Ecuador

Hello to you all, firstly apologies for being so slack on the blog front, we have been incredibly busy as you will see....!

The last blog saw us arriving in northern Ecuador, greeted by quite possibly the worst weather we had seen since leaving the UK and to be honest, it didn´t lay up for quite some time!

After arriving, we headed south to Quito which was literally monsoonal, after checking out the city as much as possible without looking like drowned rats, and camping out in our hotel room for a day we decided that there must have been more to this country than those 4 walls and rain, so we set out to find it....

The Quilitoa loop (named after a spectacular crater lake at the top) is slightly off the tourist track, but well worth the effort. After climbing for around 4 hours on the floor of a bumpy local bus into the highlands we arrived at our first over night stop Latacunga....a small town with one hotel and 2 restaurants and not a great deal else! We stopped overnight with the promise of a fab local market on the square which was rumoured to start around 4am!! We weren´t disappointed. The sun shone and the colours were incredible, by 8am we decided to head off further around the loop. This time, by pickup as we were told there was no bus service due to landslides (more the come later!). We arrived at Quilitoa around lunchtime and found a BASIC hostel to spend the night at before heading off on what was meant to be a 4 hour hike round the lake. In reality it was probably around 7! The views I think you will agree were incredible despite the rain and clouds.

After our strenuous hike, we decided to head back to the tourist track and Banos, a beautiful town at the foot of an active volcano. We were reliably informed that it had been quiet since its last eruptions 2 weeks previously, so we thought we would give it a go! After relaxing in the towns hot springs, we decided the best way to see the surrounding countryside was by mountain bike. 5 hours down hill through the valley and we arrived at Rio Negro, a small town where we supped on cool beers before hailing a bus, slinging the bikes on top and heading back up the valley.

Next stops were en-route to Peru....Riobamba and the Devils Nose railway, and the beautiful Colonial City of Cuenca. From Cuenca we decided to take the less travelled border crossing to Peru at La Balsa, which was a days bus ride to Loja and then another down to the remote border in the middle of the Jungle. In reality again, it took longer than anticipated.....a gigantic landslide meant that our bus could not get past, we decided to take our bags and hitch hike to Loja, which actually was the best decision we could have made, after 2 hours on the back of a pick up we were back on route to Peru and drier days!

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