On Thursday Russ and I caught the bus to the small town of Banos, about 50km north west of Riobamba.  Banos is a pleasant place, its name translated into English is toilet!  It has lots of Thermal Baths due to its location in a volcanic valley (its been destroyed by Volcanoes/Earthquakes many times!)  – supposedly [...]

Today Russ, Ed, and I visited Equador’s highest peak, at 6310m, Volcano Chimborazo. It’s been a really fantastic, tiring, and long day! We were picked up from our hotel at 8am and driven up to 4800m to the first climbers’ refuge. On the way we stopped to look at a large [...]

Yesterday morning Russ and I took the bus out to Mitud Del Mundo to see the Equator lines/monuments (plural as there are two sites!).  The first site we visited  was the site a French explorer claimed was the equator line around 200 years ago.  There’s a big monument there, and a small museum about native [...]

I returned to a cold and wet Quito on Friday afternoon, I though I had returned to England! The Galapagos was a hot 35 degrees when we left and Quito was about 10 with lots of rain! I flew back with Lisa and Loren who are both fluent Spanish speakers so managed to [...]

On Wednesday I left the Jatun Satcha for the last time. It was sad to leave, mainly because there were a few of us leaving and the girls were getting a bit upset! Me and Stefan (a German friend who was leaving too) sat in the back of the taxi pickup whilst all the girls [...]

I returned from my four day tour of four of the other Galapagos Islands on Monday evening.  It was a really good, lots of amazing experiences!
The trip started at lunchtime on Friday, thirteen of us piled onto a smallish boat for the two hour cruise to the small Island of Santa Fe.  You’re not allowed [...]

I’m off out on the four day tour this afternoon so came down to the town this morning, which gives me time to write a quick update.  This week has been more hard work and sweat!  Monday morning was good fun, we were asked to remove a load of baby trees (like 5cm tall or [...]

I’ve nearly been here two weeks already, where does the time go?! It’s been another tough week of hard work in soaring temperatures. It’s not rained too much this week and it’s been very hot at times, which makes for uncomfortable conditions when doing a bit of graft!
I think I have dug at least one [...]

It’s been a busy and hard week!  I flew to the Island of San Cristobal early on Monday morning and was met at the airport by the project coordinator and some other newly arrived volunteers.  We were then taken by taxi up to the highlands where the project is stationed.  Taxis here are 4×4 pickups [...]