Cuenca to Quito

Cuenca: is a quaint, colonial city- the third largest in Ecuador, and our transit city on the way to Galapagos. Fun fact: Cuenca is the where Panama hats originated from, rather than Panama. President Theodore Roosevelt famously wore these hats and when a reporter asked where he purchased it from, he reportedly stated ‘Panama’ and …

Galapagos Islands

Exploring the Galapagos Islands was like living in a Planet Earth documentary. We could almost hear David Attenborough’s voice as we swam with sea lions and sea turtles, dodged sun-baking marine iguanas, dived with hammerhead sharks and made our acquaintance with blue-footed boobies and albatrosses in this fascinating archipelago of volcanic islands.  Snorkelling with sea …

Transit from Peru to Ecuador

After our long hike in Huayhuash, we decided to head north to Peru's beaches for some much needed sunshine- first stop Mancora. The journey from Huaraz to Mancora consisted of two buses - the first with Linea to Trujillo (8 hours), then the second from Trujillo to Mancora with Cruz del Sur (approx 9 hours). …

Cordillera Huayhuash Trek

The Cordillera Huayhuash trek may be one of the best alpine treks in the world, known for it’s beautiful mountains, stunning lagoons of turquoise and blue hues and challenging weather conditions (at least when we went in the shoulder season!).  The 8 day trek was 116km, almost entirely over 4,000m, with two mountain passes over …

Short Inca Trail to Machu Picchu

Inca trail: We hiked the last day from kilometer- 104 of the Inca trail to Machu Picchu. This was a narrow ‘spiritual trail’ which was used by pilgrims to reach Machu Picchu, a religious site. The trail was challenging with many stairs but well worth the effort especially when we arrived to the Sun Gate …

Ultimate Lares trek

There are a number of options for hikes to Machu Picchu: the Inca trail (which books out months prior), Salkantay, Lares hike, etc. We chose the Ultimate Lares trek and Inca trail with TreXperience as we were keen to see other Inca ruins, visit some mountain villages and schools, and also to allow ourselves to …

Ruta de Sol and Lake Titicaca

Ruta de Sol: To visit Lake Titicaca, we took the Ruta de Sol (‘Route of the Sun’ with Inka Express) from Cusco to Puno and met the tour group in Puno. Although this was a longer journey, we opted to take the Ruta de Sol to break up the bus ride and also to see …

Cusco: a colourful city at 3,400m

Cusco, previously the Inca capital, is now a vibrant, hikers town were tourists are based to make their Machu Picchu pilgrimage via the Sacred Valley. Cusco was a great base for us to relax between tours/ hikes and we enjoyed visiting the San Pedro and San Blas markets, many delicious meals and views of the …

Iquitos: The World’s Largest City Without Road Access

After the Amazon jungle, we decided to relax in Iquitos for a few days ahead of our next adventures in Cusco. Iquitos is the largest city in the world which is only accessible by plane or boat so there are very few cars - instead, there are predominantly moto-cars: 3-wheeled motorbikes with a 2-3 person …

The Amazon: ‘It’s a Jungle Out There!’

From Lima we flew to Iquitos and travelled by speedboat for approx 2.5 hours to the Curassow Lodge along with 2 other couples from the US and Taiwan. At the end of the journey, we certainly knew we were in the jungle when suddenly a monkey fish came flying into our boat unannounced! Curassow is …