After our trip to Banos we decided to head for the Ecuadorian coastal town of Puerto Lopez where off the coastline it is currently mating season for the humpacked whale. So with a spring in our step we set off on our first overnight coach journey in Ecuador. Now, although Ecuador is in most respects more upscale than Peru, this doesnt apply to the buses and arriving at the terminal we boarded our bus “Carlos Aray” to find the seats to be hard as iron and stuck in a rather uncomfortable recline positon. This was going to be a long 8 hours. The first couple of hours passed without incident as we wound our way up the Panamericana toward Quito. The trouble started as we turned of toward the coast and decended through the cloud forest ... read more

Out of Peru and into Ecuador. We had intended to miss Ecuador entirely, thinking it was small enough to make a separate trip on a different trip further into our dotage (no comments please). But somehow we had seen enough of Peru and Ecuador was in the way between us and Columbia, and therefore needed to be explored some. So we make a break for the border, leaving Claire’s mum in Lima for her own tour and flying way north to Tumbes to cross over. Upon leaving the airport we meet a friendly guy called Walter who promptly ripped us off for a significant sum of dollars. Due to intense embarrassment and probably blame on my part I am not prepared to divulge the amount or the details of this scam, suffice to say we weren’t ... read more

Well Claires Mom (Pat) arrived as planned in Lima airport and this is an account of what we did next which will particularly interest the archaeologically minded amongst you…(you know who you are!) After a day acclimatising, recovering and eating churros (lovely caramel, chocolate and crème filled doughnut sticks) in Lima we thought it high time that Pat got to discover what this travelling lark is like first hand. As we boarded our bus to Trujillo we were excited by our 8-hour journey up the PanAmerican highway ahead. How wrong could we be? Hundreds of kilometres of sand dunes and chicken farms with nothing but desolate landscapes in between punctuated by fishy smelling towns along the route! 8 hours on a bus and 30 mins in a taxi later we arrived in Huanchaco, a bay on ... read more

This weekend was intended to be one of the highlight trips of our time in Bolivia - a four day jeep tour in the Salar de Uyuni (the immense salt plains on the Altiplano - check it out: www.salardeuyuni.com). However, all the political trouble going on in Bolivia has meant that all the main roads to the cities are blocked by protestors, and so there were no buses going. For a brief background to what its all about, read this BBC news article Now, although some may say we are cheap, we aren’t that bad, and we did look into flights instead to get us to the starting point of Tupiza about 800 miles from Cochabamba. But after sitting in a travel agent for most of the day there was no luck as being the only ... read more

Odds and Sods Spanish Lessons As you heard from Simon our rather elegant elderly neighbours invited us around for a BBQ last weekend (called Asado here). What he forgot to tell you was that in our efforts to make converstation with them our misuse of Spanish nearly caused an international incident and contintues to be the source of much hilarity... Over dinner we asked our neighbours if they had heard the kiddies party that was going on in our street the night before. There were startled looks all round and we couldnt understand what was wrong. Luckily our neighbours (who dont speak English) had invited their friends around who do speak English - let me explain.. The Lonely Planet our Guidebook gives you the low down on colloquial Spanish for each country and in the Bolivia ... read more