Kristy & Adam - South America Adventures

Hola from Ecuador!
We both love this country. The people are super friendly and the country side is absolutely beautiful.

Quito is a large city with a really nice old town, when we were there we just roamed the old town streets. We are heading back there in a weeks time to do a trek around the rim of the city´s volcano.

From Quito we travelled to a small place called Riobamba to complete the devils nose train ride. Its a 5 hour journey through the Andes the best part is its on top of the trains roof! It was spectacular weaving through the valleys and little comunities along the way. We threw lollies out to the kids running by the train waving.
In the evening got a bit of a fright! Was having dinner in the restaurant and the ground started to vibrate, I first thought it was a truck going past the restaurant, but then the vibrations continued and all the chandaliers in the restaurant were moving side to side, thankfully it stopped, but we found out the following day there was an earthquake measuring 7.1 on the richter scale in Peru!

We are currently in Cuenca, its a small colonial city with lots of churches and beautiful old town. Tommorrow we are planning to visit some of the smaller communities to see the local markets.

Hope you are all well. We are putting photos online today of our travels up to date so enjoy

Kristy & Adam

Hola From Cuba,

We left Caracus bound for Cuba, and it turned out to be a bit of a disaster day really....
Firstly the plane was delayed, then we arrived in Cuba we waited for about 2 hours for our bags - Minus Adams!!
He eventually got it back 3 days later, thankfully it wasnt lost altogether!

We spent a few days in Havana just roaming the streets of the old town and stuggling to cope with the heat...it was about 35 degrees and god only knows what the humidity was!
I love Havana. Its so full of culture. We stayed with a family just outside the city centre and each day we got a taxi into town, not just your normal cab though the olden style cars...They were great, we got a 1951 Kermit green Mercury, and got some great pictures.

The food and the costs of everything however absolutely terrible!
Everything is very expensive and the quality of the food is the poorest we have seen so far. We cooked in our apartment for 4 days and all they had at the supermarket was a packet of spaghetti and canned veg and fruit. No fresh produce to be seen anywhere! Things like this just make you appreciate how lucky we really are.

One night we also went to the Casa de Musica which was a typical Cuban style night club where they had a traditional Cuban band playing for a few hours.

After a few days in Havana we travelled by bus to a town called Varadero. I have never in my life seen such an awesome beach! The township was similar to Puerto Colombia in Venezuela, 1 street with hotels, and the main attraction being the beach. The water was aqua blue and the ocean was so warm. We basically spent four days relaxing in the sun, swimming, and one day we hired a moped and burnt around and took some pictures, and another day we went snorkelling.
We did a shore snorkel and a snorkel in a cave. Was really cool. The food was a little better here, but I think only because the place is so touristy.

After Varadero we travelled to Vinales. Vinales is a mountainous township where many farmers live and produce tobacco and cigars for the country. We had an awesome hotel overlooking the valley and the mountains. We went horse riding through the valley and stopped at the local farms along the way to take pictures and we were lucky enough to be invitied in by one of the farmers for home grown coffee, coconut milk, fresh fruits and to watch how they roll cigars. It was truly and amazing experience. We got some really good photos too! We also did a tour of a Cigar factory and the rum factory too

Our last night was in Havana and a little scary! The hurricane was on its way through and there was loads of rain and very strong winds. The power was out for a few hours too. But we survived and has just landed in Ecuador for our next adventure!

Keep in touch!

Kristy & Adam

Hola!

We havent updated our travel stories for so long!! The internet has been so expensive in some of the places we have been visiting or its been so slow! So Ill give you a breif rundown on what we have been doing...

We spent 5 days in Venezuela. We had met many people along the way throughout our travels who said that Caracus wasnt really interesting, and that it was just "another big city", so we made our way to a little beach side town called Puerto Colombia.

We travelled by bus for two hours to Maracay, then for a further two hours by taxi through very windy roads and through Venezuelas national park. Puerto Colombia consisted of 1 main street with a few hostels and hotels and the beach and its main industries are tourism and fishing.

It was a fabulous week. All we did was relax on the beach! The beach was awesome, the ocean was aqua blue like you imagine the caribbean to be and the sands golden.