Weeks 22 and 23

Wow what a busy couple of weeks!

Well we made it to the Galapagos Islands, and they were amazing!
The pictures are a small part of what we saw. We swam a meter from sea turtles, Manta Rays, Galapagos Sharks, White Tipped Reef Sharks, Sea Lions and thousands of fish. Here are some things on land:

 Where we swam with Rays, Sharks and Turtles (oh and Fish!)

 The crater of the largest active volcano.

 Marine Iguana

 Boobie!

 Sally Light Foot Crab

 Sun Rise Final Day

Sunset last day.



So after the Galapagos we went to Quito. The Old town was nice the the greatest, however it had a greta art gallery. Unfortunately this is all we did in Quito as I was ill the day we were going to the equator line. But we crossed it!

After Quito we went to Otavalo to the Saturday market, which was great. Then we made are way north to the frontier with Colombia. Crossed it safely and got a bus to Cali. We arrived in Cali in the morning and without stopping we went to Bogota.

Bogota is a nice city, it has some great musuems like the Gold Musuem and the Borota Art Galleries. Near by in a town called Zipaquira we went to a Salt mine and saw the Cathedral they had built inside the mine, which was very impressive.

Next stop Leticia and the Amazon river!

Weeks 20 and 21

Easter Island!

The most remote place in the world, amazing and beautiful. We camped on the island, saw lots of Moai and a tranditional dance performance. It all was amazing!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Back to Peru and up to Trujillo. Mocha ruins Huaca de Luna and Sol, and Chan Chan ruins. These dated from 100 AD to when the Incas kicked them out (I named them in order of date).
The ruins were interesting with amazing decoration (the ruins are all made from Adobe or clay!). The ceramics from the first Huaca where fantastic.

 

 

 

A peruvian dog, hairless like british men

 

From Trujillo we head to the boarder with Ecuador. We cross the boarder with a 4km round walk to get our passports stamped, as we went straight to the boarder (missing boarder control 2km before the frontier) and gave our last Soles to a kid with no shoes!

Into Ecuador we head to Cuenca, a beautiful town where lots of Yanks retire to. We had coffee and cake, lots of bananas and the usual 3 course lunches. Great!

 

After Cuenca we went to Alausi, this is where an engineering feet called the Devils Nose is. The train ride was OK good views but the 60m decent in a zig zag was more of a "z" and wasn't for long as we paid $25 each for the privelage of a hour on a train!

 

 

From Alausi we went to Riobamba as a stop over before heading to Banos. The town named toilet was beautiful sat in the valley of lush, green mountains and a volcano. We walked up one side of the valley to Bellavista (which it was) then round to view the cloud covered volcano. We also went to the thermal springs which made for a great, relaxing afternoon.

 

The Volcano thats due to erupt!

This time me with a dog!!!

Next stop Guayaquil and a flight to the Galapagos Islands!