By this Author: cblanc102

So it must have been longer than I thought since my last blog post as I was talking about day 48 then and I've now passed 50.

Banos continued to be a great time as I travelled into the Amazon jungle, another tick off the old bucket list, although I hope to go even deeper into there when I visit Peru in a few weeks. The trip was great, although it started off a bit ropey as we went down a river in a boat cut out of a log that had no real business being on the water. As always, like an idiot, I had my wallet on me, so was more worried than I needed to be about falling in as we hit rocks, got stuck in the middle of the river and generally bobbed and swayed like the uncontrolled log we were.

We were lucky not to drown! Luck and the fact the water was about 2 foot deep

Miraculously, we managed to stay afloat and dryish and proceeded an hour further into the jungle to visit the Huaorani tribe in their village. It was pretty touristy, with native dances and demonstrations. We drank some drink, I have no idea what it was, but was told by my guide that before the coronavirus it was made with spit rather than water. Chalk on up to the virus!

We then hiked up through the jungle to a waterfall. After some much tougher hikes, this was a breeze! I'm pretty pleased with my generally improving fitness! At the top everybody jumped into the pool at the bottom of the waterfall. I say everyone, it was everyone apart from the guides and me! It was raining and the water was bloody cold! I did the swimming in the waterfall pool thing in Costa Rica, where it was 35 degrees. I'll give this a miss cheers!

All good things must come to an end though and the next day was my day to travel to Guayaquil. It was a 5.5 hour journey, but I've had worse. Or so I thought! Pretty much the entire journey apart from the last hour was just slaloming down through the Andes mountains. It was terrible. I couldn't read a book, watch a movie or anything because as soon as I looked away from the road I felt sick. I'm usually fine, but this was really hard. I tried to sleep a bit and I could listen to music or a podcast, but I had to keep my eyes on the road the whole time. Fortunately the Ecuadorian landscape is stunning! But it was small consolation to me as the journey went on for 7 hours straight.

Guayaquil Cemetery is pretty bloody incredible!

Guayaquil is going to be a bit of a rest for me, I don't have anything much planned. Today was spent walking around, getting to know the place, with a stop at a square filled with meter long iguanas! It was crazy seeing them all just walking around the park. They didn't care about the people there at all, and the park was filled with them. I hadn't realised how many there actually were until I narrowly avoided being hit by a stream of lizard piss and looked up to see the trees filled with them too! There must have been a hundred there!

Iguanas and turtles and Koi oh my!

Tomorrow is for the football (It's coming home!) and then Monday will likely just be getting ready for the Galapagos, so I may be away a few days, but I thought as I've passed day 50, in fact now day 52, I'd update with some stats:

I have travelled a total of 8,277 miles, through 4 countries if you include the 2 hours I was in Spain on day 1.

I have stayed at 15 hostels, hotels and apartments in 14 different towns and cities so far. The shortest time I stayed in a room was one night (The hostel in La Fortuna filled with kids). The longest I stayed in a place was a week, in Boquete, where I could have stayed even longer.

I have travelled a conservative 64 hours so far by plane, boat, car and oh so many buses. That doesn't include any time waiting for buses or sat in airports etc. I have walked 240 miles so far. Up and down mountains, through rivers, jungle, rainforests, beaches and mangrove swamps. I don't know how much weight I've lost as I can't find any scales, but I'm using a hole in my belt that's never been used before.

I've seen countless new animals, but highlights are Howler Monkeys, Sloths, Hummingbirds and Tapirs!

And this lazy bastard

I have lost or broken very little thankfully. I had a towel stolen on day 3 or so, lost a sock a few weeks in, so tossed the other one, cracked the back of my phone, but that can be fixed and the strap broke on my small bag, so I replaced it with a small rucksack.

I broke a fingernail in half, got dirt stuck up my thumbnail after a slip that hurt a lot more than you'd imagine and of course did something to my back 20 mins before leaving that seriously affected my first few weeks of travel. I've also been bitten by mosquitoes about a million times.

I'm having a fine time, and it's getting better. I missing everyone very much though.

Right, I'm gonna go, some hippy looking guy is doing something weird with a flower covered stick in the hostel and I want to see what's going on!

I can't get enough of hiking through jungles

So I'm 48 days into this trip and finally it's starting to feel like it's working right.

Ecuador has been consistently great, I know I'm only 5 days in, but usually that's long enough for me to mess things up in some way! I've got the next 3 weeks planned and starting to get an idea about the next couple after that, but things are a lot easier to plan when you're not having to rush them. Importantly as well, things are a lot cheaper here which has opened up the whole trip for me.

Volcanoes everywhere you look here

For instance. In Costa Rica, on average I paid around £8 per night for a room in a hostel, and around £12 for my own room. In Quito it was £3.50 for my own room and I'm currently paying £4 for a whole apartment in Banos!

£4 a night, free coffee too!

In La Fortuna, Costa Rica, white water rafting cost over £70, today I paid just £20. I'm going on a tour on Friday that's around the same price but lasts 13 hours!

The food here is cheap too, there's loads of street food at $1 all over the place, but last night I splashed out and had a massive burger and chips for £3. There's also a really cheap enormous supermarket next door for anything I need.

It was huge!

I was never short of money here, but I put things off in Costa Rica and Panama because of how expensive they were, hoping they'd be cheaper here or knowing they are cheaper in Asia when I get back there. I had wondered before when I was feeling a bit down here what was different during the last trip and it's finally hit me, I did what I liked.

I didn't worry about money or anything really. Bangkok was super cheap, I did my PADI on Koh Tao, slept in a floating village and trekked through jungle at Kao Sok. And I stayed in hotels all the time because they cost next to nothing. Ecuador actually feels like that and it's made it far easier to pay out on the big things like the Galapagos when the smaller things don't cost an arm and a leg.

Is this a thing in the UK?? A KFC 'pizza' with chicken breasts as a base? There's your heart attack right there!

Which brings me to Banos (pronounced ban-yos), a small town in Central Ecuador in the shadow of a volcano (like everywhere here) that seems far more touristy than it would be just because of it's adventure sports and proximity to the Amazon Rainforest. At first sight, the place looks a bit of a dump, with nearly all buildings either hostels, restaurants, souvenir shops or places selling adventure tours. I should also give a special shout out to barber shops and online gaming places of which there seems to be far too many of. But it has a charm to it, the people are great, there's a waterfall about every 100 meters and if you're looking up rather than down or ahead the place is stunningly beautiful.

It's also surrounded by thermal baths, which use the hot water from the volcano nearby. The one I went to tonight had three pools at increasing temperatures, going from 'warm' to 'bastard hot!' I lasted about 2 mins in the latter. I may try a different one tomorrow morning as I'm sure to be achy after the white water rafting I did today!

They light the waterfall at night next to the baths. Very nice

To say I had an amazing day is an understatement. A six hour trip, including about 90 mins of actual rafting time and a really nice lunch after all for £20 was fantastic. I can't believe I've never done it before and am looking forward to doing it again in Peru next month. It's just pure fun! For anyone who's been to Orlando, it's like being on the Popeye ride, but it lasts over an hour and you're working constantly to not fall out the boat.

AND IT HASN'T RAINED IN 5 DAYS!!!

I ended my day after the rafting and baths by taking a walk around the town to make my 30 miles walked this week as I almost didn't make it after barricading myself in my hotel room for two days in Colon, Panama and then spending a day travelling to Ecuador to escape. I made it though, and after 7 weeks, I've now walked 217 miles! pretty good I think!

And on that note, I'm going to bed. I have an easy day tomorrow doing little and waiting for the England match at 2pm (here). As always Come on England!

I shall be back in a few days with hopefully some amazing pics!

In most new towns when I'm travelling, I like to take a long walk around, try and get my bearings. Google maps is a massive liar and all too soon space and distance tend to blur away if you have no idea where you're going some of the time. I'd been on Lonely Planet and found lots of places of interest in Quito, which I added to Google Maps as places of interest and with that I set off in the general direction of Quito's Old Town district.

There were two churches where the insides were almost completely gold!

It's pretty cold here compared to where I've been, even though the weather has been a lot better (no rain!), but that's to be expected as Quito stands at 2850m above seal level, that's almost 10,000 feet! My bed here has 4 blankets, it's pretty toasty. However, as I set out yesterday morning the weather was perfect, sunny, temperature in the high teens, ending up around 21 /22 in the afternoon.

The first church I came to was stunning!

As I walked along though, I soon found myself in trouble. It was very hard to breathe! I have been higher than this before, I climbed to almost 4000m in Nepal, but I guess we did that over three days, rather than just landing there one day. I was definitely feeling it. Headaches and breathlessness, two symptoms of altitude sickness. On top of that I hadn't eaten much as I got in late the night before because of the airplane antics (see last blog) but I carried on regardless.

The Main Square in Quito's Old District

Quito is a beautiful city, filled with some amazing churches, monuments, parks and surrounded by volcanoes. It's hard to take a crappy photo, but as you'll see I tried! It's very friendly too, pretty cheap and they serve fantastic coffee! It's also extraordinarily hilly! Some of the streets I had to climb were really difficult, it must have been quite the sight for the locals to see me huffing and puffing up the hills. I somehow managed to make it back in time to see England smash the Ukraine though, so all was good, come on you Lions!!! (and thank God for decent WiFi and a VPN)

Stupidly hilly streets

In the evening I tried to plan my next few weeks. One of the things that I have found to be a lot harder this trip is the decision making process. Everything seemed more straightforward in Thailand, maybe because I had been planning that trip for a year, whereas this trip was very much a last minute thing, but deciding where to go next has really been an issue, as it was last night where my initial plans were scuppered after discovering that one place was miles away from where I actually wanted to visit and the other town was in fact a den of iniquity filled with loggers, oil drillers and apparently tons of crime.

I finally found the website of a married American couple who have taken a year off to honeymoon hiking the Americas. This website has become my new travel Bible and within an hour of reading it, I had booked my next three weeks where I will end up in the Galapagos Islands! A dream come true for me as I've wanted to go there for years. I'm very excited! I've also got a much better idea about how to get into Peru and do Machu Picchu in a great way (more on that another time)

Now if only the Government would sort their minds out about the stupid traffic light thing, I could actually plan all the rest of the trip down to when and how I can go home!

Today I hiked higher than I've ever been, to almost 4700m! I had help with a cable car in the middle, but still walked 4km. 300m uphill to get there, then another 4km up 750m from the top of the cable car. The views were incredible, but like all exercise, it wasn't worth it of course. At least the altitude sickness was less of a bother today.

A view from the top

I then travelled North on the bus to the 'Middle of the World'. A monument celebrating the equator where you can stand either side of the North / South divide...... Apart from the fact that when GPS was invented, they discovered that the actual line was about 200m away. Good try though!

North and South. Or Not

The buses here are crazy, just 30p for a 1hr, 30km ride, they fill up with people straight away and overfill way past the limit. Just when you think it's not possible to fit anyone else on the bus, they let a few more on. On top of this there's been a person on every ride asking for money. Usually, they tell a little story and sell something like a snack, I saw one busload of people applaud a guy's story on the bus to Panama City, but on one bus today there were three or four beggars ranging from children to agitated drunks. It wasn't great.

Some old bloke up a volcano

I'll be braving the buses again tomorrow as I head for Banos where I hope to try my first ever white water rafting!

Again, come on you England! I hope the new place has decent WiFi!!

I arrived at my hostel in Quito tonight at 10pm, some 3 hours after I was supposed to have arrived. How did this happen? Well let me tell you.

Most other parts of the travel were fine. I left Colon this morning, grabbed a bus to Panama city where I got the Metro train as close to the airport as I could, for some reason, neither of Panama City's two metro lines actually stop at the airport! I had to get the train, then jump in a minibus for a dollar to the airport.

The airport was great, only really two things of note. Firstly, the vaccinations worked a charm. Instead of paying out for a PCR test now twice, I have only had to show my vaccination details, saving me at least £100 - £150. Great.

Secondly, Panama City is the only airport I've been to where they don't sell cigarettes in the duty free! These weren't for me, I don't smoke (more on that in 10 days), but I was looking to see how much they were for friends. Nope, none at all that I could find. I looked online and apparently they don't sell them there!

Anyway, on to the flight, nice little 90 min trip. All was good until at about 300 ft the pilot decides that it's not safe to land. This is now the third time this has happened to me in three years! First in Istanbul where the pilot pulled up ten feet from the ground and then in 'Sarf'end a couple of years back where we had to loop round as he arrived at the landing strip too fast.

Beautiful Ecuador

This time was pretty scary though. Ecuador is stunning from above, low clouds over volcanoes and mountains, deep cracks in the ground where earthquakes have pulled the country apart. It looks amazing, but when you want to land on a runway 3000 meters up in the mountains, it can get a bit hairy!

Out the window photography

We flew around for about 30 mins after that, when the pilot told us that we were being diverted to Guayaquil, a town some 250 miles SE. This much to the annoyance of the old boy sat 2 seats away from me. We landed there fine, refueled, waited for some news or idea if we'd be staying there the night or going back. After a while apparently the wind died down and we flew back, landing in the dark with no issues at all.

I don't know what part of my body is in this cack handed shot!

It wasn't the scariest flight I've ever been on, I'll give that to the Istanbul flight, but it was up there! Any safe landing is a good one, but three near missed in three years I could do without!

Oh P.S! Quito is bloody cold!! Back to jeans tomorrow!

This will be pretty short, but have loads of photos!

A nice part of Panama City!

Hanging at the Panama Canal, truly o World Wonder

I haven't been enjoying Panama. Boquete was lovely, but I couldn't stay there forever and travelling in Panama was just driving me crazy for some reason. It felt like every decision I made was the wrong one. And this is how I found myself in Colon, apparently Panama's most dangerous city.

Colon is a shit hole, probably where it gets it's name (it's not)

I could only stay in my hotel in Panama City for two nights, so I thought, 'Why not head up to the Caribbean for a few days?' BIG mistake. I am at the Caribbean, but in a port city that makes Mos Eisley look like Athens, makes Dartford look like Shangri La.

At least the Panama Canal is near by

I pretty much lost it. I didn't even feel safe walking around and I've walked around some dodgy places, slums, darkened Mumbai alleys at night, Dartford. Here felt worse. I wanted out. Now.

This is a working prison! It's like sonething out of a horror movie!

I had a flight in 19 days time out of the country that couldn't be changed because I saved £70 on a flight, but after a couple of phone conversations I just thought sod it and booked a flight out to Ecuador. I lost £180 but I'll save half that by being in the much cheaper country for the extra time.

Animals checking me out in Panama City park

So I'm getting ready to leave now for my bus back to Panama City, then off to the airport. It does feel a bit like giving up and it was a knee jerk reaction to being in such a craphole of a city, but I'm happy with the decision. At least I had enough time to see the Panama Canal. One of the trip bucket list entries and well worth being here for.

Now on to Quito and the Southern Hemisphere!

Goodbye Panama - I give you a 5/10, but that's not enough