The drive from Banós to Cuenca took all day. Normally I don’t take many photos on driving day, being too snobby to shoot from a moving truck. Today that changed and I took lots of photos, probably helped by the beautiful weather and stunning scenery. Rather than write about driving from A to B here […]
Day 68 : Near Banós
We had nothing planned today and pretty much did a lot of relaxing. The sun came out for long periods and I was able to take down our tent and dry the groundsheet. We got some washing done and I figured out how to edit movies using the laptop. The horse riding continued in Keryn’s […]
Day 67 : Near Banós
Another day in paradise and today we went white water rafting. There were two rafts going down the Rio Pastaza and in our raft we had me, Keryn, Rhys, Vanessa and Danny. Danny and I were in the front. The other raft had Kerrie, Albert, Melissa and Sean. Much like our first rafting experience in […]
Day 66 : Near Banós
As this is pretty much the only place on our trip through South America where it’s possible to do canyoning I had signed up for this as todays activity. Shortly after 9am I was getting kitted up along with Sean, Daniel, Janet and Angie. We all got wetsuits, spray jackets, life jackets, abseiling harnesses and […]
Day 65 : The Amazon Jungle to Banós
Before leaving the jungle we had time for one more activity. Fausto led us on a short walk from the lodge and we met the boat on the other side of the island. Along the way we saw some spider monkeys in the trees, they didn’t seem very happy to see us with angry expressions […]
Day 64 : The Amazon Jungle
The morning boat trip took us to a local village. We waited on the shore while Fausto cleared our arrival and then walked through the plantations and gardens to reach some of the village buildings. We walked past a house and school to a field where locals were working clearing weeds from the crops of […]
Day 63 : The Amazon Jungle
The mornings activity saw us head upriver past the point where we had left the truck and onward to a curve in the river where we disembarked to start a nature walk in the jungle. Our guide was Fausto, a knowledgeable and friendly local man. For a few hours we slowly walked and every now […]
Day 62 : Otavalo to the Jungle
Our journey today was a reasonably long driving day out to the Amazon basin and the eastern edge of the Amazon jungle. It was a beautiful day and we drove past some amazing scenery as we drove over the Ecuadorian Andes and a high pass at 4200ft. Taking in the view One of the alpine […]
Day 61 : Quito to Otavalo
The group met at the hotel reception just before 8am and we were taken a short way down the road to where our truck, Tranquilo, was parked. Vanessa showed up around the vehicle and our bags were loaded into the lockers and then we were inside and heading for the equator park. Vanessa was talking […]
Day 60 : Quito
We had another hotel to move to today but we decided to have a sleep in before we moved the few blocks to the next place, the Alston Inn Hotel. When we got to the hotel the room wasn’t yet available so we left our bags behind reception and then sat down to decide what […]
Part VI : Day 59 : Quito
We took today as a rest day. Our only real task was to move to a new hotel and meet the Kumuka tour crowd in the evening. We did go out for a walk and exchanged some traveller’s cheques and also collected our washing from the hotel. In the afternoon we got a taxi (only […]
Day 58 : Galãpagos to Quito (Isla Seymour Norte)
Around 5am the anchor was raised and we sailed for an hour or so to get to Isla Seymour Norte. This activity of course woke us up so I was soon out of bed and wandering around the boat. It was raining outside, bands of cloud coming across and precipitating lightly on the boats moored […]