Off to Peru...

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If you have a fear of heights then South America is not the best place to come to. I´ve spent a lot of time on some of the highest and windest roads I´ve ever seen in the last few days and my fear of heights hasn´t gotten any better!

We left Puyo to travel to Riobamba for a flying visit of one night then straight off to Alousi where we rode the Devil´s Nose train which gave us spectacular views of the countryside. It´s supposed to be feat of engineering or something but I wasn´t really listening, I was too busy hanging onto my seat trying to look out the window without freaking out. My very helpful room mate Kate took the window seat and would explain whether we were high enough to either roll down the hill once we came off the tracks or the carriage would simply explode from the sheer drop. True friendship there, haha. We also drove along the Pan-American Highway which I was very grateful for after a hair-raising trip where a volcano had taken out a very large section of the road a couple of years ago and a narrow and steep dirt road has been carved out of the molten rock. Although these journey´s over the past few days have been scary I´ve got some awesome pictures!

From Alousi we travelled to Cuenca where I am now. We finally have a free day to check out the town (very picturesque as it´s a world heritage site) and then tomorrow we´re off to the border of Peru. The transit has been pretty full on so far but by lunchtime tomorrow I should be able to say that I´ve conquored Ecuador by public buses!

The tour group has been fantastic but with 17 of us there´s quite a few to keep track of. We found out today our group will be splitting up once we hit Lima as we´re on different tours from then on which is sad as we get on so well but we´ll have a new group from then which will be interesting. Fingers crossed for no crazies! I´ve done well so far!

The language has been interesting, I´ve worked out that if you don´t know the word in Spanish, if you say with a Spanish accent they sometimes understand you. And if they don´t understand you they seem to get quite excited that you´re trying. So I now sound a bit crazy while talking to people in broken Spanish and then my English is in a weird accent :-)

So far I´m completely exhausted from transit and altitude sickness but I´ve seen some amazing stuff. I´m covered in bites I can´t identify, probably some bed bugs some the lovely mouldy hostels we´ve been staying in...I´m hoping they improve once we arrive in Peru!

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