Huaraz is a fairly big town high in the Cordilleras surrounded by some stunning scenery. We arrived early and booked ourselves onto a day trip to the Lagunas de Llanganuco. It went via a couple of towns including Carhuaz famous for flavoured ice creams - we tried maracuya, pisco sour and cerveza. Not great! We also stopped at Yungay. A big earthquake in 1970 caused an avalanche on the biggest mountain in the Cordillera Blanca (Huascaran at 6768 meters). It measur...

Trujillo, the 3rd biggest city in Peru, is really nice with plenty to see and do in the area. Coming in off the night bus we were tired but the wasnt a cloud in the sky so we wandered around the city taking in the main square and the colourful colonial buildings and ornate windows. In the afternoon we did a trip to some nearby pre inca ruins. Huaca Arco Iris (or Dragon) was a boring mud building with a restored reliefs. Chan Chan, the main pre inca ruin from th...

We had been fairly apprehensive ahead of the border crossing into Peru so instead of heading directly there went from Cuenca to Machala on the coast where you could pick up a bus that would actually take you over the border rather than ditching you in the vile, smelly sess pit of Huaquillas. We got up at the crack of dawn and were at the bus station in Cuenca for 6:20am. However with best laid plans and all that we still had to wait till 7am for a bus. 4 hours la...

We left Baños in torrential rain and headed back towards Ambato. We were ditched on the side of the Pan American highway where we picked up a bus to Cuenca. It took around 7 hours but unlike the buses we had been on up till now, this one was nice. That evening (22nd) was the first night of the Corpus Christi religious celebrations and we were lucky enough to be able to watch an amazing procession at about 7pm from the balcony of the restaurant we were in. A band...

From Latacunga we had to head to Ambato and took a Puyo bound bus to Baños. Baños is a lovely little town and the adventure capital of Ecuador. With so much to choose from we decided to stay for 4 nights! Monday morning and our first full day in town meant a half day white water rafting on the Pastaza river. Simone had opted out of the trip and with plenty of rain the water was high so we covered the grade 3, 14km run through secondary rainforest in about an h...