Hosteria El Carmelo Mindo

... sweet. They do the best breakfast, which is included in the price.

Mindo was a vast contrast to Quito. It's a very small village with dirt roads. Most of the accommodation is chalet like wooden houses, it reminded me of the Alps quite a bit. It was very damp at night, but we were very high up and when the cloud sets in it gets quite chilly too. The main reason we visited Mindo was for the ...

... where a two day rock festival is being held. Let me also mention that because we are at such high altitudes to which we are still being acclimated, it is EXTREMELY exhausting to walk even a few short blocks on a leveled plain. The park is about 15 flights of stairs up. grossssss...hahaha I thought I was going to pass out. At one pt, an old man smoking a cigarette passed us. how embaressing...The old town is beautiful. Views from all ...

Ecuador, or equator, is a small country on the northeastern side of South America. It is bordered by Colombia to the north, Peru to the south, Brazil to the west, and the Pacific Ocean to the East. The equator horizontally runs through it a short couple of hours away from Quito.
In the 1700’s some scientists figured out where the equator was and set up a giant bronze monument there, marking it la Mitad del Mundo, or the middle of ...

Ahoy!

I've slowly been catching up with my news over the last week or so and I'm finally up to date! I've been in Quito for almost a week now, so I suppose I'll fill you in.

I left Popayan after a couple of days recuperating and enjoying being back with a few home comforts (hot showers, Coco Pops, endless juice stalls/shops, internet) at the ungodly hour of 5am to catch a bus to the border town of Ipiales. Ideally I would have undertaken this eight hour journey ...

... for a reason, and I'm pretty sure this was one of those times. The place that Swampy crew were staying was booked out, so we had to go up the road to another hostel. There we met the owner, Jerry and one of his friends Juan. Jerry was literally crazy, bipolar or something! He was a Shaman and very spiritual... and again, very crazy. That day we spent at the hostel with Jerry and Juan just lazing about the pool, swimming, getting a massage, eating seafood (thanks to Juan who ordered 2 ...

... equator - and as it’s now “winter” here, above 3000m we’d expect to be on skiis rather than smelling eucalyptus!!


We’ve been taking Spanish classes for the past 6 days - between 2 - 4 hours a day and whilst our understanding has increased exponentially we still need a lot of practice to actually speak! We are still dependent on sign language but increasingly we’re managing to spit out a few questions and even sentences - or at ...

After our time in Colombia, it was time for a return to the cloud forests of Ecuador to an Eco-lodge named Bellavista (after an obligatory stop in Quito).

Our time in Colombia meant we were a little under budget for our South American leg of the journey - this meant we could go wild and treat ourselves for a little while. We decided to go to an eco lodge that was a whopping £10 over budget per ...

”Buenas tardes mis amigos!

After a rather hair-raising day spent in Quito withdrawing the required $600 from numerous cash machines (I had to stuff the money into my socks and pants to be safe!), I headed off to the wee small village of Nanegal, 2 hours north of Quito in the cloud forests.

For those of you unaware of why there are two designations of forest in Ecuador (Cloud and Rain), I shall explain. Cloud forests are at ...

... one of the most memorable of the trip so far - a wooden house surrounded by it's own forest of orange trees, banana plants, apple trees, guava trees, exotic plants, dozens of humming birds, fly catchers, tanagers, 7 dogs, 4 ducks and 6 chickens! It was an amazing place and like staying in our own private zoo! Our 3 days revolved around trips to the forest and local wildlife - the first day Paul hiked around a ...

... is broken into three. there are three levels to the chapel, the windows are 3 sq meters, and the tiles all around the capilla are each 30 sq cm. the exhibits adhere to precolonial, colonial and contemporary themes and follow the three stages of Guayasamin“s career.