Derby to Dubrovnik*

At 7am in the morning, after being on a bus for eight hours, with three more to go, we admit to having had a few doubts about whether the rainforest will be worth the drive. Not only does the journey involve an eleven hour bus ride from Quito, but it's followed by a three hour ride on a motorised canoe. It is a long way from civilisation! We needn't have worried. As soon as we were on the canoe, we began to relax and enjoy the rainforest environment. We saw pink dolphins, toucans, flying monkeys and kingfishers all on that first ride. When we arrived, rather tired, at Nicky Amazon Lodge, our home for the next four nights, we were pleased by how comfortable it all looked. There were a number of thatched (with palm leaves) cottages, with mesh walls, around a courtyard. It was all very peaceful. There were about ten of us staying there, with four Dutch people (we continue to be impressed by their travelling prowess), two Danish, one German and an Israeli. I love finding out littl...

I write this as we lay in our tent at Chimborazo Base Camp staring up at the towering summit through the tent window. The deep blue sky providing a vivid backdrop to the whisps of clouds being whipped across the summit of the 6273m peak. The gentle domed top is surrounded by more aggressive looking cornices, steep cliffs and the long scree/morraine slopes that surround this dormant volcano. Not a bad tent view Nightime tent view The wind rattling the tent is doing nothing for my nerves, "if it's this windy down here, what will it be like on the summit at hopefully 6am tomorrow" I worry. We shiver in the cold tent; after spending a few weeks in the warmer lowland cities it's somewhat novel feeling cold. Our nerves are slightly calmed by the knowledge that we've acclimatized almost as well as possible: sleeping at over 3500m for almost 10 days and also summiting 3 peaks between 4300-5100m during that time.  Sinscholagua summit ...

We arrived back on the mainland, having loved our time on the Galapagos Islands. The next part of our trip was our mountain section. Most of central Ecuador is at altitude, with Quito being at 2,800m, and Chimborazo, the highest mountain, at nearly  6,300m. We wanted to summit a few peaks, and to give ourselves the best chance, we wanted to increase our altitude slowly. We therefore planned to visit Baños, Quilotoa, Cotopaxi National Park and Chimborazo NP. Of course, we were not the only ones to come up with a similar itinerary! Throughout our time in Ecuador we've met lots of great people, and our typical conversation with other travellers invariably starts with "where have you been" and "where are you going next". It's usually the same 10 towns. Travelling by bus, and guided by the Ecuador Rough Guide, everyone is on a similar path through the same towns, having broadly similar experiences. It's very difficult to get off the beaten track, and given ou...

"I could get used to super expensive holidays" mused Rhys after our first full day aboard our Galapagos cruise. Despite some initial queasiness, and a bumpy first night aside, we were already loving life on board. Each day, we were taken to new exciting locations with our wonderful guide, provided with snorkelling equipment and generally didn't have to worry about any logistics. On return to the boat, we were delicately helped off the dinghy by the attentive crew, greeted with refreshments, and we found that in  our room, our fresh towels had been folded into the shape of animals we had seen that day.  Heading back to our boat at sunset We'd booked our cruise pretty last minute, and thought we'd got an okay deal on it. T he boat capacity was for 16 people, but we were amazed to be told at the airport there were just five of us on board. Whilst this had the potential to be a little intense, the ratio of crew to passengers (9:5) was pretty wonde...