Well hello everyone who is reading! We´re back on the green stuff, in Cuenca (Ecuador) after our trip to the Galapagos. The first thing to say is that we got back from the Galapagos two days earlier than planned. This is probably something of a surprise to some of you (especially Uncle Geoff!), but for a couple of reasons we decided to jump ship before the end of the trip. The main reason is that, as Matt and Lou found, the seas in the Galapagos area can be quite rough, and some of the travelling between islands was overnight or during [View Full Entry]

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Hello All, Quick update as it´s getting late and we have to be up early tomorrow for our flight to the Galapagos. We will be there for a week so we won´t have interenet access until 16-17 September. So, what have we been up to the last couple of days? Yesterday was mostly spent in a bus travelling from Riobamba to Guayaquil, where we are now. The scenery for the first couple of hours was fantastic - high peaks plummeting to little valleys with streams running through, local people farming their land, dogs and pigs and cows sharing the fields and [View Full Entry]

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An exciting day trip today, as can be seen on the photos. The two of us, along with a Swiss chap named Patrick, were driven by our guide William up to the lower of two refuges on Chimborazo volcano (4800m above sea level), a few miles northwest of Riobamba. Although it is still called an active volcano it is estimated that the last eruption was about 10,000 years ago, so we risked it. The idea was then to walk up to the second refuge at 5000m, but us lilly-livered Englanders only managed to get about half way to the refuge before [View Full Entry]

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Buenos Tardes! (That's Good Afternoon in local lingo) Quito review... a very interesting city which we both thoroughly enjoyed. The vast majority of the streets are in a poor state of repair, kind of like you see in a film set in 1950s Cuba, but at the same time it is a very busy, lively place. Stray dogs wander around looking for leftovers, street vendors try to sell woolly hats, and eight-year boys earn a living shining shoes (one such lad looked extremely disappointed when he thought he spotted two gringos in need of shiny shoes only to find we were [View Full Entry]

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This´ll be entry number one then. You still with us? Good, then read on... First things first: To the mums - journey to Quito was fine, no major dramas or issues. We both had splitting headaches by the time we landed, which we put down to either lack of sleep, 13 hours flying, or having to endure the last 45 minutes of Pirates of the Caribbean 3 even though it was terrible we needed to know how it ended. (Poorly, if you´re interested.) Bridget has found an alternative cure-all if sausage rolls are unavailable - Werther's Originals. It's true, just one [View Full Entry]

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