The RG's description of a 12 hour bus ride to reach San Agustin, punctuated by military and guerrilla roadblocks at which one might be relieved of money or other valuables, was as out of date as much of the information circulating about travel in Colombia. As I waited at Popayan bus station for my 6AM departure, I chanced upon the deaths/injuries board showing a tally for each of the transport companies and was pleased to see zeroes in all columns for Cootranshuila. 6.75 hours later, most of which was spent on a fairly horrendous pot-holed gravel road - though the green and misty scenery, plus some snowy mountains, had helped the time pass - I was in San Agustin. Due to the bumpy ride, and my unfortunate habit of dozing off, I had a bruise on ... read more

Cuenca airport was so small that I thought the taxi driver was dropping me off at a warehouse, and I was only convinced he wasn't having me on when I saw the first of the 8 check-in desks. The flight to Quito was cloud the entire way, with not even one Ande, let alone a whole range of them, visible. The airport pick-up for my hostal in Quito never materialised, and this, plus the non-existent wifi (contrary to the description on their website), dwarven room (I had to stoop in order to negotiate it without injury), and brazen attempt by the owner to scam me out of my deposit, led me to check out the following morning. My second abode was average but even there the owner was intent on pushing tours for which he would ... read more

The Galapagos islands and cribbage are a natural connection in my mind, as the first pictures I recall seeing of them were on a pack of cards that my sister C had brought back from her first tour of the archipelago a few years ago. Boobies, baby sea lions, and even Lonesome George had stared at me from the deck as we played the highly competitive, obscenity-strewn games that constitute an evening's entertainment when the whole family is at home. I'd then looked at her own photos and finally searched on Flickr, and knew that I would have to pay a visit there as part of my South American wanderings. The Galapagos are most famous for providing the spur for Darwin to formulate his theory (fact?) of natural selection, albeit 20 years after his 5 week ... read more

Domestic bus travel in Ecuador had novelty value from the very beginning, with the toilets in Loja's bus terminal being free of charge. Any Peruvian visitors would have broken out in a cold sweat at the lack of security checks as we boarded the bus. The initial stretch of road was so poor that I could have hopped faster, and the nearly 6 hours to cover just over 200km warranted a Laos comparison. Mercifully there was neither music nor videos. Cuenca looked very pretty from the initial drive-through in the bus and after a couple of days I was convinced that it was better than Cusco for colonial architecture, the relative lack of tourists also a plus. There was little in the way of Inca heritage, even though Cuenca was the site of an Inca city ... read more

It would have been possible to get from Cajamarca into southern Ecuador in 24 hours of bus journeys, but at my age such things have even less appeal than they did, say, 2 years ago, so I broke up the trip in Piura. The standout feature of the city was that it was actually hot (upwards of 25C) and sunny, a combination I hadn't encountered for 6 months. It reminded me just how much I love the cold, and also hinted at how miserable I'm going to be when I finally run out of Andes to hide in. I'm firmly expecting to simply melt into a pool of John when I reach the Amazon. Piura did provide the best value for money hostal I've stayed in in Peru, but setting new personal records for such things ... read more