My next few days were spent in Mancora, a coastal holiday resort and party town with one of Peru´s finest beaches. Here a multitude of backpackers rub shoulders with the Peruvian jet-set. I had come here to fufill a major desire of mine, to learn a very cool activity which I had lusted after for years. KITESURFING! For those of you not familiar with kitesurfing, you are firmly attached by a harness to an enormous kite the size of a parachute, and then pulled along the water on a board at ludicrous speeds. Unfortunately my travel insurance did not cover me [View Full Entry]

---

---

It was time to leave Ecuador and enter Peru, across what the Lonely Planet guide calls “South America´s worst border crossing”. One of the problems is the border guards charging you an exit or entry fee which doesn´t exist. The simple solution is to ask for a receipt. Suddenly you will get through without any charge! But the trickiest and most ridiculous thing is the oficial exit requirements from Ecuador.In an ideal world, a border crossing goes like this: 1. Leave Ecuador, get an exit stamp 2. Enter Peru, get an entry stamp Simple,yes? But for Ecuador you also need to [View Full Entry]

---

---

My next stop was Montañita - holiday resort, party town and the surfing Mecca of Ecuador. It was a cool place, and was filled with a mix of surfer dudes, travellers, dreadlocked crusties and hippy-chicks. It was also a town which INFURIATED me to the point which I wanted to batter someone over the head with a blunt instrument. Basically, no-one in this town seemed to have any concept of change (as in money). Imagine going into a corner shop in England and buying something for a pound with a ten pound note, or even a five pound note. You would [View Full Entry]

---

---

After my high-altitude mountain adventures, I decided to hit sea level for some "normality" and sunshine. I had three delightful bus journeys to look forward to before I reached the coast. When changing buses in one town, I saw a man selling crates of multicoloured chicks! He had used food colouring on the poor little things. There were brown chicks, blue chicks, green chicks and orange chicks. He was picking them up by the handful and throwing them into paper bags to sell. (Pick´n´mix) The poor chicks were piled up "two storeys" high, and the ones on top were quite happily [View Full Entry]

---

---

This is my tale of climbing a mountain. Considering London has very few mountains, this was a personal first. The mountain in question was Cotopaxi, an extinct volcano and Ecuador´s second highest peak. I had originally investigated climbing it through a company in Quito two months ago, but I quickly discarded this idea for the following reasons: 1. I have no climbing experience 2. My fear of heights 3. It looked like bloody hard work But on the journey back from Quilitoa, I saw the mountain in it´s full glory. My view was the first photo on this page. Something stirred [View Full Entry]

---

---

My next stop was Quilitoa, a remote mountainous region and some of the most spectacular scenery I have seen so far. It was a 4-hour journey over unpaved roads, with a bus driver who was a certified NUTTER! Generally if a road has potholes, the bus slows down and gently weaves around them. This guy continued at full pelt and wrenched the steering wheel hard to avoid them. This caused the bus to lean on it´s side precariously, passengers flying around and with the back-end sliding out on occasion. He also went dangerously close to a number of crumbling cliff edges. [View Full Entry]

---

---

So, I was back in Ecuador, and in some ways it was a big relief. I could understand people again, and they could understand ME! The accents had been so difficult in Venezuela. Unfortunately, having left the security of an overland tour, I was subjected once again to B.S.A. (Backpack Separation Anxiety. This is when you are on a public bus and you have to stow your backpack in the compartment underneath. You try to seat yourself by a window and crane your neck at every stop to make sure no-one is taking your backpack off) I stayed with my Ecuadorian [View Full Entry]

---

---

The journey was bad enough to begin with. I had to get back to Ecuador, so the Dragoman tour continued towards Brazil without me, setting off at 8am. I had a nightbus back to Caracas that night at 10pm, which meant waiting around by myself for FOURTEEN HOURS. And the nightbus itself was a ten hour journey. Plus, when I arrived at Caracas airport, I would have a further eight hours to wait for my flight back to Quito. Oh, the joys of travel! I was not looking forward to Caracas airport in particular. I took an "official" cab from the [View Full Entry]

---

---

No journey to Venezuela is complete without visiting Angel Falls, the highest waterfall in the world (much in the same way that no trip to England is complete without trying Fish´n´Chips, the greasiest meal in the world). For some reason I thought it would be easy to get to. Park at the side of the road, walk for half an hour and there it is, showing off with it´s big stream of water. But no, it´s a right pain in the arse to get to. To get there you need to take a bus, a flight, followed by a train ride, [View Full Entry]

---

---

Deep in East Venezuela lies the Orinoco Delta, named after one of The Wombles. This is the country of swamps, mangroves, and endless networks of mucky rivers filled with pirhanas, caimans and anacondas (and other creatures which can be scientifically classified as "scaly things that bite"). We stayed at a place imaginatively entitled the "Orinoco Delta Lodge." By lodge standards this was a palace. The main area hada 30 foot high thatched roof, chunky furniture and tropical plants littered throughout. But they really should have called this "Dr Doolittle´s Lodge" because it was a crazy animal-filled menagerie! An assortment of well-kept [View Full Entry]

---

---