Today I was once again up early ready for my mission out to Quilotoa Laguna. After yesterday's crazy amount of walking I am not feeling the best today and feel my cold coming back. I had an unusual breakfast today that my host family had made for me - various mashed up cereals, grains, sugar and chocolate made into a warm drink - was so so tasty but unfortunately gave me the s***s. At 7:30am we headed in to the city to drop Cami's 18 month old sister off at dayca...

Today I am going to attempt to climb Cotopaxi Volcano one of Ecuador's primary tourist attractions. As I will be doing on the cheap I need to catch a bus heading towards Quito, get off at the turn off for Cotopaxi and then hitchhike in 40km to the base camp - from here I will hike 1.5 hours to the refuge (hopefully if the snow isn't too thick). Luckily my hosts had some thick jackets, beanies and gloves to lend me otherwise for sure I would freeze. My hosts dropp...

It was back on the road today after 6 freezing but amazing days in Otavalo. I met some wonderful people Paul, Dudu the owners who let me stay in their hostel The Flying Donkey for free in return for some designs and paintings and Juan the crazy Argentinian, the French guy, Adriana the Couchsurfer from Quito and Luisiana my host from Quito that I never got to stay with. The festivals were definitely the highlight of my stay along with Otavalo being my first time i...

After only about 2 hours sleep I dragged myself out of bed in the hope that myself and the other Couchsurfers I had met would make use of the day and go hiking around the base of one of the volcanos. Unfortunately they had only arrived home from the sun festival at 6:30am and would not be waking until well after lunch time. I decided to come up with a new art design for one of the other dorm rooms - A silhouette of an old man playing a trumpet under an old dingey...

This morning I decided to get up a little earlier and check out the famous Otavalo Saturday Market. At about 9am I headed down to the market square and wow what a maze of people, venders, handicrafts, foods etc. A lot of the vendors were only just setting up but that didn't matter they were all selling the same kind of stuff. On Saturday the market doesn't just occupy the main square but all the streets in and around and leading up to it. Loads of tourists were w...