10th Jan 2016Quito is a large city of around two and a half million people. The properties range from tiny one room shacks clinging to the side of hills that surround the outskirts, to many, many flats of various types and sizes from the very basic to the quite large, Spanish styles. The huge range of rich and poor is the same as in most parts of the world and although we travelled through a great deal of Quito on our travels, we personally didn't see any beg...

  GETTING THERE! (8th/9th)Be warned Miami airport IS without doubt the worst in the world for visiting travellers. From the gate where Virgin passengers disembark we walked for a mile to get to passport control, no exaggeration. Then queue for half an hour to begin the A.P.C.(automated passport control) Easy???? No! You then either get a 'Pass' receipt or a 'Fail' 90% Yes Ninety per cent fail at random, we were told so then you queue for 90 minu...

Well fans, the adventure begins! Journey from Teignmouth to Paddington 1st class in 1st class.Extended liquid lunch with The Davies very good.Problems getting from Heathrow to Premier Inn discussed in review, beware!!!!Now happily awaiting first flight to Miami before we head to Quito tomorrow and onward to Galapagos on Monday, where wifi will be few and far between.Will be in touch, whenever I can with many photos, no doubt.Speak again sometimep.s. Thank u Bery...

With the wonders of modern travel, Virgin Airlines get us to Gatwick half an hour early at 5.20 am on 30th December, after the usual arrival formalities I manage to load all our suitcases and rucksacks onto a trolley and head through the arrivals scrummage and into the increasing cold in Gatwick Railway station to try and sort a change of ticket from our original February return to immediate ones. The cold is no good for Peters condition and 20 minutes queuing is...

So Christmas day arrives and problems start to rear their ugly heads.We open the beautiful drapes in our fabulous room on Christmas morning and ................................ HELLO!!!  What is this RAIN??????Yes it was and had been raining for some time. So it continued for most of the day, puddles everywhere. We were lucky to have our wonderful 'Mountain Warehouse' Cagoules that we were hoping to wear in fabulous Rain Forests in the next few weeks. It...