Alice Smart

Our next stop was Arequipa, another beautiful colonial town, we were glad it lived up the the reputation after the horrible night bus we had to get there! We decided to book the cheapest one, every night bus we’d had so far had been great, lots of leg room, reclining seats, free meal and blankets and super comfy. So we figured the cheaper one would maybe not include a meal and blankets but really apart from that what could be wrong? It turns out a lot. We were crammed into bolt upright chairs that didn’t recline at all and were all of 5cm away from the chair in front, which would be fine if you didn’t have any legs. Honestly I’m sure caged hens get more room and the cages probably smell better too! Eventually we got used to sitting bolt upright crushed into a bus that smelt like a urinal and drifted off to sleep, but you can see why it was a relief to wake up in beautiful Arequipa!

The first day we had a walk around the city, it’s surrounded by 3 volcanos and was built by the spanish out of beautiful white volcanic stone. Arequipa is known as the white city and people assume it’s because of these white stone buildings but originally the buildings where all painted colonial colours, it was actually called the white city because there was no town in Arequipa before the Spanish decided to settle there so it was predominantly a city of white people, after independence the colonial colours were left to fade off of buildings and a more politically correct back story for the white city was spread.

Arequipa also had ammaazzinnggg food and as if that wasn’t great already it was also super cheap! We visited a huge food market and treated ourselves to some super tasty mangos! We also spoilt ourselves and dined in a few nice restaurants while here but our favourite was a burger restaurant that made everything from scratch, the food was great and a huge burger chips and a drink came to S/.15 (£3.45) you can’t argue with that! They also had an amazing selection of home made sauces which were delicious, including a purée black olive sauce, which sounds disgusting and was bright purple but was actually really tasty!

On our second day in Arequipa we went for a walking tour, it was interesting to hear the history of the city and the guide pointed out lots of parts of architecture that mixed Spanish and native symbols to try and integrate the city, especially in the churches where native religious symbols were carved into entrances to ease the transition of the local populations into Christianity. We also got to see the monestry and learnt about the tradition for children of the town. For each family the first son was sent into the army and the last to become a preist, the first daughter was to be married, the second sent to become a nun in the monestry, hence why the monestry here is so huge! Outside of the monestry we got to meet Peru’s most friendly police officer, again this was not just our opinion but he had been voted such for the last 3 years! Me and Grace seem to attract all of Peru’s celebrities!

We also visited an alpaca farm and got to see a few, we learnt the difference between lamas, alpacas and a smaller version called Guanacos. All lamas and alpacas in Peru are domestic after hundereds of years of agricultural use in Peru, Guanacos however were to fast to ever be caught and domesticated. We were shown all of the natural alpaca wool colours and then how these were dyed. There were also local women hand weaving alpaca wool products, which range in price but can be up to £3000 for a single jumper or scalf! Our budget doest quite stretch that far so we had to make do with just feeling how soft the products were.

We had heard about a rooftop bar which supposedly had a beautiful view of the sunset so in the evening we went to find it and after much walking around in circles, checking our phone maps and gawping about at the skyline like idiots we mannaged to root it out and enter just in time to see the sun go down, it was definitely worth the game of blues clues to find it!

After a lovely evening we headed on a night bus (this time the most expensive one! And boy was it nice!) to Cusco. I’ll let you know what we get up to there!

Lots of love,

Alice x

We didn’t stay long in Lima, it’s the capital of Peru but there wasn’t masses to do in the city, we took a walking tour around the old town which was interesting, we found out lots of cool facts like how it is the 2nd largest desert capital city after Cairo, Egypt, it has the largest bull fighting ring in Latin America, A third of Peru’s population live there and it never experiences rain, only dribble. We also saw the world’s smallest Catholic church and tried our first pisco sours, which was delicious!

Pisco is the national spirit of Peru made from fermented grapes, it was developed by the Spanish as an alternative to the expensive gin imports from spain. Unlike most national drinks we’ve tried (looking at you aguardiente) it is actually very nice! The second day we went shopping and I bought some trainers, I finally don’t have to decide between cold toes in my sandles or looking like Dora the explorer in my walking boots!

That night we headed to Huacachina on an overnight bus, we were told it would be cold there so wore our warmest coats, Huacachina is a beautiful oasis in the desert so we should have known it wasn’t cold, but we listened to the locals which again was probaly foolish as they tend to be in a duffel coat in any temperature lower than 25 degrees. After lookong like idiots and peeling off our 500 layers we really enjoyed the oasis, it’s like nothing weve ever experienced before, a tiny little village around an oasis, it was so beautiful. We spent the day sunbathing and relaxing and in the evening we climbed up a huge sand dune behind our hostal and watched the sun go down. It was absolutly stunning and picturesque until the boys got bored and started trying to push eachother down the slope and of course me and Grace had to show them how it was done with a sneek attack rolling down the hill to take out their legs from underneath them.

The next day we went on a pisco tour, ‘tour’ is a strong word, what actually happened was after a guy approached us asking for $100US for a tour and we laughed him out of the hostel a local guy offered to take us for S./25 (£5.80). It turned out to be him and his mate driving us there in old bangers but it did the job. Once we reached the winery we were given a free tour around and the process of making peruvian wines and pisco was explained to us. It’s much the same as in the rest of the world only much faster as it is warm year round here and is stored in big pottery urn type things, technical I know, you try remembering facts when you’re several glasses down! After the tour we also got to taste some peruvian wines and like most things in south america it is far to sweet! The pisco however was absolutly beautiful and we ended up buying a few bottles of different flavours, straberry, passion fruit and coffee. We were then taken to another winery but as wed already heared the ‘official tour’ our driver took us on his own tour which consisted on giving us as much as every kind of alcohol he could get his hands on, which we gleefully accepted. We also got to try pouring the drinks ourselves using the bamboo stick they dip in the pottery urns and then pour from, it was a lot more difficult than it sounds, especially when already quite tipsy, I was voted best in the group, im not quite sure what thay says about me! We decided to carry on our pisco tasting at our hostel with our newly purchased bottles and after watch the sunset from a lovely rooftop bar over dinner before heading off on yet another night bus.

As always I’ll keep you updated on what we get up to next,

Lots of love,

Alice x

Our first week in Peru was mainly spent at the beach, from here on out it will be getting colder and there isn’t masses of things to do in the north of Peru, so after meeting up with our friend Scott and two other guys he is traveling with, we spent the first week or so here traveling down the coast for beach town to beach town. Scott is still teaching Grace to surf but I’ve decided I’m more of a fair weather surfer, I’d rather soak up rays on the beach than surf in the Pacific. You have to wear a wet suit here to surf and me in a wet suit is the opposite end of the spectrum to what I consider fun, there are whales here and I don’t want to run the risk of a mistaken harpooning! So lately it’s just been lots of tanning, I’m now the most brown I’ve ever been, which mainly just makes me look like a need a good shower.

So far our thoughts on Peru are that it’s nice, the food is a lot better than the rest of South America, especially chifa a mix of Chinese and Peruvian cooking, although were less keen on Inca kola, a fizzy drinks that seems to be a national treasure here, it kind of tastes like panda pop and is a bit to sweet for our taste. Women here love an oversized hat and taxi drivers always think you want a taxi. Even if you just got out of a taxi, even if you’re getting onto a bus, even if you’ve just told the previous 10 taxis in a row of traffic you don’t want a taxi, they still think if they bib and nod at you, you’ll cave and decided they’re right, it really was a taxi you’ve been after this whole time, you’ve just been playing hard to get. In fact everyone here loves bibbing, it seems to be a trend in South America, bibbing for no reason, even if you’re the only car on the road, but here in Peru they have personalized horns, which is an unexpected and loud twist. The people here are very friendly and actually speak some English which makes life a little easier.

Eventually we had to leave the beach and headed to Huaraz, a really beautiful town up in the Andies. It is absolutely stunning but also freezing cold and coming from the coast I really felt the change in altitude. This is the first time I’ve had altitude sickness badly, normally I just get headaches but this time I could feel my individual organs throbbing and felt constantly sick, luckily Scott was a diligent nurse and brought me tea made with Coco leaves every few hours which helped a bit.

We spent the first day in Huaraz exploring the town, it’s the third most populated town in Peru and is absolutely bustling with life, we managed to find a shop selling coats and bought some fake North Face jackets that so far have kept us warm against the wind, we just have to hope they don’t fall apart at the seams when it rains!

On our second day in Huaraz we wanted to do a hike to one of the beautiful glacial lagoons in the mountains. The boys all opted to do the 8 hour hike to Laguna 69, an absolutely stunning blue lake at 4700m, but as I was struggling to climb the stairs of my bunk bed without feeling queezy, I thought a 4700m climb may be a bit much (fun fact the average skydiving height is 4000m). Instead we opted for a trip to Laguna Llanganuco, a lower down Laguna which is apparently the inspiration for the paramount pictures logo, how could we refuse?

The Laguna itself was stunning, the trip to see it however was an absolute shambles. The trip was supposed to be 9am-5pm, we were picked up late and then walked around town to different agencies, none of whom seemed to claim ownership of our tour, we were eventually added onto a group of people on another tour. However no-one would read our ticket or speak to us to clarify we were headed to the same destination, until Grace lost her temper and shoved our ticket at the guide shouting “will you just look at it!!”, which terrified the guide into finally helping us and became a fun catchphrase for the rest of the trip (Grace is not a morning person incase that was not immediately clear). Once we were shuttled to the correct bus we realized we were the only English speakers on the tour, that included the ‘english speaking guide’ we had paid for, I guess they didn’t specify how much English he spoke, but we were expecting more than just the word ‘okay’. That did not however deter him from directing his whole tourist information speech directly at me, for several hours. To be fair it was nice to know my Spanish is now good enough to understand a talk about geology, but unfortunately that was only a small part of the tour and I didn’t get much of the rest! The first few hours of the tour consisted of a long drive accompanied by a Spanish guide to the scenery, our first stop was a pretty plaza, we’re still not too sure why, but there was a photo opitnity infront of a random church that we’re still kicking ourselves about missing out on! After that there was a long drive to the lagoon.

The lagoon is beautiful, with cristal clear blue water, surrounded by beautiful snowcapped mountains, we could have spent the whole day here walking around, but unfortunately we only had 40 minutes before we had to be back on the coach. We walked about a quarter of the way around the lake before we had to head back. Although the walk was beautiful it wasn’t the best idea while still suffering from the altitude and I managed to throw up on the side of the lake, which Grace found hillarious and pointed out that I’m always sick in the most beautiful places we go to, lake Atitilan, the Galapagos Islands and by a glacial lake.

We left the lake at 3pm and were taken to a restaurant nearby, unfortunately the only food available was chicken feet soup or fried Guinea pig, after just being sick I didn’t think I could stomach either. As it had taken so long to get to the lake and the trip was supposed to end at 5pm we assumed we would be heading straight home afterwards, so we just grabbed some biscuits.

Instead of heading back south we headed north for another two hours, again stopping at another plaza, we we marched off the bus and into a shop to try a spoonful of caramel and immediately marched straight back onto the bus and began traveling back in the direction of home. The caramel was nice but not quite worth a two hour trip! On the way back we had several more 5 minute stops to take photos infront of churches and to look at not much at all, one stop was to look at a rock that ‘had a face on it’, if you can call a circular rock with a lump in the middle a face. Everyone on the bus was getting more and more frustrated and less people bothering to get off everytime. Around 7:30pm, on our 9am-5pm, tour we stopped to watch a pottery demonstration, the guy was literally in his pajamas watching TV when we turned up, it was actually quite interesting and I’d decided to just go with the flow at that point and enjoy it. After a full day stuck on a coach haven only eaten a packet of biscuits Grace however, was about to explode with anger and when the guide spent another ten minutes trying to chat to her in Spanish instead of getting on the bus…well let’s just say it was probably a good thing he didn’t speak much English!

We got back home around 8pm, a total of 11 hours on the tour probably about 4 hours of that we spent outside of the coach! We grabbed a quick dinner and then had to get straight on an overnight coach to Lima! Hopefully our time here will be a bit more rewarding.

I’ll let you know what we get up to here!

Lots of love,

Alice x

So the Galapagos was amazing! We’ve seen a lot of cool things and animals on this trip but it’s just so different on the Galapagos, the animals here have no fear of humans what so ever, you step centimetres away for tiny little birds and they don’t even flinch let alone fly off, they also just sit about your table when you’re eating and perch next to you on benches, the same with all the animals here, I feel like a Disney Princess! The golden rule is to always stay 2 meters/6 foot away from the animals at all times, the problem is no-one tells the animals this, you basically have to watch not to trip over sea lions or get hit by a low flying pelican. The islands themselves are absolutely beautiful especially on a good day. We went out of season so it was slightly overcast for a lot of it but on the plus side this made it a bit cheaper, when they say paradise comes with a price tag they mean it! Food here was so expensive we were eating one meal a day and living of Oreo biscuits the rest of the time. In the first day getting there we spent; £270 on flights, £20 on a permit, £100 on entry to the island, £5 on a 5 minute compulsory bus and another £5 on a 3 minute boat ride across a gap between islands so small you were over half way across when you’d walked to the front of the boat, then another £25 on a taxi to our hostel, £20 for the hostel and £30 for a small dinner £470 in the fist afternoon! After that we decided to stop counting money, that way bankcrupting ourselves would be a slightly more enjoyable experience.

On the first day we stayed on Santa Cruz island and decided to do a taxi tour of the island. Our first stop was the twin craters, two giant caterers in the ground formed when the magma chambers under the island emptied leaving vast holes and the roof of the chambers fell in, now it’s covered in vegetation and wildlife including Darwin finches, we had a walk around and a watch of the birds and then moved onto the next spot, there’s only so long you can stair at a hole in the ground no matter how pretty it is.

Next stop was a giant tortoise ranch, they were everywhere and huge! We thought there would be one or two but there were so many you had to watch not to trip over them, apparently as it’s now the cold season here the lowlands are much greener so they migrate down from the hills and the ranch is one of their favourite spots. It used to be a farm but the farmer was overrun with tortoises and couldn’t keep them off his crop so he decided to just let them be and open the ranch up as a tourist attraction. The tortoise migration seems to case havoc here as they’re not exactly fast and you’re not allowed to touch or move them even if they have decided to take a nap in the middle of the highway, but it made even the most boring journey feel like an off-road safari.

After we had our fill of giant tortoises we visited some volcanic tunnels, again created by lava flows when the outside rocks solidified but the inner lava kept moving, leaving tunnels. They started off huge but at one point they reduce to a tiny point you can just about crawl under, I hadn’t planned to start a trip of a life time with my face in the mud but there you go, after that we were dropped at our hostel in the main town on Santa Cruz, where we booked our activities for the next day and went on the search for dinner, we found a street of people selling freshly caught fish and lobster and decided if we were spending £30 for dinner anyway we might as well take advantage of the cheap local seafood and go fancy with lobster!

The next day we both went on trips, Grace went scuba diving and I went on a trip to Santa Fe island, only a few of the islands here you are allowed to visit alone the rest you need to book trips which range from $100-$150 a day. Our boat consisted of me, a English/German couple and a family of 5 Argentinians and a guide in her 20’s on the way to the island she was chatting to us about growing up here, how you are only allowed to be a permanent resident of the islands after marrying in or having a required job and living here for 10 years, to try and avoid over population, she was also pointing out large groups of fish and different species of rays swimming alongside the boat and even jumping out of the water. Once we got to the island we had an hour of bird watching and learning about them and which ones are unique to the Galapagos, it wasn’t hard to spot the birds as they were absolutely everywhere and were even diving into the water catching fish in front of us, I felt like I was in a documentary, we even saw the famous blue footed boobies.

Next we got to snorkel in two spots off of the island, it was incredible! The best snorkeling I have ever done in my life, the water was so thick with life, I was scared to swim incase I hit something, the water was just so packed and all of the fish were beautiful colours and in big schools. We saw a billion different types of fish, eels, crabs and several different types of star fish. We also got to see marine iguanas, iguanas that have adapted to fish and can hold their breath and fish underwater for 30 minutes! My favourite part of the day was the sea lions, they are just so friendly here, you’re not allowed to approach them but as soon as they see you in the water they come over and swim all around you doing loops and jumping in and out of the water, our guide showed us that they love it when you blow bubbles and at one point I blew I bunch of bubbles to find my self nose to nose with a sea lion once they’d cleared only for it to speed off again, for such clumsy animals above land they sure are speedy and agile in the water!

After several hours hours of snorkeling we were all knackered especially our guide, as it turned out none of the five Argentinians who had signed up for a snorkeling trip spotted the potential floor in the fact none of them could swim. So our pour guide had to pull them all along in floats while trying to point out all the different species of fish. She thankfully got a sit down as the captain of the boat took us fishing and explained how they fish here only with lines in attempt to reduce the impact on the environment. We then had some lovely barbequed fish and rice for lunch.

Next we headed on to a tiny nearby uninhabited island, where our guide showed us all of the different plants and animals, and I felt the softest sand I’ve ever sat on, apparently the product of a lot of parrot fish poo! They grind down and eat rocks, dead coral and sand to try and absorb algae, giving out a fine dust as their waste products, so not only are they amazingly colourful beautiful fish but they also create lovely beaches! We also saw a lot of lava lizards and some baby rays in the water, our guide was hoping we’d see turtles as the beach is one they come to to be cleaned by other fish but unfortunately there were none about. We headed back to Santa Cruz and what do you know in the harbour there were turtles! So we got to see them after all, we also got to see lot of tiny black tip sharks. In the evening we went to visit the only brewery on the Galapagos with the couple I had met on the boat trip, and they also sent me some photos they had taken on the trip as Grace had my waterproof camera on her trip, so that’s why the photo look a lot nicer than my normal ‘point and hope for the best’ blog photos!

The next day we headed to the Darwin research center, here they research the species on the island and their genetic make up, they also do a lot to combat and educate people on the ecological problems on the island such as invasive species. People bring cats and dogs which often eat animals, blackberry bushes aren’t native to the area and are much more aggressive than indigenous plants and have already killed 99% of the Scalesia forests on the islands, there are also fly’s that lay their eggs in nests to each hatchlings, even barreling against eruptions, which on some islands nearly wiped out certain species. They spend a lot of the breading native species or collecting eggs and rearing them until they are big enough to have a good chance at survival when released into the wild. So we spent the day reading about the work they do and cooing over baby tortoises! In the afternoon we got the ferry to Isla Isabella where we would spend our last few days and booked a trip for the next day.

The next day we decided to go on another snorkeling trip as Grace was a bit gutted she’d missed the last one. This the we would be snorkeling through some small open top volcanic tunnels, this trip was $95 but not as good as the last one, we only snorkeled in one place, most of the trip was getting there. The water in the Galapagos is also very cold, hence why it has so much life in it, so to snorkel you need a thick wetsuit, (don’t worry there are no photos of me in a wetsuit in case you’re reading this while eating!) But the ones they gave us on this trip were really thin for the temperature, only 2mm, so poor Grace, who doesn’t have the extra bit of insulation I do, had to get out after 15 minutes as she was too cold. But I made sure to take lots of photos for her! We saw a lot more large scale stuff this time, there were turtles everywhere, several rays, a large sea horse and even sharks! Okay they were only about the length of your arm but when the guide said not to move to much incase we woke them I followed that instruction to the tee! After that we headed onto some tunnels where the bridges/roofs were still intact to have a look at the nesting sites of some blue footed boobies, it was really surreal scenery like the set of a different planet on doctor who or something. We saw a few chicks, one of which took a liking to Grace and came up right close to inspect her.

On our final day we couldn’t book a trip as we needed to get a ferry back to the island closest to the airport and the last one left at 3pm, so we decided as it was a nice day to just sit on the beautiful beach by the ferry terminal and have a swim. But this actually turned out to be my favourite day, not only was it free, always a big plus for me! But we ended up spending the day swimming with some super playful sea lion pups, they came over to investigate as soon as we sat down on the beach, and were then excitedly speeding about in the water as soon as we went for a swim, it was so much fun playing with them, we were no where near as fast as them in the water and they swam circles around us, literally! We also saw some more tiny sharks in the shallows although I didn’t follow them too closely! It was an absolutly beautiful day and a great end to our short trip!

Keep you updated on what we get up to next.

Lots of love,

Alice x

We awoke in Baños to a horrible hangover and a lot of noise, there was a huge festival in the town (of course there was on the day we were hung over!). We decided to go explore, we weren’t sure what exactly they were celebrating, but boy were they enthusiastic about it! People were dancing traditional dances in traditional dress which was really entertaining to watch and the crowd were shouting and banging along to the loud music, which was a lot less fun for our headaches! But we soldiered on and actually had a really fun time, the locals seemed to enjoy us joining in, especially our friend Scott who is a really tall, very blond Australian who is so pale he’s almost translucent, the locals were fascinated by him wherever he went there were stares and eyes following and being the nice supportive friends we are, we obviously bullied him about it relentlessly, trying to charge people for photos with him.

We joined in the festivities and met a few local people through our friend Scott, he’s a musician (although he refuses to play wonder wall…) and has been playing guitar in local venues, where we get dragged along to meet everyone afterwards, normally getting evil stares from what ever group of girls happen to be swooning over him that particular day and afterwards we spend a lot of time taking the piss out of him until his ego returns to a normal size. We went out with some Ecuadorians he knew and had a fun night drinking and partying with them, me and Grace brought out our amazing beer pong skills out of retirement, along with our not so amazing salsa/dancing skills. Again we went to bed far to late and drank far to much, which has started to become a theme this week, I blame hanging around with musicians!

After a morning nursing our hang overs we made the assent to a high point overlooking Baños called the end of the world, there they have these huge swings the swing out over the edge of the mountain, they were absolutely terrifying! I played it cool and got in the swing and almost fooled myself I wasn’t scared until I went out at speed and let out a huge scream! A rookie mistake as Grace and Scott smelt my fear and kept pushing me higher and higher! We also had a race on some zip lines which was super fun until we hit the end of the line and nearly got thrown off.

We spent the next day organising our trip to the Galapagos Islands, as all we had so far were our flights, when our accomodation was sorted we booked a bus to Montañita on the coast where we planed to relax for the three days before our flights. The hostel we’re staying in here is right on the beach and has two donkeys and a horse that wander around like dogs, they come over for a fuss and you have to be careful they don’t eat your lunch or in one guys case, your box of cigarettes. The weather hasn’t been so great here, quite overcast and the sea has been really choppy but luckily Scott knows how to surf and offered to teach us while the waves were big, I was dubious after my last attempt, which consisted mainly of me being beaten up by the board and waves, but he was actually a really good teacher and I got more out of the first 10 minutes with him that the whole three hours we had before, and this time only cost me a few beers! (And a lot of being laughed at) but I managed to stand up this time, and didn’t have half as many bruises afterwards!

The next day was our last by the coast and as we were leaving that evening and everyone was going to miss us so much, they decided to throw a pool party for us. Someone mentioned they do that every week but we know it was for us really! It was a lot of fun and they had a surf competition in the pool which consisted of one representative of each nation jumping on a surf board and whoever went the furthest without falling in won. I was going to volunteer for the UK as I had now stood on a board once and was pretty much a professional, but apparently some guy had lived in Australia for two years and nipped me to be representative, he did not win which I think says it all really.

The party finished around four and we packed and headed via bus to a home stay near the airport, which is where I’m writing this now, although ‘home stay’ is overstating the niceness to be honest, I’ve seen better conditions in prisons! But it’s only for one night and tomorrow we fly to the Galapagos Islands!

I’ll keep you updated on what we get up to there!!!!

Lots of love,

Alice x

After an uneventful night in Quito, we headed to Cotapaxi a beautiful national reserve around Cotopaxi volcano in the Andes, a minivan took us across the country side and up some windy paths onto the foot of the volcano. It’s very pretty and picturesque here, surrounded by lush green volcanoes in the distance and greenery all around us, with horses, cows, lamas and some super cute hostel dogs wandering about.

On the first day we arrived we went on a waterfall hike, it was only two hours and to be honest after our amazing waterfall hike in Mindo the waterfalls here were a bit underwhelming, but it was still a fun walk and we had to do a bit of rock climbing to get across deeper parts of the river which was fun if not a little terrifying.

On Thursday we decided to go horse riding, it was a bit costly at $35US per person but the scenery is amazing here (I feel like I’m in a Windows desktop!) and it was a fun way to explore the national park. We arrived at the horse riding place about 9:30am and we were all put on horses, of course I was given the grumpy old horse of the group, as soon as I got on he cranked his neck round to look at me and I’d never realised until then it was possible for a horse to look disapproving, he immediately began to wander off and ignored all of my attempts to control or lead him with the reins, he would just yank them out of my hands and continue doing whatever he wanted. I soon discovered it was futile to resist and I was actually a passive participant in this journey, we would go whichever way the horse wanted, which normally involved a much harder route, a gentle meandering path down a steep hill? Nope straight down the middle, with me clinging on for dear life, hoping we didn’t hit other horses on the way down, a concern my horse didn’t share. My horse didn’t like the other horses, he insisted on being up the front, despite being the slowest horse, and when another horse tried to overtake? It would barge into them and try and bite them, I felt like I was in the horse version of dodgems! At one point my horse decided, on a thin path on the side of a very steep hill with a river and a drop on one side, that he had had enough of the horse infront and would overtake at speed, with little regard for both of our lives. Although that was one of the few times my horse actually went fast, it would normally just plod along miles behind the other horses and refuse any command to go faster, at one point there was an open grass plain where all the other horses ran full speed across, but despite my best efforts my horse went so slow we almost stoped and the others had to wait 10 minutes for us. Although on the plus side the slow ride did mean I got to appreciate the national park we were riding in, it was absolutely stunning, I felt like I was in a painting surrounded by mountains and cristal clear rivers (that my horse would stop refuse to cross), the ride was 3 hours and we went across valleys, beautiful yellow and green grasslands, rocky cliffs it was amazing, I tried to get photos but I could only manage it on the open plains where the other horses where far enough away that I didn’t have to worry about my horse attacking them or it deciding to head down a steep cliff suddenly. At the end of the ride my horse finally decided to run, when he realised he was close to home (just when I started to take a video the little shit), although ‘run’ is a generous term, it was barely faster than walking, but somehow much more uncomfortable. Instead of normal stirrups it had these cloggs that my feet barely fit in so I had to stand on tiptoes everytime the horse ‘ran’, I couldn’t hold the rhythm in tiptoes and kept bashing into the horse, I now have a very bruised bum! Although Grace faired a bit worse and actually slid of her horse, luckily her horse wasn’t a dick and when it felt her start to slide it slowed down so she was fine. Despite the grumpy horse and tiny stirrups I still had an amazing time horse riding and we thoroughly enjoyed the three hours, Grace slightly more as she got a lot of enjoyment laughing at me trying to control my horse and being dragged about, and we both had a good laugh at eachother when we got of the horses but still walked around bow legged as if the horse were still under us for half an hour.

On Friday we decided to do the walk up thePasochoa volcano, it takes about 7 hours and you get up to a height of aroind 4200m. I was really nervous about it as for some reason I have really bad anxiety about hiking in groups, before we even set off I was shaking, when we measured my stress level on an app I had a resting heart rate of 110bpm, only 85% oxygen blood levels as I was shallow breathing and a extremely high stress level, I don’t know why I get so anxious but it really screwed me! 40 minutes into the walk I was breathing heavily and my lips started turning blue from lack of oxygen which was ridiculous because the start of the walk was the exact same route we had taken on Wednesday to see the waterfalls and then I wasn’t even puffed, we’ve also done much harder hikes on our own and I’ve been fine. I find it really frustrating that I wanted to do the hike and physically I was able to, but mentally I had made my body so anxious that I couldn’t cope. I couldn’t breathe properly but I was anxious that if I slowed down the whole group would notice and be waiting on me which was stupid because I was at the front of the group and there were people much slower than me, but I stressed out about it so much I started to have a panic attack, I felt so stupid shaking and crying out of nowhere, I just wanted to leave but felt too pathetic to explain I got anxious about being in a group. Grace bless her came up with the idea to say I had asthma, which worked great until the guide mentioned she carried and emergency asthma pump, which really threw a spanner in the works! We tried to bluff that I can only have one really rare specific type of asthma pump, which I couldn’t describe and for some reason didn’t carry it with me, for some reason this didn’t give her the impression that we were lying and just wanted to leave and she suggested we could just slow down as we were going faster than groups normally did anyway, and we could stop every 30 minutes instead of every hour, which was super nice of her and didn’t sound such a bad idea but then people started to ask why we had slowed down which started my anxiety off all over again so we decided to just tell the truth like mature adults and then run the hell away from there… We ended up having a really lovely relaxing day reading our books in the beautiful surroundings, but it worries me how I’m going to get over this anxiety as me and Grace both really enjoy hiking on our own and want to do the rainbow mountain hikes in Peru but I’m not sure how I’ll fair as they’re all done in guided groups, I guess time will tell.

We left Cotapaxi at 3pm on Friday for a ‘two hour’ journey to our next destination, Baños. An hour into the journey our driver droped us off on a motorway and told us it was just a bit further on a bus, after several creepy offers from lorry drivers to hitch hike with them (no thanks I like not being murdered), we finally flagged down a bus and hoped it was heading in the right direction. Two hours later we again got dropped on the side of a motorway and luckily some nice locals noticed we were white and guessed we would be heading to Baños and pointed us onto another bus as it slowed up along the motorway. We got our bags onto the bus and then it sped up and we had to run after it and jump on and this time we finally made it to Baños around 8pm. We were ready for an early night but we ended up seeing a kiwi guy we had met a few hostels back and he invited us for dinner with everyone we knew from the previous hostel so we had some lovely pizza and to much alcohol! I’m writing this now as Grace has yet muster the energy to move this afternoon and after she put up with me terribly hung over after her birthday I think it’s only fair I let her spend the day in bed without judgement!

Hopefully tomorrow we’ll get up to something fun.

I’ll keep you updated,

Lots of love,

Alice x

Ps. We here’s were we ate last night, it made us chuckle more than two adults should!

In the past few days we have been in Mindo a small town about 2 hours northwest of Quito. The main attraction here is the cloud forest, as the name probably gives away it’s a tropical forest surrounded by low level clouds. Our hostel here is tucked away in the forest and pretty quiet, there was hardly anyone else in the hostel, which was great as we got a dorm to ourselves and also our poor livers got a break for once. Weirdly, although it’s on the edge of a forest outside of a rural little town, the hostel had the best shower we’ve had in a while, it has both hot water and nice pressure! We are normally blasted by cold water or have warm water that dribbles out of what can at best be described as a modified hose pipe (and that’s still a luxury to be honest). The other attraction of the hostel, second only to the shower, is the beautiful surroundings, were right next to a river and the edge of the forest and just sitting eating breakfast we’re surrounded by hummingbirds, butterflies, capybaras and other nature things I don’t know the names for!

It was quite rainy on the afternoon we arrived so we watched a bit of Netflix and had an early night. On Monday we got up early ready to head into the cloud forest, we had read about a trek around waterfalls in the forest that was meant to be beautiful, it was supposed to take about 6 hours in total so we stocked up on snacks and headed the cable car you have to take to get into the trek starting point.

The cable car was a tiny cart that fit 4 people in, connected to a peak in the forest by a thin cable dangling above a vast forest. I was quite terrified to get in, as anyone who knows me will know I have a fear of heights, well specifically being high on things that feel unstable, which I would say is quite a fair and rational fear! But as the cable car cost us $10US(!! A fortune in Ecuador, the 2h30 bus to Mindo only cost $3US) I told myself at least some of that would be put into maintaining a good cable car I got in, we were also joined by a super cute dog, who obviously regularly made the journey as she knew when we were arriving and got up.

The dog (the guides had named her Poco – which means small) decided to come on our trek with us, the trek consisted of 7 waterfalls of various sizes and it was actually really useful having poco with us as she was obviously a seasoned pro and knew the way, even if she did make us feel a bit inadequate as she ran up the steep bits and then came back down trying to round us up when we were to slow for her! The forest was beautiful we saw lots or orchids, cool bugs and hummingbirds and the trek itself was really enjoyable, we were mostly up and down trails in the forest, although a bit of rock climbing and crossing rivers was involved. I got to use my Dora the explorer walking boots, after weeks of ridicule for bringing them, they showed their worth when they stopped me skidding on slippery paths and at one point when a misplaced foot ended up in the river I discovered they were also waterproof! Which was really useful until the next time when my whole foot went in up to my shin, turns out water can still get in the top when you fully submerge them! Luckily they also dry quickly….

Safe to say the hike was knackering, we walked back to our hostel covered in sweat and headed straight for some food, a traditional Ecuadorian plate of rice, beans and meat and then had an embarrassingly early night!

The next morning after a solid 11 hours sleep we booked onto a chocolate tour, it was a bit overpriced at $10US per person but I really enjoyed it, they took us through the history of chocolate and the whole process of manufacturing it, which they did on site. Showing us the Cacao tree and fruit that chocolate comes from, the cocoa seeds that chocolate is made from are surrounded by a fleshy pulp inside the fruit, which was news to me! We even got the try the fruit, you put the seeds in your mouth and suck the pulp off, it has the texture of pumpkin but tastes like passion fruit and lychee.

They told us that traditionally the seeds and pulp are fermented with bananas, this kills the stem inside of the seed which is what gives dark chocolate it’s bitter taste, modern chocolate companies don’t do this as it takes too much time. After fermentation the pulp is separated (the company here uses it to make BBQ sauce!) And the seeds dried out in the sun, once dried the seeds are crushed up, and the inside is melted down to make a concentrated Coco paste, (the company uses the shells to make Coco tea). We got to try the paste, it smells delicious but doesn’t taste so good, at this point the paste is either crushed to sperate out the liquid and dry parts to Coco butter and Coco Powder or sugar is added to kill the acidity and make chocolate. We then got to try lots of samples of dark chocolate, they consider milk chocolate or indeed anything less than 77% concentrated to not be real chocolate but a western butchering of it. I’m not a fan of dark chocolate but the samples we tried were a lot nicer than dark chocolate I’ve had before and you could really taste the difference the fermentation made, it was hardly bitter at all! But most of all I enjoyed the brownies they made with the chocolate, some of the best I’ve ever had!

After filling up on chocolate we made a run for the bus and just caught it, getting back to Quito in the afternoon, we’re staying here the night before heading to Cotopaxi in the morning.

I’ll keep you updated on what we get up to there.

Lots of love,

Alice x

Our flight from Santa Marta took us to Bogota where we stayed one night before our flight to Ecuador the next afternoon. In the afternoon we headed up on the escalators to Mont Montserrat viewing point, we’d already been when we first got to Bogota but the girls hadn’t so we took the trip again, although it was so cloudy at the top we hardly saw anything. That evening was our last night in Colombia and also our last night with Alexa and Laura so we decided to out for an early birthday meal for Grace’s birthday. We also met up with one of our friends from the Spanish school who was in Bogota and after the meal decided to go for drinks and then ended up in a club where they had a ‘Gringo Tuesday’ night which meant the music wasn’t reggaeton for once, which was a nice change. We ended up having a really fun night and even bumped into some people we met in Mexico. The best part was after a great night out we were still tucked up in bed by midnight as the club opened so early.

We flew to Quito the next afternoon, it’s cheaper to cross by land but we had heard the the boarder was chaos due to a huge influx of Venezuelan refugees fleeing from the civil war, so we forked out a bit more and got a flight. Quito is the world’s highest capital at 2850m and we really feel it here, it’s always worse when you fly in as your body has less time to adjust, so we spent the first afternoon just adjusting and meeting people in our hostel. On Thursday it was Grace’s official birthday I had decorated her bed with banners and she started off the day with a beer and a cake for breakfast which she enjoyed and a chorus of happy birthday which she didn’t!

We decided to join some people we met at the hostel and take the cable car ride up to a viewing point on Pichincha Volcano, the cable car ride is about 10 minutes and rises 2237m, it’s actually one of the highest cable cars in the world and at the top reaches just under 4000m high. We saw some stunning views of Quito at the top, we hadn’t realised how big the city was until it was laid out Infront of us, we also really felt the altitude there, I ran up some steps to quickly and got light headed and dizzy and after walking around for an hour all of our hands started to get pins and needles from the lack of oxygen, so after a few more photos we headed down.

On the lift down we noticed a fairground not to far away and decided to check it out, we had a great afternoon going on the dodgems and rides, although it was a little more stomach churning at altitude!

In the evening we decided to go out partying and fortunately the hostel had a night out already planned with a party bus that took a large group of us to a club, we had a lot of fun although we all learnt the hard way that altitude makes you get drunk more easily due to the lack of oxygen (or at least this is the excuse we’re all sticking too!) and as I write this I am suffering from the worst hang over I think I’ve ever had. (Sorry if the blog is sub par because of this, but honestly it’s a miracle I haven’t killed of the brain cells containing these memories!)

But so far we’ve had a great time here and Grace has had a fun birthday (I think) apart from having to look after one slightly too drunk cousin…

Keep you updated on what we get up to next here.

Lots of love,

Alice x

The last four days we’ve spent chilling by the sea, mostly because it’s hard to do anything in this heat and humidity but also because it’s the last few days in Colombia for the two girls we’ve been traveling with for the last month and they wanted to work on their tans before they head back to England.

So most of our days have been spent spent sunbathing and our evenings dancing on the beach and drinking too many cocktails. Now it’s September were starting to notice that it’s the rainy season a bit more, every other evening there is a downpour that lasts for an hour or two, unfortunately the hostel dog doesn’t like the storms so if you forget to put your mosquito net down you sometimes end up with a bed smelling of wet dog. Although on the positive side if you’re not caught in the storms and are tucked up inside dry and warm they’re really fun to watch, the other night we go to see a really cool thunder storm out to sea, it was lighting up the sky as if it was daylight.

We also got to see some really cool bioluminescent phytoplankton in the evenings if you splashed around in the wet sand it would all light up, which was especially entertaining on the drunken walk back to the hostel after parties on the beach.

This afternoon we headed back to Santa Marta as we have to catch our flights to Bogota here soon, we got a bus from the coast to Cartagena and I ended up sat next to a woman and a super cute toddler who was fascinated by me, he kept was staring and giggling every time I smiled at him, he kept stroking my skin and trying to play with my hair, probably not used to gringos yet.

When we were about 20 minutes from our hostel the bus got stuck in traffic and we saw two police motorbikes pass us, we waited for about 10 minutes and then saw people running past the bus shouting. Suddenly the lorry in the lane next to us reversed backwards at about 50mph and slammed into the taxi behind it crushing it into another lorry. People started screaming and we heard gun shots, we all threw ourselves down on the bus floor as the noise got closer. It was horrible, I was trying to help the woman get her toddler underneath us to protect him, he was still smiling at me it was so heart breaking. There was a bang on the side of the bus and the driver of the bus decided to get the hell out of there, he sped us down the side of the road into a steep gutter to try and get around the other cars infront of us, the windshields were smashed and we didn’t look to see the fate of the drivers. The bus started to tip so me and Grace shouted to everyone to crawl on the floor to the other side of the bus to balance it, we managed to keep it stable and get passed the unmoving cars and then sped off. Were still not sure why it happened or what it was about, were just glad to be back to relative safety. It’s really weird knowing all of these things are regular occurrences here but we’ve just been so sheltered in our travelers bubble that you start to feel distant and unattached from it, it was a scary reminder of the reality here, we could have easily have been in the taxi that was crushed or have gotten off the bus and had a very different outcome.

Its a shame to have such a shocking end to a wonderful trip here.

I’ll keep you updated on out next movements,

Lots of love,

Alice x

Sorry it’s been a while since the last post we’ve been in some more rural areas recently and have had either no internet or its been very patchy.

So we arrived in Taganga, a small little fishing village, on Wednesday the 29th. It was pretty and had hardly any non-Colombian tourists, we spent the day walking around the small village as we waited for Grace to do her scuba dive, apparently Taganga can be quite dangerous and that’s why there are so few tourists but we found everyone friendly and helpful and even followed some suggestions to visit a nicer beach a 20min coastal walk away. After Grace finished her dive she spoke to her instructor who suggested she get her advanced diving certificate before she dives in the Galapagos Islands as she would be able to do much more interesting dives there, after asking if it was okay with us she agreed to another 2 days diving and training for her advanced open water license. The rest of us (me and the two girls we’ve been traveling Colombia with, Alexa and Laura) spent the two days on the beach snorkeling and going for walks.

Alexa and Laura had heard about a really cool hostel on the middle of nowhere that was supposed to be amazing to stay at and stunningly beautiful so we decided to head there as they were also having a big party over the weekend. It was a bit of a trek to the hostel (El Rio hostel) but once we got there it was amazing, it was beautiful and set right next to a river, there were lots of communal areas and everyone’s meals were served on communal benches and there was no internet so it was super social and we met lots of people.

On Saturday night they had a party with djs flown in from Europe, although it was mostly techno music which I’m not a fan of it was still lots of fun and ended up going on until 9am the next morning. We spent most of Tuesday hung over with a big group of us sat in the shade, although it was beautiful at El Rio, like most of the North West coast it’s so humid! Which was not appreciated while hungover. On Sunday evening we just had a chilled night sat around chatting.

Monday we went on a lazy river tour, it was so cool we spent an hour or so trekking up the side of the river, it was actually a really nice walk except for the fact we did it barefoot and holding a massive rubber ring. We then sat in the rings and floated back downstream, stopping at various points along the way to jump off rocks and swing in on rope swings. The experience was also made 10x more fun as the hostel dogs decided to follow us on the trekk and then swim down with us. I don’t have any photos of this as I’m not rich enough to own a waterproof phone and someone (looking at you Grace) broke my waterproof camera, but here’s a photo of the dogs on my pillow, which I was not amused by but everyone else was! Update – here are some photos someone with a GoPro took.

On Tuesday we went to Tyrona National park and I got to feel like a wilderness explorer. We decided to stay overnight at the campsite furthest from the entrance, which meant a 3 hour hike across several types of terrain, It felt like a training montage from a film, except we did it in 38°C heat, so we looked a lot sweatier than they tend to in the movies. We went through tropical forests, dirt trails, rocky outcrops, beaches and mangroves. It was hard work but a very enjoyable walk, we saw two types of monkeys, a capybara and several huge trails of red ants. We spent the rest of the day on a beautiful beach, after 8pm the electric goes out and we were so knackered that we went straight to bed. Well to hammock, the only sleeping options there are tents or hammocks on the beach and we couldn’t bare the thought of being in a tent in this humidity. We opted for hammocks, doused ourselves in bug spray and wore long trousers and long sleeve tops and went to bed, safe to say it’s not the most comfortable nights sleep I’ve had and I still managed to wake up with lots of bites but it wasn’t awful, l a dip in the sea the that morning made it worth it.

About 10am we made our way back, on a not so great night sleep it seemed a lot harder, by the time we reached the entrance we were completely soaked through with sweat and looking thoroughly knackered, the poor people entering the park seemed to reconsider their hiking plans a bit when they saw the state of us. But we made it in good time and moved on to a hostel by the sea. I think we’re going to spend our last few free days in Colombia here before we make our way to Bogota to catch our flights out of here.

As always I’ll keep you updated (internet permitting).

Lots of love,

Alice x