Alicia: After saying farewell finally to Ecuador after the crazy flight changes, we arrived in Santiago on thurs 16th Aug in the afternoon, much later than planned. First impressions? Looked like a European capital city except it was surrounded on two sides by huge snow-capped mountains. Was beautiful, but cold! And despite having been in South America 4months and got on fine, we found we couldn't understand what anyone was saying- Chilean Spanish is really slurr...

Mike: Alicia, Sandra and myself headed up to Riobamba which is a small town in the middle of the country. We hadn't heard great things about the city itself, but we had a trip planned from there. In the run up to getting this sorted, I had been emailing the company and very confusing it was too. They didn't seem to understand my questions or answered un-asked questions. They even sent Sandra numerous odd ones (and she writes in perfect spanish!). All of whic...

Alicia: After our lovely time in Puerto Lopez and having had our fill of Boobies and Ballenas (whales) we left Sandra to travel up to Cuenca to meet Christina and her friend, while we travelled up to the hippy hot bed that is Montanita. The guidebook said we would 'be hit by the smell of marijuana and the sight of barefooted hippies' when we got of the bus, but we arrived to a huge built up beach resort with dozens of happy hour bars, street vendors with an array...

La Hesperia: our home for six awesome weeks,Esperie, KM 58 Santo Domingo-Aloag Route,Pichincha ProvinceEquadorAlicia: We arrived 18th June with two other volunteers- Susan (Edinburgh) and Sofia (Canada). As Susan had luckily booked a taxi we were able to get a lift all the way to the reserve. When we arrived there were three other volunteers - Sebastian, Tanja and Bjorn all from Germany. The reserve was owned by Juan Pablo and his wife Alexandra, and they lived t...

La Hesperia: our home for six awesome weeks,Esperie, KM 58 Santo Domingo-Aloag Route,Pichincha ProvinceEquadorAlicia: We arrived 18th June with two other volunteers- Susan (Edinburgh) and Sofia (Canada). As Susan had luckily booked a taxi we were able to get a lift all the way to the reserve. When we arrived there were three other volunteers - Sebastian, Tanja and Bjorn all from Germany. The reserve was owned by Juan Pablo and his wife Alexandra, and they lived t...