Day 751 (19.04.09) Our adventure to Cotopaxi was to start at a leisurely pace with a tasty market brekkie and a bit of CD burning. We had teamed up with a couple from Holland who were going the same way and opted for a bus and taxi to our home for the next couple of days, the Secret Garden in the foothills of Volcano Cotapaxi. With a little pallaver in terms of meeting the taxi driver (where our instructions were to meet by the horse statue on the roundabout ... found the horse statue but no roundabout in sight) we made [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 750 (18.04.09) It was distinctly possible that we'd leave the Otavalo market looking more like 80's weathermen than backpackers due to the mountains of brightly coloured llama covered jumpers on offer there. Thankfully our knitwear tastes are a lot more tame than those of the TV meteorologists of our childhoods but we nevertheless managed to overdose on woollen items in the short time that we spent there. We left Quito early and jumped on a bus to Otavalo, north of the city and normally around 2 hours drive away. It took longer than that today as we got held up [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 748 (16.04.09) A taxi, bus, ferry, another bus, two planes, another bus and a taxi later we arrived back at the Secret Garden Hostel in Quito in the early afternoon to find much celebration and frivolities just down the road. As we were checking in we found out it was a free bull fight going on (something to do with the upcoming election) so dumped our bags and went down to see if we could catch the last of the action. The rainy weather in Quito had limited the number of attendees but couldn't dampen the spirits of those who [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 746 (14.04.09) So we'd stayed around in the Galapagos to try and do some diving here but that hadn't worked out to plan giving us a couple of days at our leisure to enjoy the sights of Santa Cruz Island. Most of the day cruises we could take would only take us to see things that we'd already experienced on our cruise so we searched out some other options. After a quiet morning we teamed up with Ryan from our cruise and made our way to Tortuga bay. Around 45 minutes walk from town through cactus forest, Bahia Tortuga is [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 742 (10.04.09) We'd had a great group for the first few days of our Galapagos cruise and would be sad to see them go today as the 5 day section of the tour was completed and they were off to the airport. But not before we'd made an early morning visit to the Charles Darwin Research Centre. Despite his only having spent 5 weeks on the islands Charles Darwin's name is linked in everyone's mind to the Galapagos and the centre that is named after him is mainly concerned with giant land tortoise research. We visited the section where the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 739 (07.04.09) After an early morning transfer to the airport, some well needed coffees and two flights, we exited our plane and took our first steps onto the Galapagos islands under clear blue skies and in scorching heat that was to last for our whole time here. We were here! We had always wanted to come here but didn't know whether we would have enough money by now or be able to get a good last minute deal ... this really was 2 years of hope coming to fruition. As we'd booked late ( by late read yesterday!) and missed [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 737 (05.04.09) It was our first full day in Ecuador and what else to do than to visit the 'thing' that the country was named after? Just a short bus ride from the city of Quito you can visit the site of the Equator and this is where we were headed today. Vic had left us really early this morning to continue her mammoth journey to Cusco and, after a month on the road with her, we will certainly miss her. After having an early lunch we jumped on the local bus with John and made our way to the [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 735 (03.04.09) Having recharged our batteries it was time to make a move and face the bone thumping journey back to Popayan - not a prospect that brought joy to our morning. We could have carried on south from here but had been advised that both the condition of the road and amount of Guerrilla activity in the area made it better to retrace our steps to Popayan before heading south to Ecuador. Picking up the bus at a military police check point, it seemed that they had upped their activity from our previous journey down with everyone already travelling [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 733 (01.04.09) San Augustin is famed for it's archaeological sites where carved stone statues sit outside large grand tombs topped with huge slabs of stone. It takes a bottom-bruising 7 hours on a slow and bumpy bus to get here from Popayan and having woken up this morning feeling just about recovered from the previous day's journey we were ready to go out and explore. There are several sites around the area that can be visited by horse or jeep tours but you can also get to the Parque Arqueologico on the local bus which takes in a few sites. [View Full Entry]

---

---

Day 732 (31.03.09) We spent the morning visiting the market in the town of Sylvia, a little over an hour away from Popayan on the local bus. Every Tuesday this small town plays host to a big market where local indigenous folk come down from their remote villages to stock up on all their requirements for the next week. Purely there for the locals it makes a great place to go and see local life in full flow. The people from the area attend the market in their usual traditional dress and we had a great time wandering around and watching [View Full Entry]

---

---