On the buses

To keep the back-packing karma balanced we moved from the Galapagos to a week of bus travel.  With the exception of a day on a dry forest farm (belonging to our Galapagos guide & his wife) we spent the next 5 days in a zen-like trance to ignore the fact our legs were crammed into Latam size gaps while we shared air and bathrooms with 48 other travellers. 

The dry forest farm was great - we met Fabians wife, Lucia as planned ('take a cab out of Quito to the fried chicken stand near a supermarket on the north bound highway. She'll be in a dark pick-up') and drove up into the mountains.  Despite the environment the farm has been worked to now have sufficient irrigation for 70+ species of fruit & veg. And cows, horses, dogs & llamas.  We grabbed our baskets and went for a tour, collecting whatever we wanted to eat/drink along the way.   In tribute to childhood trips to 'pick your own' fruit farms we ate more than we carried in our baskets and a few hours later started to question the sense of that. Eating kilos of tree-tomatoes, avocados, passion fruit and oranges before a night bus with no toilet was not necessarily the best plan*.

Anyway, great day and very interesting to see how 2 biologists are making arid nothingness into lush farmland, despite the Ecuadorian governments best attempts at strangling them with red tape. 

The rest of the week went like this: 

13 hour night bus from Quito to the Peruvian border 

1 hour bus from the border to the nearest transport hub- turns out to be a man with a mini-bus & 2 plastic chairs for us to wait on. Which we did.  For hours. 

4 hours through desert to the nearest town. 

9 hours through the night from that town to a recommended beach area (Trujillo).

Arrived at 6am & got a local bus to Huanchaco, found a hostel & stayed there 24 hours. 

People told us north Peru has good beaches, this being the best. but we were less than impressed. Great for surfing but otherwise dirty (not the fault of Peruvians necessarily but the wash from the Pacific Ocean is pretty grim on this bit of coast) with nothing else of interest around.  The upside for us was a night in a real bed, food, and a change of clothes. 

Next night we got the 9 hour bus to Lima (charmless, cloudy & grubby), kicked our heels for 7 hours then got on the 21 hour bus to Cusco.  By this time I'd got quite happy with sleeping on buses (it helped me to sleep on the move as I still hadn't got over motion sickness from the boat) but Chris is too tall to get comfy- even on the luxury service we chose for the longest leg. 

21 hours spanning very hot desert to the chilly Andes was beautiful even if the notoriously carefree driving style along mountain ridges was sometimes a bit unnerving. We woke up (eventually- no idea what day by this stage) to snow capped mountains, cloud forest and an altitude difference of c3000m . 

Time to get off vehicles for a week, get acclimatised to thin air and get excited about meeting our friend Jan who'd flown out from the UK to walk the Inca Trail to Machu Pichu with us. 

 * stupid, stupid thing to do. Spanish lessons came into their own with hurried pharmacy visits at bus stations as that is one conversation we didn't want to have to resort to mime on. 

Viva la Evolution! (Or The Galápagos Islands)

We booked this bit of our trip months before we left the UK so have had a long time to get excited about it. It's a 9 day non-backpacking holiday in the middle of a massive holiday, staying on a luxury yacht in one of the most ecologically diverse regions of the world. 

200k people a year are allowed to visit the Galapagos.  Of them 60% visit the inhabited areas which make up 3% of the Islands landmass - from there people can get excursions to the immediate surrounding areas. The other 40% of us take our sea sickness pills and get to visit the extensive unpopulated areas.  Very very privileged.  

The islands are 1000km away from mainland Ecuador and are formed from volcanic eruptions so they were never attached to other land masses. Years of tectonic plates shifting around hasn't bought them close enough to anywhere else for species to merge so, with the exception of introduced species by man (dogs, goats etc.) they remain populated with endemic species.  Some reptiles have reached here on vegetation rafts from Ecuador, but no mammals would survive the 2 week+ voyage.

Survival of the fittest means the plants and animals have adapted to their environment in the optimal way so that only the best of each kind now exists. There are no large carnivores (all the reptiles have taken herbivore niches) so fear/camouflage are redundant and all specifies are quite relaxed to show themselves to human visitors. 

Each night we sailed to a new island and spent the days walking, swimming and snorkelling around key points, getting up close and personal with stunning creatures and landscapes. 

The boat: Queen Beatriz holds 15 guests with a crew of 8. It's a catamaran with a bar, sun deck, restaurant and bedrooms. Just big enough to feel plush but small enough to get us around quickly. 

The people: largely retirees due to the cost of doing this but we had a really good bunch. For the first 3 days 2 Aussie honeymooners our age, for the  remainder they were replaced with 2 feisty Sheila's from Queensland. The rest of the gang were ex-colonials with the exception of Fabian our guide. 

The route: it takes weeks to sail around all the islands so we'd opted for the central, south and East Islands. It meant we'd miss the specialist birds watching, but as that takes 2 days sailing north it was a fair trade.  As it was I had to spend the first night on our balcony keeping my eyes on the moonlit horizon to keep sickness at bay so 2 days of open water (the max we did was 7 hours overnight) would have ruined me.

It's so hard to describe how incredible the trip was. The days were high point after high point. Once we'd got over gawping at giant iguanas on lava fields, we'd be snorkelling with sea lion pups, climbing into lava tubes (darker than dark and perfect for hiding a very preciousss ring) or knee deep in vegetation in a could forest with giant tortoises. Each day we had at least 3 excursions off the boat to see something different - each one just at incredible as the last. Even with my verbosity I was out of superlatives by day 2.   We have hundreds of photos and if anyone back home so much as hints at wanting to see them we will gush with enthusiasm for hours (be warned) but for the sake of brevity - here's an attempt at edited highlights....

Sea lions. The Labradors of the Galapagos are everywhere. The bulls are huge and aggressive but thankfully not that interested in humans. 

The females are either supervising the nurseries or out hunting (if one gets eaten by a shark while out, the pups are left to starve. Very sad but adoption is just not a thing in this species) and will give the odd warning bark but otherwise are happy to watch humans get very close. 

The pups are the most fun! Like all kids they're curious and playful and if you do the 'come and play' sign (a body roll) they don't need asking twice. We both drank lots of sea water and bashed our limbs on the rocks as we tried to keep up with them but the joy of tumbling with several pups at a time, eye to eye as you swim under the water with them, and getting the odd slap as they investigate you close up (I got a slap in the face with a fin after a prolonged staring contest- I swear I heard it laughing as it swam off) is worth it every time.

Every time a large grey object appeared in our peripheral vision we hoped it was a sea lion and not a shark, but when we found sharks they were so serene fear was immediately replaced with awe. We swam with several reef sharks (white tips, wary of sea lion bulls) and were amazed how close they came to us. As we swam through a narrow cave in Kicker Rock (below) know as the washing machine due to a clash of tides and the tumultuous effect thereof, 5 circled around only metres below us.  30 mins later Chris &  I spotted the only hammer head shark of the trip. Approx 3m long and 1m away it was beautiful to see but also a bit frightening (completely frightening. Instead of giving the 'shark' alert to fellow swimmers I shouted 'f*#%ing hammerhead' in a pitch much higher than normal) as they're known for bad tempers even if they don't intend on eating you.  

We got out soon after and noticed that Chris was bleeding from being bashed on the rocks in the washing machine. Could explain the volume of sharks? 

Turtles: huge, graceful creatures in the water they come ashore to bury their eggs leaving tractor like tracks up the beaches.  There is a 2m distance rule for all the animals however sometimes they got closer to us quicker than we could get away - turtles seemed especially calm and if our underwater camera was any good, we should have some lovely shots of them swimming alongside us. 

Iguanas of many colours and sizes. 

These dragons have to warm up in the sun before they've got the energy to move much & even then only to eat or protect eggs. One spat at us rather than move off the trail (again, no appreciation of the 2m or the 'stay on the trail' rule). 

Most curious is the marine iguana - as adept in the water as out. Unless they get nabbed by a sea lion; Our morning snorkel took on a different note as one reptilian bather became a toy for a juvenile sea lion. Until, like all toys, it broke in half and was discarded. Messy. 

Giant Tortoises roam the clouds forests in a very other worldly fashion, tearing along at up to 3km per day if they need to, cold water penguins challenge the sea lion pups for Most Adorable award, flamingos eat shrimp until they turn pink and the water returns to transparency, bright red Sally crabs provide great contrast to the black rocks they sit on, blue footed Boobies do their dance to attract a mate while red footed Boobies woo with a noise like a creaking door. Groups of Sting Rays the size of bed sheets flap along so beautifully you could almost forgot to look at the plethora of fish, coral and crustaceans. Under the water there is a loud crackling noise which is the sound of shellfish chatting! Apparently it drives dolphins and whales mad with frustration as they never give it a rest. 

The other major inhabitant to note is the human. Mostly converted to the importance of conservation the few inhabited places co-exist well. Sea lions are the most prominent neighbour - they love a flat surface so will lie on every sun lounger, bench, restaurant table etc. and the locals aren't allowed to harass them away. 

They climb onto people boats, on the back of trucks and attempt to steal fish in the market by stealth - serving at the counter, and pretending to be part of the catch being 2 of the tricks we saw.  Sometimes a fishwife will turn the hose on them but they bloody love that and queue up for more. 

I got quite emotional on departure (and not just because of bumpy pacific flight ahead) and we vowed we'll return to do it all again. 8 magical days that will be really tough to beat. 

Quito - it's got altitude

The thing about cities is that they get a bit samey. Quito is pretty by night, the old town has plenty of colonial old houses, more churches than you can shake a catholic at, and some really quite dull museums (museum of money anyone?), but we didn't find enough stand out features to make it comparable with the other capitals we've seen.

It does however have altitude. At 2850 metres, you have to move slowly, eat little and often and knock the booze on the head.  As Quito is dry every Sunday (to try and get people to turn up to work on a Monday) that side of things was taken care of for us. We walked the old town, perused the markets and watched some dancing in a plaza before heading back to our hostel for Sunday night curry. 

The next day we got a couple of local buses to Mittel de Munde (middle of the world) to see the equator line.  Being on the exact line makes no difference to anything (the effects are the same roughly 10k either side) but it makes for a novel tourist attraction and plenty of cod-science.  As such we (along with our dorm mate Louie) marvelled at our ability to balance an egg on a nail (the yolk centres on the equator line making this possible), teetered along a painted line with our eyes closed (no idea what this was meant to prove but was funny watching people be very earnest about the powers of the equator), and posed for the mandatory 'we're at the equator' shot.  

There was also a much underplayed museum of Ecuadorian culture where they showed us shrunken human heads, and gave us a banana. Never worked out the relevance of the latter. 

The bus back meant we'd spent a massive $1.20 between us on travel ($40 if you take the package tour offered from the hostels to see exactly get same. Not sure if you get 2 bananas though for extra value). Grabbed our packs, and shared a cab with 2 Finnish travellers to the bus station (much small talk about The Killing was had). 

3.5 hours bus travel South and we arrived in Banos - a small town nestled between active volcanos, famed for its thermal baths and extreme sports.  It's a tourist hotspot for Ecuadorians and gringos alike so with much glee we found many cheap restaurants and went for a pizza & a litre of red wine for $12. 

Given we'd been ok in other altitudey venues the sickness came as a surprise! I put the headache down to booze and set off up the side of a volcano In order to peer at a much bigger volcano. About 30 mins in I got tunnel-vision and had to sit on the floor while it passed. Fearing a migraine we turned back and started descending at which point I lost depth perception. Probably very funny to watch as I took giant steps to get down tiny inclines and fell on my arse several times but it was the longest and most stomach churning stroll I've ever had.

2 days in bed, massive amounts of water, ibuprofen, no booze or coffee and I could get to the loo and back without falling over and everything. 

Fixed, we went walking up hills and cross rivers as we'd originally planned.  The cloud was too low to see the volcanic action but we still endured the night time disco bus up to a viewing point in the hope it might clear. It didn't, but on the upside the sound system failed so we were spared the ear splitting disco beats along the way.

Rested, far more respectful of the powers of altitude and with a huge amount of growing excitement we headed back to Quito to a swanky hotel for the start of our galapagos trip.  

Star Gazing in the desert

After the chilly heights of Bogota we swapped to the Tatacoa desert with temps of 40* plus. The main draw for this place is the star gazing if the sky is clear so somewhat dumbstruck by our accommodation (and ours was comparatively nice) we sat in the middle of nowhere, watching nothing, and waited for nightfall. 

At 7 pm we walked up the dusty track to the Observatory and waited for Señor Astronomer (really) to arrive.  He did soon after but apologised for being unprepared. He then disappeared for 30 seconds only to reappear 'ready' for which we could only read replete with badge-filled Gillet to house his pens, notes and gadgets - the best of which has to be the high powered laser pointer that seems to reach space, it could probably burn someone's eyes out, but my view is you can definitely trust a small studious man in a Gillet not to attack you with a laser.  

He had several telescopes set up for the likes of Jupiter and the cluster that inspired the Subaru symbol... But by far the best was a hugely detailed look at the moon, which he kindly captured on the stream of cameras we all passed to him. 

After 2 hours of neck hurt we returned very happy to our tin hut in the middle of nothing. Gayle slept like a baby while I was woken up by the sensation of something crawling over my legs.  I'll never know if it was the sizeable crickets, spiders or lizards that I saw in there, probably best I reckon. 

Our daytime sights were a few odd landscape shapes left from when the area was a river bed and a 'natural pool'. The water was natural - but the pool was a concrete bath 3x5m, no idea what the point was there - we kind of sat in it watching the guys 'managing' the pool stare at us while we stared at them.  Odd.  Definitely time to find some more cramped bus seats to carry us to San Augustine....

San Augustine.  Home of very old tombs and monuments of people with their animal spirits. Potentially interesting but we were a tad bored.  Perhaps we've reached our limit of old stones now so bypassing our hosts offer of a 'secret trip' to a real live coke farm (a snip at $250!?) we packed for the final small-seat-defeaning-music journey across Columbia. 

The only dodgy bits of Columbia these days are around the borders so with a land crossing ahead of us we set out early to ensure we were off the mountain passes (still known guerrilla territory) by nightfall. 20 hours later we'd twisted and turned through some terrifying dust tracks  on very high drops,  got through border control (we were told to expect 2hours and thorough searches - we got there one hour before they shut and with a cursory sniff from an old dog, were waved through in 15 mins), and had got a final bus to Quito, Ecuador.   When we got to our dorm beds at 2.30 am the thought struck that it was Valentines day.  Romantic to a fault. 

Bogota: Botero, bikes & betting

Our Bogota bus was roomy enough so we were well prepared for a Fri evening 90min taxi queue (because it was raining).  After a slice of pizza (only visible veggie option) and a good night's sleep we were ready to take in the sites of a city close to the population of London but at 2500m+ 

We started the day with an invigorating walk up hundreds of lung-busting stairs - climbing 500m to the top of Mt Monserrat which affords a great view over a not so great looking city - but it is one hefty sprawl of 8.5million people none the less.

Back on lower levels, we saw a town square with Blackpool beach style Llama (instead of donkey) rides, randoms dressed as smurfs and angry people protesting about something (no plaza worth it's salt is without a daily demo about something).

The modern art museum had Gayle delighted over the quality of the free culture on show: Botero, Picasso, Bacon, Freud... due to past training I recognised a Chegal to my credit (but no idea what it signified as usual).  

We moved onto the renowned Gold museum - the whole point of which was to show that the Mayan cultures made stuff - sometimes with gold.  We made short work of that as we had already realised this groundbreaking point.

We topped off the visit with a really good, balanced and informative bike tour which took in:

- a bull ring - no fighting that morning thankfully

- the impressive city park - complete with public Zumba/Aerobics class for 500 people

- huge and impressive graffiti murals

- a coffee factory (best coffee destined for export of course) where a small coffee made Gayle a bit jittery and mental

- a depressing view of the legal red light area

- a trip to the market where we tried exotic fruits - some looked really weird

- a game of Tejo

- a look at the truly inspired street gambling game of - guess which tub a guinea pig will run into....

I think they did a very, very good job.  Although not a pretty city we have a good impression of the place and definitely enjoyed the bits we managed to see. And despite it's reputation of being very dangerous, we saw nothing more frightening than crimes of fashion. 

San Gil - home of extreme sports.......

                               and yet we managed to do 2 of the most serene activities ever! 

Paragliding: despite the inelegant take off cause by high winds & a 25kg weight hung from my lap, the flight was smooth, tranquil and not remotely adrenaline fuelled. Figure of 8s made me feel weightless and did that strange stomach thing (like going over big drops on a roller coaster), and did slightly ruin the ambiance by making me cackle like a loon. All in all a really relaxed way of seeing some stunning scenery and I wished I could've stayed airborne for hours

White water rafting: grade 3 rapids we were told. Grade 1 or 2 at best I think. 2 hours of rafting down a gently meandering river with the odd bit of rapid action was boring.  Our guide tried his best to make it feel edgy by doing back flips off the raft, threatening to capsize us and making us bash oars together (a bit like a really lame group high-5) for the bank side photographer but it was really tame. 

I (Chris) took on some difficult downhill mountain biking - which was more tailored to real mountain bikers than my amateurish efforts but still a really fun challenging day which left me exhausted (due to some unexpected up-hills!) and more than a little dusty.  It was another activity that was somewhat made by the spectacular views that Colombia has on tap.

The town itself was at a quiet point in the season so we had a sedate time outside of our (in)extreme activities, Gayle is finding it hard to locate decent veggy fair, so is begrudgingly alternating between the local trout and a cheese sandwich if she can find someone to make one.

Next stop Villa de Leyva....

....to see what the countryside looks like, and it is quiet.  The local square (the biggest of all town squares) was the central attraction at night for gangs of well-off teenagers and less well-off local dogs.  We had a good people/dog watch over a few choice beers outside an off license, their off licenses have a couple of tables and seem to take up the role of the great British pub or Le grande cafe Francaise - but it's hard to ignore that you are sat next to a sweet stand as you drink.  We quite like it.

During the day we visited a site of great archeological significance, it was a site with stones in phallic shapes aligned to the summer solstice in order to grant great harvests a millennia or so past.  Yes, it's a field full of dicks - and we sniggered appropriately like we were 6.

Next, back on an array of buses once more to rejoin civilisation in the capital: Bogota.

A note on the buses: most of them are not made for the likes of me.  The big coaches are better, but all buses assume the passengers are 5'6" or less (knee caps are often sore from enthusiastic reclining from the traveller infront).  The smaller buses are also made for people a lot narrower than me too, this tends to mean I arrive at places lacking sleep and walking in a less than symmetrical fashion, a bit like Egor.

Salento. Clean air, Tejo & verbs

We arrived in Salento on a Sunday evening, the biggest night of the week it transpired, and it felt like 50% of the 7k population were in the bars and plaza.  A mountain town in the middle of the coffee growing region Salento is full of brightly painted buildings, residents in cowboy hats & ponchos, billiard bars and brightly coloured jeeps (called Willys). It felt somewhere between the set of a Western and rural Latam. 

It also felt cold which was a nice novelty. Hoodies and trainers on we set off to find the local Tejo bar.  Tejo is a game where you throw a metal puck (a Tejo) at 4 targets placed on a metal ring set in clay. The targets are paper triangles filled with gunpowder so with enough force and a good aim the Tejo bashes into the target and the metal ring and an explosion goes off.  More fire = more points. 

The Tejo hall was like an old skittles ally: full of old boys (with obligatory hats and ponchos) playing very seriously from 8 metre throw-lines while we novices stood 3 mts away and whooped every time any points were scored.  The game is free to play - the only condition is that you drink beer while you do so. No great hardship. 

Food next so we found a stall in the plaza selling the local delicacies: bandeja paise (mixed random meats thrown together in a dish with an egg), and patacones (plaintain, mashed and rolled to plate size, deep fried and served with cheese/chilli etc). 

Arteries clogged we retired for the night a bit giddy to need covers on our bed instead of a noisy and largely ineffective fan (unless the objective of them is to look precarious and pull clumps of plaster out the ceiling, in which case they're excellent). 

Next day we hiked a famous loop that takes you through woods, over many highly questionable rickety bridges (some of which are 2 felled trees laid next to each other- this is not a bridge in my opinion), through a Hummingbird sanctuary, up a bloody steep hill to the money-shot view: lush green mountains surrounded by clouds and wax palm trees. The tallest palms in the world they grow up to 60m high and look quite surreal in these surroundings.  

Hundreds of them line the rest of the walk and were distracting enough to get us through the fields of bulls, under the barbed wire and back to catch a Willy home. Minimum 10 people in the 4-seat Willies before they'll leave so 4 people have to hang off the back for the 25 min ride, while the other six forget the concept of personal space. 

At the hummingbird sanctuary we had another local delicacy : hot chocolate and cheese. The cheese is a bit like halloumi and is broken up into the chocolate where it gets stringy rather than melty.  Enjoyable but not sure I'm desperate for a second bowlful just yet. 

Declaring chocolate/cheese combo as dirty (from the man who'd eaten unidentifiable bits of unknown animals the night before) Chris had yet another rubbish cup of coffee.   Despite growing the best beans in the world, Columbians drink instant coffee with a lot of sugar, or the crap beans they can't sell elsewhere. Sad, but when they grade the beans 1-5, grades 1-4 get exported and the cheap rubbish stays at home. 

We stayed another 5 days after that and got ourselves a Spanish teacher for 3hours a day for an incredibly good $120 dollars for us both.  Marcia is a teacher at Bogota Uni but teaches gringos in the holidays so unlike some student teachers who're just starting out, she really knew how to teach. A 5ft 0 powerhouse of energy, bling and irregular verbs she was excellent for us and by the end of the week we'd watched a couple of films in Spanish, and chatted with a Chilean woman for 2 hours without too much frustration. 

There is still so much to learn and without the discipline of a bossy Latino woman checking our homework each morning we won't continue at the same rate but it's getting easier all the time. Off on the night bus(es) to San Gil. A mere 15 hrs away.