Right, i realise i´ve been slightly slow in updating this but im not dead, don´t worry, just a bit lazy. You´ll be glad to know my own blog/diary attempt failed miserably as well. after six days i´d just written about my night out on brick lane, the night before i left,so i decided to stop there. brick lane was very good though.

I´m in cusco now as the header says. its nice to look at but not much more, so i´ve made do with sitting in a few bars watching the champions league and uefa cup. im getting a bit bored with these towns which are nice to look at but dont have much to do. although to be fair cusco has loads to do around the place, i.e inca trail, human catapulting and the worlds 3rds highest bungee jump, all of which i plan to do. The inca trails starts tomorrow at 4.45 am, so its a bit like getting up for work.

Up until now i´ve spent 4 weeks in ecuador and arrived in peru early sunday morning, about 1am.

Ecuador was quality, exceeded all expectations, although Quito was nothing special. The highlight was going to the Quito derby which ended 2-1 to the away side and had 3 sendings off, pretty tasty. And it was only 6 dollars a ticket and the beers were $1.50, bargain.

In between weekends in Quito I went to the galapogos. Surprisingly, this was also quality. The highlights were snorkelling with turtles, rays, eels, sea lions and hammerhead sharks, apart from when i accidently swam into a sealion, although it was pretty cool about it and didn´t give me any bother. Also sitting on the deck of an evening, beer in hand watching the dolphins swim around the ship was pretty nice (beer in hand being the key component).

I took abit of a battering from the sun though, even after resorting to wearing factor 70 it still ruined me. I even went for the Sheikh look, with my towel covering my neck, quite amusing but id rather have not.

All the other people on the trip got ill at some point so the toilets were no go areas but i was the last man standing until the flight home, which was terrible. never been so happy for a number 2 to actually be a number 2.

Then it was off to cotapaxi, which until now has been my favourite place even though it was an effort to breath. The people i met there were sound and i ended up spending the next 2 and half weeks with two dutch guys from there and have plans to meet up with another few later in my trip. We stayed at a hostel run by the same ppl who ran the one is quito. very nice to say the least. i ended up spending 5 days there as it was so good, even though it was pretty expensive. The day usually started about 7:00 and then we did our activities until about 3, when it started to get tough. The next 6/7 hours were spent drinking in hammocks or by the fire and eating tea. Killer.

All the activites were class. On the first day we climbed up some nearby waterfalls and on the 2nd we climbed to the cotapaxi refuge and glacier which was about 5200 metres, so pretty high. Then we got to mountain bike downhill all the way back to the hostel, which is the best thing ive done so far, purely for the adrenaline. The roads werent really roads, just tracks and broken rocks. The first part had 16 hairpins, i only managed to overshoot one but we were allowed to go straight down the mountain for the most part which meant just cutting across the roads. All those years of cycling down bankfield none handed without the parents knowing obviuosly paid off.

The other activites i did were hiking up the volcano behind the hostel and then going down the scree on the backside of it for about 900 metres. it took us 4 hours to walk up and about 55 mins to walk/jump/run down. Then on the last day i did horseriding which was much better than i expected, mainly because i told them i was an experienced rider so i got a pretty reactive horse that bolted with the slighest of kicks.

The two dutch guys and me then went off to do the quilatoa loop over the weekend which is basically a road that loops round from latagunga, with a massive crater lake halfway round, which was formed by an eruption. it was a bit dissapointing as it just rained all saturday and still rained the next morning when we got up at 5.45 am to see the sunrise. We stayed in the worst hostel iv stayed in so far and it was freezing. Although it was pretty funny when we started making a fire to warm up and then some 7 year old kids came to help us by just pouring parafin into the stove and walked away.

We also had our first experiance of ecuadorian bus drivers who obviously model themselves on lewis hamilton. Similar size, similar colour, most of them have a little bit more hair but i doubt they´ve ever dated nicole scherzinger, but they do drive in the same mould. We were on the bus to Quilotoa along a road where we passed 8 graves and made me think twice about doing the Worlds most dangerous road (but im still going to do it. incidentally i found out today that the road built to make the WMDR less dangerous in now closed and all the traffic is back on the WMDR!), when another bus over took us on the outside going round a blind corner and then our bus driver lost control of his back right wheel, which nearly went over the job. I was thinking it was going to end like the Italian job, but we got there in the end. And we must have sounded like right puffs, being the only gringos on the bus as all the locals kept looking round as us everytime we made a noise and didnt seem to think the driver was doing anything wrong.

We then had a less eventful drive to banos. Banos is a haven for watersports and adrenaline activites which was perfect for me. We did quadbiking, which ended controversially with police involvement, canyoning and we cycled down the road to puyo which takes you down a massive valley going past and through a fair few waterfalls, along a road with a good 100 metre drop. Along the way two of us did the swing jump which is pretty well known around banos. its about a 40 metre drop and you just let yourself drop from the bridge with your arms out headfirst and swing back under the bridge. I was fine about it until i noticed everytime a bus or lorry went over it the bridge wobbled.

Banos also has some thermal baths which were very nice to unwind in after very long and mentally and physically strenous days. Life´s tough.

I then split up with the dutch guys for a few days and went to tena which is one of the best places for white waterafting in south america and is one of the last towns in ecuador before the amazon takes over. I got on a trip which went along class 5 rapids on the rio misahualli, setting off at 9am and getting back at 9.30pm, so it was definatly worth the 30 dollars. although i got battered by the mosquitoes on both my ankles and the marks have only just gone, over 2 weeks later. still it was quality, so cant really complain.

I then got on my first night bus of the trip, which was terrible. the bus was packed and there was an indigneous family standing in the aisle, the woman pushed right against me. she was also not the best smelling and had a bundle on her bag. I was trying to work out what was in it when two feet popped out of it, which slightly surprised me as i was thinking more something like potatoes, not a human.

I arrived in montanita at about 7 in the morning and met up with the dutch guys later that morning. Montanita is just a surf haven and was boiling so we spent most of the days 3 days there sitting in hammocks or on the beach with beers and cocktails. i tried surfing a few times and thought i was pretty good so made my way up to the north end of the beach where the big waves were but got anniliated by the first wave so made a quick exit and went back down to where the amatuers were.

After a few days of beach bumming it we went to cuenca, which is the best city iv been to so far, abit more european and just generally nicer. The highlight was walking into Deportivo Cuenca´s ground and walking onto the pitch watching the team train and we had a little kick about ourselves.

So this brought me upto 4 weeks of being away and by this time, accoridng to my itinery i was meant to have been in peru for just under a week. But ecuador was too good so i dont regret it. I managed to bag myself a cheap flight from tumbes to lima meaning I could leave cuenca and arrive in lima on the same day, instead of about 36 hours of coach journeys. I had only planned to go to mancora in northern peru which is a beach town so i wasnt missing much. everything else of interest seems to involve rocks and ruins, none of which you can climb up or down so i wasn´t too bothered. Macchu pichu and the inca trail will provide me with enough of that.

In lima theres not much to do so i made light work of it and just walked around miraflores which in no way mirrors the rest of lima, as its more like Beverly hills. I did a 15 minute paraglide over the cliffs which was pretty cool and then just watched the mans get beaten by bayern. I then made a trip to Huachachina, 5 hours south of peru, which is basically an oasis in the middle of the desert where you can to sand boarding and dune buggying. Like ecuador there is no health and safety so drivers just went mental over the dunes, getting air a fair few times. The sandboarding went from the beginners dune of 30 metres straight to the 100 metre dune, you went down both pretty damn quick althought the only downside is that you get sand literally everywhere and im still finding bits in different places even having washed at least once!

So hopefully ill update this a little bit more frequently than i have until now, although promises.

Hopefully your all sufficiently jealous
peace
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