Galapagos) and the water was a relatively chilly 22 deg C so both Emma and I found it a challenge. We were lucky [View Full Entry]

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So, after two weeks in Quito, 20 hours of Spanish lessons and a nasty case of that condition that you expect to get at least once when you travel, we were off to the Galapagos Islands. At 5:45am our alarm clock went off rousing us into an unwilling state of consciousness - it's a very uncivilised time of the morning after all. We had arranged to share a taxi with another girl from the hostel who was going to the airport at the same time. Sounded like a good idea at the time. Problem was, when it came to getting in [View Full Entry]

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After booking our trip to the Galapagos Islands (more on that in my next entry) we decided to spend some of the intervening days somewhere other than Quito. There's nothing wrong with Quito in my opinion, although the pollution, hustle and the potential for petty crime can wear you down after a while. We had after all been there for almost two weeks. With all of this in mind we decided to spend a few days in the market town of Otavalo, in the north of Ecuador. Most people go to Otavalo for the market. Emma and I went there to [View Full Entry]

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The Mitad del Mundo translates as the Middle of the Earth. Which it is. Well sort of.... Apparently some time ago the French built the gigantic edifice shown in the first photo of this entry where they calculated the equator to be, some hundreds of years ago. Unfortunately those days they didn't have GPS, and subsequently got it wrong by about 200 metres. What this all means is that there's a big complex that says it's at the middle of the Earth but in fact isn't - instead the real equator is a bit down the road, along with a far [View Full Entry]

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It all started when we finally landed at Quito one fairly chilly Thursday evening. I say finally as the flight from the UK to Quito, via Madrid, was delayed due to heavy fog at Madrid. This lead to us missing the connecting flight to Ecuador and therefore to us having to deal with Iberia´s complete lack of organisation, although ultimately to us staying in a rather nice hotel somewhere outside Madrid. Anyway, we finally got here. South America is a funny place, all said. All the guide books in the world can´t prepare you for the airport, let alone the streets, [View Full Entry]

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