Blogs from Ecuador, South America - page 8

I went to Ecuador - Quito, rain forest just north of Quito, and the Galapagos Islands - back in 2004 with my high school. Memorable moments: 1. Off the coast of the Galapagos islands - which are beautiful, especially the ones with "fresh" cooled lava - we went scuba diving... with sharks. These were the vegetarian-types, but still a good 8-12 feet long and quite scary to see from 100m under water, circling above you - essentially blocking your only path out. 2. On a guided boat ride through a river in the rain forest - amazing wildlife, narrown streams that eventually open up to a small lake completely enclosed by 50-100m tall trees, covered in vines and howler monkeys. As we pass an especially narrow part of the stream, our tour guide is happy to ... read more

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Hello from Quito airport! We are on our way home! The day after we last blogged, we made our way to Mitad Del Mundo, which means "Middle of the World". Its a large complex built just south of the equator. its commonly considered to be the 'middle of the earth' because its the highest point along the equator. Zero degrees longitude and zero degrees latitude is actually in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean, hence why this place receives its title. We explored a number of interesting museums and monuments here, before heading to 'Museo Inti Nan', which is technically right on the equator. We did a number of fun experiments to do with gravity/magnetism. Perri actually managed to balance an egg on a nail sticking out of a piece of wood!!! Apparently right on the ... read more

A new year, a new country. We spent the best part of a day travelling into southern Ecuador from Piura. The ride was particularly scenic, with the landscape crumpled up like the front end of a Renault Laguna after a ram raid, there were plenty of valleys to navigate. It's all very green, some greens look a little surreal, like, they'd been added by a special effects team at a Hollywood studio. The whole place reminded me of Wales or Lake District, except on steroids and scaled up to gargantuan proportions. And there was't anyone called Dai with an abundance of sheep following him. And with sunshine and 25C heat. The border crossing was no problem which I'd not expected, and we got chatting to an Argentine priest who pointed us in the right direction at ... read more

Road miles to date 22,190 With a few days to spare on Colombia's northern coast we packed up our gear and headed East to Santa Marta. Three hours of riding around the city looking for a room to stay revealed that we should have headed the advice to give the place a miss. Overheated and dishevelled we jacked in the search entirely and rode ten minutes up the coast to the small fishing village of Taganga. With no shortage of backpacking visitors, Taganga was thriving with small palapa restaurants and bars overlooking a working beach that was chockablock with fishing and diving vessels. The search for a room continued and just as we were about to cave into the enthusiastic sale of a mothball scented, cat infested room by two policeman and one hotel owner our ... read more

Hello from Ecuador! Sorry for the delay in posting this blog, was trying to post this last night, but the Internet was down. Picking up where we left off last time... We set off on the Inca trail on Christmas Day, with a 5:30am wake up call. The first day was relatively straight forward, with only an hour of steep incline (the rest was fairly gentle). Matt: Perri was sick (we think altitude sickness) from the start and at times questioned whether she could continue, but she soldiered on like a trooper. As part our tour, we were fortunate to have had Porters carrying 6kg of our luggage - we were in constant amazement at the speed and strength of these guys! Some even ran up hills wearing sandals with 25kg on their back! We had ... read more

Hi All, Happy New Year!! Hope everyone had a lovely Christmas. Very sorry for the delay in blogging...again! We have been having a wonderful time over here. We have just arrived in Quito. It is getting late here, but wanted to quickly blog to say hello and say that we will definitely blog in the next couple of days as we have internet for the next four days. Hope everyone's year has started well. Be in touch soon, P & M xx... read more

Today we went to the Mercado (fresh market) to pick up fresh fruit. I do not like Mangos in the states, but here in Ecuador they have smaller Mangos that are delicious. We walked around the city centrol and took in the beautiful sites. At 1:00 pm we had an appointment with Alfredo and Noshy from Cuenca New Resident Services to take us on a tour of the different neighborhoods and to see a few properties. Noshy and her husband were recommended by our friends Mike and Patty, they had helped them when they arrived in Cuenca. They have many services such as: personal Assistant, Transition Services, Accompaniment, Spanish Lessons, Ecuador Tours. They help all visitors, new arrivals, and residents with ALL their transitional needs. Noshy was sick, so Alfredo took us on our 2 hour ... read more