Salento is a very pretty small town. We decided to stay at a hostel recommended to us by a fellow volunteer in Salasaca. I was called La Serrana or something and it it was a ten minute walk out of town into the hills. It was quite good but although it advertised hot water, there wasn't any. And it was chilly. We mentioned it to the owner, a New Yorker, who told us, "I know, I've changed the cards so that they say 'warm water'." I don't know why he bothered because this was also a lie. The hostel did have sofas, though, and a film collection, and a very cute kitten who kept sleeping with the guests. That first day, Adam went out with some other hostel guests to find some mushrooms while Anna and ... read more

WARNING! This is a long blog. One of the things I had really wanted to do on the trip was to try teaching English. I had planned to do this in Bolivia, but it hadn't worked out. After that, I looked through volunteersouthamerica.net and found three potential places to teach ENglish. I emailed them and only one of them replied, so that's where I went. The organisation is called Sumak Kawsay Yachay (SKY) and is a privately-funded foundation committed to assisting and supporting educational programs in Ecuador (I stole this wording from the website http://www.skyecuador.org/). I know only of its work in Salasaca. Volunteers work at Katitawa primary school up in the hills (truly gorgeous) and in the library in Salasaca, where kids can go to learn to read and play with volunteers, and there is ... read more

So I haven´t written any blogs for ages and I´m starting with the most recent as it´s what I can remember best and you´ll just have to read them out of order. I haven´t uploaded photos for ages either. I´ll get round to it at some point but I can´t guarantee it will be soon as I´m having a bit too much fun in Quito. When I left Huaraz, I was planning on heading up to Máncora to catch some rays and try out surfing. I couldn´t go directly there so I decided to stop off in the quieter beach town of Huanchaco. I got there quite early and it was foggy and grim, just like in Lima. I had a couple of hours´snooze in Casa Suiza, - which I really couldn´t recommend because the staff ... read more

When I got to Arequipa, a white city within view of three volcanoes in the middle of the desert, I was really feeling the absence of Conny and Jennie. It was odd to suddenly be on my own again, after 2 weeks of being part of a three. And for the four months prior to that I was always hanging out with someone I'd met previously. Now for the first time, I was on my own, not knowing anybody, and I had to start from the beginning. I was a bit sad, but I told myself to just suck it up and go and join the boys playing cards and drinking beer on the roof and that worked. They were two Aussies and a Portuguese Brit and great company. I played a LOT of shithead with ... read more

Hurrah! I met up with my lovely sister, Conny, and her friend, Jennie, in Cusco. Cusco is a very touristy city. I got a bit of culture shock when I arrived there from La Paz - everyone speaks English and there are shops. There's even a giant North Face in an old building on a square. Could have been Bath. It's proper fancy and clean compared to La Paz. We spent the day paying up for our Inca Trail and catching up. The following day, we went white water rafting, which was followed by a sauna and lunch. We ate dinner in a cute place called Cafe Yamana where you can wear a bunch of silly hats. Wednesday was the first day of the Inca Trail. We got picked up very early in order to get ... read more