Merry Christmas!!!

Wishing you all a wonderful festive season & health, wealth, peace & prosperity for 2009

Feliz Navidad & próspero Año Nuevo

Fröhliches Weihnachten & Glückliches Neujahr

Joyeux Noël & bonne année

Buon Natale & l'anno nuovo Felice

Nadolig Llawen a Blwyddyn Newydd Dda

Best Wishes,

Kath

Scotland

Four months on from our trip to South America and Andy & I headed off to Scotland with four friends for a week away. We stopped in a little cottage in the picturesque village of 'Bonnie Strathyre' (from the Gaelic 'sheltered valley'), situated at the head of Loch Lubnaig ('Crooked Loch') below Beinn an t-Sithean (pronounced Ben Shean - 'Mountain of the Fairies' or 'Fairy Hillocks') in the heart of the Trossachs National Park. The area of the Trossachs is from Loch Earn in the north to the Lake of Menteith in the south (the only lake in Scotland – the rest of the bodies of water are lochs) and from Doune in the east to Loch Lomond in the west.

It was near Strathyre (Doune) that Monty Python & Holy Grail was filmed and the village isn't far from Dunblane or Stirling. Also unbeknown to us when we decided to do the trip we got to learn some Scottish (& English) history and learn more about the local Scottish heroes William Wallace, Robert the Bruce & Rob Roy Macgregor, but on our first night we simply enjoyed the hospitality of a local pub for food and drinks! J

The following day the sun was out so we wandered around the village, as there was direct access to woodland with walks from the cottage through which we could take a scenic walk into the main part of the village. The village shop and 3 pubs in village were within easy walking distance. Then after a hearty home-cooked Sunday lunch at the cottage we decided to venture up Beinn an t-Sithean through the woodland. That was enough for one day and we settled in for the evening in the lounge with its cosy open fire to watch a spoof version of the Talent Show mania currently on TV.

The Monday bought with it grey skies and some slight drizzle but we decided to be brave. Going further a field to Loch Lomond, we set off (on what I found to be a relatively arduous and very tiring journey) up to the 3,192 ft summit of Ben Lomond. The Ben had been named after Laomain, a legendary hero of the Celts. Apparently the song "The Bonny Bonny Banks O' Loch Lomond" was associated with the last Jacobite Rising of 1745 & the words were reputedly said by a Jacobite soldier before his execution to his sweetheart who'd walked all the way from Loch Lomondside to Carlisle to bid a sad farewell. At about 24 miles long & 700 ft deep at the deepest point, the loch is the largest freshwater loch in Scotland and the largest inland water in Britain. Although we were back late from our walk, we still managed to join the other four down the pub for a couple of drinks while they finished off the pub quiz they'd joined in with!

After a late start and a long sleep Tuesday was a relaxing day visiting Callander with its coffee shops, crafts outlets and a Rob Roy & Trossachs National Park Visitors Centre. It was made famous as Tannochbrae in the BBC TV Series "Dr Finlay's Casebook". It appears that it used to be a favourite meeting place for drovers, bringing cattle from the highlands to the markets of central Scotland. We also visited Balquhidder just a couple of miles north of Strathyre where Rob Roy's family grave is situated. Dinner was cooked at the house.

As the saying goes, "To take Stirling is to hold Scotland" and no less than 6 major battles that changed the course of history took place in or near Stirling: 2 of the most famous being the Battle of Stirling Bridge (William Wallace) and the Battle of Bannockburn (King Robert the Bruce, 1314). Close to the heart of the nation geographically, historically and tourist literature has it, emotionally, Stirling was Scotland's ancient capital, seat of Kings and parliament. In 2002 it was granted city status to mark the Golden Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II

So while the other four opted for a day out to Edinburgh (Andy & I have both been to Edinburgh before), we opted for a visit to Stirling Castle. The castle whose origins date back centuries – it was a meeting & crossing point over the river of the four main routes from north, south, east and west respectively - has apparently been attacked or besieged at least 16 times and a number of Scottish Kings & Queens have been baptised, crowned or died within its walls. The current remains of the castle though mostly only dates back from 1496-1583 as the castle was burnt to the ground by Robert the Bruce after his success at Bannockburn. There is more to see here than just the castle, with exhibits on past, present and future renovation works, a townhouse outside the walls (available on a tour) and a museum for the Sutherland & Argyll Highlanders Regiment. Suffice to say, we spent a great deal of the day there and returned late enough (the others were back late too) to have the excuse of eating down at the local pub again!

Within a short drive you have Loch Katrine & what we felt would be an easy walk for the day up Ben A' an. However the road was closed off for tree felling so we had to take option B that was the medium-hard walk up to the 2,874ft summit of Ben Ledi that stands majestically overlooking Callandar and Loch Lubnaig. Not so bad as Ben Lomond, the worst part was a section of the walk, which is neither way marked, nor has trails. A combination of that and the late start due to its being Plan B, we were back late again. Fortunately although our friends weren't in the walking mood, they were in the cooking mood and dinner was waiting for us on our return!

Since we'd only seen Stirling Castle on our previous visit to the city, we decided to revisit Stirling and walked through the Old Town & along the route besides the Old Town walls. We also visited Stirling Old Town Jail where an actor re-enacted what it would have felt like to be a prisoner in those walls at various times of its history. We hadn't planned to, but with time on our hands we also went up the Wallace monument – a tower & viewpoint erected as a national monument to William Wallace in 1869 and exhibiting Wallace's sword & life story as well as other Scots in the "Hall of Heroes". We visited another pub in the village for a final eat & drink session before the end of the holiday.

All of a sudden we were setting off back to England again. On the way we visited Bannockburn Heritage Centre where you can "relive the action of Scotland's most famous battle – Bannockburn". We also stopped at the Falkirk Wheel – the world's first and only rotating boat lift that links the Forth and Clyde Canal, which lies 35m (115ft) below the level of the Union Canal. Historically, the two canals had been joined at Falkirk by a flight of 11 locks that stepped down across a distance of 1.5km, but these had been dismantled in 1933, breaking the link. The journey starts by sailing into the bottom gondola of The Wheel in a basin of the Forth and Clyde Canal, which then makes a graceful sweep, lifting the boat up to join the Union Canal 35m above. The ascent takes approximately 15 minutes. Another stop was the renovated woollen mills of Lanark at the New Lanark World Heritage Site.

In Darwin's footsteps

Near the intersection of the equator and 90' west of the Greenwich Mean Line, 1000km west of Ecuador in the Pacific Ocean where four ocean currents meet lie the isolated group of volcanic islands known as the Galapagos.

The 13 major islands, 6 small islands and scores of islets are spread over 400km of ocean with a land mass covering approx 7,882km2. The highest point is Volcan Wolf on the Equator line on Isabela, the largest island in the archipeligo and the 12th largest in the South Pacific Ocean.

Known as the Las Enchantadas (Enchanted Isles) by early explorers, the earliest of the islands was formed 4-5 million years ago by underwater volcanos erupting and rising to the ocean surface on an endless geological conveyor belt that will ultimately see them die beneath the waves.

The Galapagos was the catalyst that led to the 1859 publication of On The Origin Of Species By The Means Of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin (Shropshire lad), with the mockingbirds and tortoises not the finches elicting the revelation that was to start the ball rolling. The phrase Darwin's Finches was coined by a David Lack some years later for his book and the name stuck.

The first national park was formed in 1959 and then the Charles Darwin Research Station, based in Puerto Ayora on Santa Cruz, was inaugurated in 1964. There is a captive breeding programme for tortoises, after which the islands were named. 97% of the Galapagos is now a National Park, though only about 3% of that can be visited by tourists. The fauna is famous for being relatively fearless of humans and at times it was difficult not to trip over them. They would have no qualms about crossing the trail in front of you and making you wait for them. Tortoises, blue-footed boobies and lava lizards have come right up to me, sea lions play with you in the ocean and a hawk ate breakfast just feet from where we stood one morning.

Getting to and from the Galapagos is a bit of a pain. Flying via Guayaquil on the coast, the journey takes some six hours or more travelling from the hotel until we finally got to the boat in Academy Bay in Santa Cruz. Arrival at Baltra airport was bedlam and chaos, then there was a bus ride to the ferry, a short ferry ride across the passage between Baltra & Santa Cruz and finally an hours bus ride more or less to Puerto Ayora where we got a panga (dingy) out to the small/medium sized motorised yacht that was to be our home for the next few days. Although a large part of the day had been taken up with the transfer, we had a late lunch and then did have time to visit El Chato near Santa Rosa in the Highlands (highest point is Cerro Crocker at just 864m - remember we´ve been at almost 3,000m in Quito) to see Giant Tortoises in the wild. While waiting for the panga ride back there were Sally Lightfoot crabs, pelicans and blue-footed boobies (they´re seabirds for anyone whose wondering) near the jetty. Unfortunately I missed dinner the first night: one of life´s great ironies - I may travel the world but get travel sick and this particular night there was a lot of swell with the boat rocking quite profusely. The drugs worked eventually though and slept ok until the engines started at 3.30am to travel to the next mornings destination.

Must have gone to sleep again though as the following morning we found ourselves in a nice quiet bay and breakfast was an altogether much better affair. Our first stop of the day was a wet landing on the island of Santa Fe (also called Barrington), a fairly small island but great for watching sea lions - well tripping over them on the beach. Along the island´s northern shore is the forest of giant 10m high Opuntias (Prickly Pear Cactus). Here we got to see the endemic subspecies Santa Fe land iguana, a Galapagos Hawk, Galapagos Mockingbirds, pelicans, blue-footed boobies and lots of colourful lava lizards. Snorkelling in the bay we saw some rays and fish. The afternoon visit was to South Plaza. At only 1km long and 100m wide, it is one of the smallest islands in the Galapagos but has one of the largest populations of Land Iguanas. It also hosts a large number of Marine Iguanas and even hybrid land-marine iguanas that occurs nowhere else in the Galapagos. We saw more sea lions, blue-footed boobies, gal shearwaters and lots of other seabirds.

Cerro Dragon (Dragon´s Hill) on another part of Santa Cruz was our first stop on Day 2. It has a population of giant land iguanas hence the name. It is also home to marine iguanas, sally lightfoot crabs, galapagos pintails, various finches (of the famous Darwin´s Finches collection) and other birds. The land iguanas were like little dragons and we watched a couple of males having a bit of a brawl at each other for some time. The afternoon was a dry landing at Bartolome Island (also called Bartholomew) - created by two volcanic cinder cones with a sandy inlet (double-sided beach) in between. A hike to the summit of the island (one of the cinder cones) provided a panoramic view of the island and Santiago in the distance. Andy particularly liked this island because it was a fantastic example of various geological features common to several of the islands including spatter cones and lava tubes. Personally I thought it was like a moonscape. There wasn´t much life surviving here that we could see apart from the rugged lava cactus. We took a panga ride along the coastline around the base of the volcanic tower of the other cinder cone where we came across a few of the rare Galapagos Penguins. There are only 800 pairs and we saw about 1/2 dozen of them. Under the base was also good snorkelling, plenty of fish and a few people got a glimpse of the expert swimming penguin as it rocketed past at high speed.

Day 3 started in Rabida Island´s Red beach where we had our daily interaction with sea lions. A short trail leads to a salt water lagoon which used to be used by flamingos but not anymore. Juvenile sea lions now occupy it for playtime and we watched a couple of them frolicking in the water. Back on the beach amongst low-lying bushes were nesting Brown Pelicans. At one point as if on cue, two of the pelicans started mating! It was very short and not so sweet! There were also a few finches. Santiago or James was our afternoon stop. This has a raised beach, now protected by a lava flow which through weathering has lots of grottos and caverns connected to the sea. Here was where fur seals hauled themselves onto rocky ledges to sleep during the day or cool off in the grottos. The grottos provide protection from their predators during the day as fur seals are night hunters. We got another snorkel again today. Plenty more fish in the sea and some were the size of dinner plates!!!

Located on the second-largest island in the archipelago of Isla Santa Cruz is the picturesque Black Turtle Cove, mangrove fringed lagoons providing nurseries for a large number of animals. We could only negotiate this by panga but on our way into the lagoons we witnessed a Blue-Footed Booby feeding frenzy where there were literally hundreds of boobies diving for fish and other prey, the sort of scene that you would only see on something that David Attenborough had done! Even the guide said it was unusual to see one of these kind of sights and he´s been doing this for some 19 years. It was very peaceful cruising through the lagoons and we got to see plenty of sea turtles (even one couple trying to mate), a large school of golden rays and baby sharks. In the afternoon we continued onto North Seymour, which is home to abundant animal life including swallow-tailed gulls, magnificent frigate birds, great frigate birds and blue-footed boobies. This is where alot of the aforementioned birds nest and we were able to walk within a metre of sitting birds. We watched a couple of male blue-footed boobies performing their courtship ritual to females without success. One was particularly persistent and the pair came within our circle to do their performance. Even then the female was having nothing of it and eventually flew off - we all pitied the male as he had made a great effort. Some of the male frigatebirds were desperately trying to attract females and had their red throat pouches extended. There was a small number of land iguanas on the island. They don´t naturally occur here but were bought from Baltra (also known as South Seymour) as part of an experiment. During WWII when Baltra was used as an airbase (why there is an airport there today) all the naturally occuring iguanas were killed out and the population has been re-established from the thriving iguana population on North Seymour. A few are kept on the island today incase of any disasters at the airport wiping out the population again.

A rough 10-hour overnight bumpy rolling rollercoaster of a boat ride landed us in the rather quieter Garner Bay on Espanola Island the next morning. Espanola is the oldest and southernmost of the islands, 61km2 in size and estimated to be 3.5 million years old. We first went for a walk up the white sandy beach avoiding sleeping sea lions up to the mid-beach rocks which are as far as we were permitted to go. Here Hood Mockingbirds, a subspecies of Mockingbird endemic to just this island, were picking flies off the sea lions. On the rocks were Sally Lightfoot crabs and a unique subspecies of marine iguana. Only on this island are the marine iguanas black and coloured, usually red but sometimes green or other colours. On every other island they are totally black. We had two snorkels, one off the beach where we saw a sting ray as well as lots more dinner plate sized fish and a second off the panga where a couple of sea lions came and played & swam with us in the water for a good time. The afternoon, still on Espanola but on the western side, we stopped at Punta Suarez where we followed a 2km trail through the rookery of the Waved Albatross, one of which was nesting right on the edge of the path. Espanola is the nesting site to vitually the entire worls population of these birds and its the only albatross that nests at the equator and in the tropics. Large numbers of the yet unseen Nasca Boobies (formerly known as Masked Boobies) were seen nesting as well as other seabirds including our old friends the Blue-footed Boobies. Red-billed tropic birds were also quite abundant as were more of the red-coloured marine iguanas and yet more sea lions. A huge blowhole where the surf is forced througha natural rock formation (spraying the cliffs with water and keeping it green during the dry season) spouting seawater 15-20m in the air was also here. If you´ve ever watched the BBC Galalpagos Series they showed it on there. We also saw Galapagos Doves, a Striped Galapagos snake and a Galapagos Hawk. Here the Tortoise breeding programme will eventually indirectly help the hawk increase its numbers. The young, forced from their parents territory when they are old enough due to lack of space, have no food in the highlands because the giant tortoise was almost wiped out. With the captive breeding programme the first rehabilitated tortoises will soon be breeding and therefore providing a source of food for the hawks.

The final day around the islands we went to Floreana Island. Firstly a panga ride brought us into contact with more of the rare galapagos penguins, turtles and yet more sea lions. We stopped at Post Office Bay to drop off postcards. Early British Whalers set up a barrel to leave messages for ships returning to England to take home and picking up messages from those on their way back. Although the barrel has been changed a few times, the mail system has been more or less in continuous use since then. Leave a postcard and pick one up to hand deliver to someone near you. Eventually I will have one hand-delivered to me! Then we had 3 snorkel points around the Corona del Diablo (Devil´s Crown) where we saw several sharks including my first Hammerhead Shark, sting ray, spotted eagle ray, sea lions and lots more fish. I was fine until the third drop where the surge and currant was just too much and I started feeding the fish and had to be plucked out of the water. but I´d seen everything everyone else had seen. Our final stop was Cormorant Point, home to Greater Flamingos and where the Galapagos Green Turtle nests, before heading off for a very bumpy 6-hr ride back to Santa Cruz.

Yesterday, off the boat and on our way back to the chaos and bedlam that was Baltra airport, we stopped at the Charles Darwin Research Station to visit Lonesome George, the last Giant Tortoise of the subspecies from Pinta Island. We saw hatching tortoise eggs, the nursery which cares for young tortoises until they are about three years old and corrals housing female and male adult tortoises - some of the males weighing a ton each of both the domed and saddleback varieties.

It was an interesting time for us to pick to visit these islands being:

• The 199th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin
• The 149th anniversary of the publication of Origin of The Species
• The 49th anniversary of the founding of the Charles Darwin Foundation in Galapagos and the Galapagos National Park

Due to 2009 being a significant year for the Galapagos a collaboration of organisations across the UK has been set up, called Darwin200. They are all celebrating Darwin's 200th birthday in February 2009 with an exciting programme of activities starting from July 2008 to the end of 2009. For more information about Darwin200 and to view some of the activities, please visit www.darwin200.org.

We made it back to Quito late last night. We moved back from the hotel to our original hostel who are dropping us off at the airport very early tomorrow morning for a very long journey back home. I hope you´ve enjoyed the chronicles nearly as much as I´ve enjoyed the actual trip.

Until the next time, adios

Kath & Andy

Hola! from Ecuador

Buenos nochas from Quito...

Welcome back to all you regulars and a big Hi to all you newcomers. This year´s trip is to my 6th continent - the only one I´ve yet to visit now is the last great wildlife wilderness, the big white continent that is Antarctica!!!

Approx the size of the UK, Ecuador straddles the equator on the pacific coast of South America; the Andean range running north to south splits the country into the west coastal lowlands, highlands and the eastern jungles of the Amazon. Ecuador is one of the most species rich countries in the world with over 20,000 species of vascular plants, 1,500 species of birds (apparently twice as many as North America, Australia or Europe), 300 species of mammals and thousands of species of insects.

At 2,850m above sea level San Francisco de Quito - otherwise known as Quito - is the second highest capital in the world. It is located 22km south of the equator in a valley flanked by mountains (volcanos) which are visible on a clear day. Named after the Quitus (early inhabitants pre-inca), it was founded on the ruins of an Inca city in 1534. In 1978 it was declared a UNESCO World Heritage Site (well the old town was as it´s divided into new and old towns).

When we first arrived we spent our first two days in Quito - recovering from the 24hrs of travel to get here and mild symptoms of altitude sickness due to Quito´s high altitude. We visited some parks and generally got a feel of the place (New Town) including our first tentative steps speaking pigeon latin american spanish such as trying to order food! We also visited the small but excellent Museo Etnografico de Artesania de Ecuador - about the artwork, clothing and utensils of Ecuador´s indigenous people.

On our third day we joined a Footloose trip via a local company - Ecuador Odyssey - for an 8-day snapshot / taster of what the country had to offer, starting with an historic walking tour down the cobbled streets of the Old Town, popping into several cathedrals and churches and other important sites such as Plaza Grande with the Presidential Palace where we caught the changing of the guard. The oldest church in Quito is the monastery of San Francisco from where it gets it´s name. From there it was up to "El Panecillo" (The Little Bread Loaf), a small rounded hill with a statue of The Virgin of Quito on top with panoramic views of the city and surrounding volcanos.

Just beyond the small village of San Antonia, 22km north of Quito is Mitad Del Mundo (the official government equator monument) which was our afternoon stop. The monument is a 30m high stone trapezoid topped by a brass globe 4.5m in diameter. This is where a French expedition did some measurements (in 1736 I think?) which resulted in the invention of the metric system and where they discovered that the Earth wasn´t entirely round but bulged at the equator. From there it was onto our night stop of Otavalo via the little village of Peguche where we visited a local family that made (and played) musical instruments such as various types of panpipes, guitars, drums etc.

Otavalo is a famous indigenous market dating from pre-inca times. The food market for the locals was an interesting experience to visit as there was more to see than your normal butchers!!! From there it was onto the main craft & handicrafts market for which Otavalo is best known to buy a few goodies and do some bargaining. Peguche Waterfall was our next stop where we got soaked as the rain was bucketing down also, but it was a terrific little waterfall. The area around the waterfall is dense with eucalypts - aliens to this country but not eradicated as they grow quicker providing wood and firewood many years sooner than native trees.

If Otavalo is famous for handicrafts then Cotacachi is famous for it´s leather goods. It was also the place that we tried the national delicacy "Cuy" - spit roasted and served with fried beans, boiled beans, potatos, cooked veg and salad. I thought what little meat it did have on it tasted like over-cooked chicken; Andy said his was like an anorexic dessicated rat! Suffice to say, it was an experience but not one that either of us is intending to repeat. For those who don´t know, cuy is guinea pig!!!

Still with taste of rodent in our mouths we moved onto the Cayambe Mitad Del Mundo - the little-known but correct equator monument called "Quitsato" (http://www.quitsato.org/) in the shape of a huge solar clock which has been confirmed as precisely on the equatorial line by satellite technology. It was better than the more famous official government site as it was also more informative. Our final stop for the day was "El Quinche", another cathedral, before passing over the 4100m pass of the Cordillera de los Andes (rim of Amazon basin) and arriving to Papallacta (pronounced Pa-pa-yac-ta) for our second night stop. This was the worst hostel we stopped in and was nicknamed Faulty Towers, with it´s own ecaudorian version of Basil Faulty. It was also freezing cold, but we were high up in the Andes after all!

The hostel might have been dodgy but the reward for staying there the next morning was an early dip in Papallacta´s hot springs. It has various pools of different temperatures and there was an icy cold plunge pool for those of us brave (or stupid) enough to try it out... Then it was onto the warmth and humidity of the Amazon Jungle or Amazon Rainforest by paved road, then rough bumpy pot-holed road and finally motorised canoe to our jungle lodge. One of our stops was a visit to a little town with Capuchin monkeys running wild down by the riverside - you have to hang onto everything as they are not worried about running off with anything.

Yacuma Lodge is in it´s own area of primary and secondary rainforest on Chontayacu River, a tributary of the Rio Napo, the largest tributary of the Amazon River (http://www.yacuma-lodge.com/). It was dark by the time we got there the first night so our only contact with the jungle was being soothed to sleep by the sounds of the rainforest. Next morning though after a hearty breakfast we set off on a 3-3.5hr jungle trek to be taught about the medicinal properties of plants and those used for building etc. It was hot, sweaty and at times almost treacherous underfoot as heavy rain overnight made the paths slippery. Even the "main highway" between two villages was a muddy donkey track. In the afternoon we visited "Amazoonico" (http://www.amazoonico.org/), an animal rehabilitation centre in Selva Viva, a 13km2 reserve of primary forest, 1.5hrs away from the lodge by motorised canoe. This is where we came face-to-face, albeit often with wire between us, with ocelots (wild cats), tortoises, terrapins, various birds, monkeys, jungle fowl, wild pigs etc etc. Then it was back to the lodge for dinner and a soothing sleep to the chorus of frogs and grasshoppers.

Rainforests are important in their own right for a number of reasons - great biodiversity: half of the 2 million known species live in them and many more possibly yet to be discovered; tropical plants provide habitat, food and medicines; disease-resistant strains of wild crops can be bred with commerically-raised to provide an eco-friendly way of providing disease resistance to cultivated crops; they are still the home to indigenous peoples such as the Quecha who rely on the rainforest to maintain their cultural identity and way of life; they globally moderate climatic patterns. By protecting the rainforests in national parks & reserves and making them accessible to tourists and travellers, they provide an important income for the country. However in Ecuador there is a constant threat from the petrolum industry which has opened up the rainforest for mining and created roads through indigenous communities that in turn create knock-on effects distroying more rainforest.

A very early start the next morning and we retraced our steps in motorised canoe and by bumpy pot-holed road to Puyo. Here we stopped to see bolsa-wood carvings being made (by hand) and painted. From there we followed "La Ruta de Las Cascades" (the road of the waterfalls) that snakes parallel to the Rio Pataza canyon from Puyo in the Or¡ente (the Ecuador name for the Amazon jungle) at 950m to Baños in the central highlands at 1800m. Lunch was in Rio Verde (the Green River - village on river of the same name) with a hike down to "Pailon del Diablo" (the Devil´s Gorge) waterfall which could be viewed from a suspension bridge and/or tunnel that came out almost underneath the falls. Manto-de-la-Novia was our next waterfall stop; a tarabita (open cable car) ride 500m across the gorge 100m up took us above the waterfall. Agoyan was the final waterfall before we arrived in Baños. Sitting in the foothills of the active volcano Tungahua, the first task was to give us the emergency evacuation procedure in the event of an eruption: run like hell over the bridge across the river... This is a reality as the volcano erupted only last year destroying a little village on it´s slopes.

We had a full free day in Baños so we hiked up the nearby mountains to La Virgen del Agua Santa, a viewpoint over the town, and then onto Bellavista, another viewpoint looking over the town from the other end. Since the name Baños means baths and it has thermal baths, we thought we´d have a nice warm bathe to ease the aching muscles before bed. We ended up in a writhing soup of (mainly latino) bodies sharing the murky-looking waters with more closeness than I´d intended to get with the locals. It wasn´t a patch on the springs of Papallacta. Baños also means toilet and it would have been more appropriate in this case, although the murkiness of the water is due to the minerals it contains apparently.

We spent our last two days visiting volcanos. On our route out of Banos we stopped at San Martin (The Black Saint), a deep river gorge cut into lava from previous eruptions and up the road, the site of the most recent eruption where the village of Las Juntas was destroyed with only part of one hotel and one house remaining. Nearby was the meeting of two rivers - Rio Chamba from Volcan Chimborazo and Rio Patate from Volcan Cotopaxi - which became the Pataza river, the one we'd been following from Puyo. Via Pelileo, a town famous for it's jeans (and not so famous for it's freakish mannikins) and the Gardens of Benigno Velo in Ambato, where Cypress trees have been fashioned into all manner of figures such as Mickey mouse, Humpty Dumpty, Galapagos animals etc we headed off to the snow and ice-peaked volcano.

At 6310m Chimborazo is the highest mountain & (considered extinct) volcano in Ecuador. It is also the farthest point from the centre of the Earth due to the Earth´s equatorial bulge and it is higher than any other mountain in the Americas north of it. We drove up gradually worsening roads til we were onto bumpy potholed gullied tracks up to the hut at 4,800m. From here we hiked very very slowly up to the hut at 5,000m where climbers and mountaineers spend a few days acclimatising before ascending the mountain further. At this altitude it is easy to get out of breath very quickly and become dizzy. Half-way up my legs turned to lead and it was all I could do to shuffle one in front of the other. Slowly but surely we plodded on until we´d reached the hut ok. Our descent was much more rapid and although I felt like I´d just done a marathon, one of our co-travellers remarked that we looked like we´d just walked round the block!

Our overnight stop was an old hacienda converted into a hotel a short ride from Cotopaxi volcano near a town called Machachi where we stopped the following morning to buy lunch before heading off to the Cotopaxi National Park. First we visited Lake Limpiopungo for a short walk before heading off to the volcano. At 5897m Cotopaxi is Ecuador's 2nd highest mountain and the world's highest active volcano. We arrived at the hut at 4,500m but the cloud and mist decended rapidly accompanied by horizonal ice-sleet and very cold temperatures. Other people who had started hiking up to the acclimatisation hut at 4,800m were turning back so we decided not to bother. Just a quick walk in the near-blizzard conditions left you breathless and hacked by ice particles.

So it was back to Quito where we've also spent today visiting another park in the north of the city complete with a small natural history museum, botanic gardens and vivarium where we both ended up holding a snake!!!

The weather has been so-so, Quito was like a typical wet British spring, the northern highlands were wet and cold, the rainforest although hot, humid and sticky was also wet on occasions (hence being a rainforest) and the central highlands were warmer with more sun but also some (at times heavy) showers and so you have a general reoccurring theme here.

Having a fantastic time though as you might have guessed from yet another epic.

Tomorrow we meet the Galapagos trip group and then it's a island-hopping trip round the Galapagos which you'll no doubt hear about on our return.

Adios and good night from Quito

Kath