We finally made it to Rio on 16th February, that night it was the final main parade in the Sambadrome, we´d thought we couldn´t get tickets but we ended up getting some through our hotel but that wasn´t until later on that night at 8.30pm so we decided to go for a walk around in the afternoon. We were on a mission to find somewhere that was playng the Preston North End v Man U game later on that day, Casson had a North End T Shirt on and we´d literally walke...

Before leaving the Galapagos we´d decided to blow the budget and fly to Rio for the last 3 days of Carnival, it was pretty expensive but we just couldn´t resist going. We booked the flights on line and the plan was to fly from the Galapagos to Ecuador on 14th February and then that evening fly out to Rio. Unfortunately the night before we were due to leave we got an email saying there was a problem with the flights and we had to ring to confirm some details. T...

We arrived at the Galapagos airport which is on a tiny little island called Baltra, you then have to take a bus to the ferry, then take the ferry which is about 10 mins if that and then either get another bus or a taxi into town. When we arrived onto Santa Cruz we planned to get the bus but the taxi drivers were saying that a) it had stopped running and b) it was dearer than we had thought. All of which was complete lies, luckily we met a couple of Canadian guys ...

So after getting back from Colca Canyon at 5pm we headed straight to our hostel for a quick shower and to grab our bags as we were heading out that night to start our extra long journey to Ecuador. Our bus was at 7pm and the company who we had bought our tickets from did transfers and were picking us up at 6.15pm. By 6.30pm they still hadn´t arrived so we asked the hostel to phone them for us and their resposne was we had to make our way to the office for our t...

Our bus to take us to Colca Canyon picked us up at 3.30am!!!!! Needless to say we´d both fallen asleep pretty much as soon as we got on there. The day before in Arequipa was boiling, so much so that for the first time this trip I actually wore a dress (up until this point i´d had trousers on everyday) so when I woke up on the bus I couldn´t believe we were in the mountains surrounded by snow, it looked amazing! After about 4 hours we stopped for breakfast whi...