For much of our time in Quito, we enjoyed the company of our own personal guide, Diana, who flew in from Guayaquil to show us around.

On our first morning we woke up to a beautiful sunny day and the concierge at our hostel told us that we should immediately take the cable car up the teleferico to take in a panoramic view of the city before the clouds roll in. The view from the top was fantastic, although the altitude of over 4100 meters left us both a little short for breath.

Quito has earned a UNESCO heritage listing as the best preserved, least altered historic centre in Latin America. To take full advantage of this we spent most of our time in the Centro Historico, visiting several beautiful churches and museums, eating and drinking at rooftop venues, enjoying street tango performances and taking a tour through the presidential palace. A highlight was the rooftop restaurant/bar/reception at our hostel, which was run by a friendly Aussie bloke who had fallen in love with an Ecuadorian girl while traveling in London.

We found some great food in central Quito, although the most memorable dining experience was at a nice restaurant in the La Ronda district. Although the food was fantastic, the service made us wonder whether we had stumbled onto the set of an Ecuadorian version of Faulty Towers. At seven o'clock the early rush subsided and our quirky waiter decided he'd had enough, unilaterally closing the restaurant and inviting us to share a stiff drink with him. The waiter bragged that he was from Colombia and assured us that the country is perfectly safe; 'the only danger in visiting Colombia is you'll fall in love with the place and want to stay', he said. Cindy asked 'so when will you next visit Colombia'. His response was hard to reconcile with the rest of our conversation; 'oh no, I can't go back, I came to Ecuador as a refugee, Colombia is way too dangerous'.

Quito also has plenty to offer outside its historic centre. Perhaps the most famous attraction is the Mitad del Mundo monument, which marks the meeting of the southern and northern hemispheres. At the monument site, we took a tour featuring half a dozen science experiments that showcased the differing forces at play on each side of the equator. Sam was awarded a certificate for balancing an egg on a nail (only possible on the equator) and we both enjoyed seeing water drain in different directions on either side of the line.

While in Quito, we partied in the Mariscal district, a hub for local and international young people. We also visited the house and museum of the late Oswaldo Guayasamín, a famous Ecuadorian painter, and bought a limited edition drawing as a souvenir.

We had an interesting mix of taxi drivers in Quito. We had one who drove with his mum in the passenger seat, was convinced that every car that drove next to us was full of car jackers and didn't know what the historical centre of town was (let alone how to get there). Another drove through a road block and almost ran over a policeman. For one cab ride we paid less than one tenth of the fare paid by some other gringos we met. Traveller lesson number one is to remind cab drivers that they are required to run their meters, although this doesn't always prevent you from being ripped off as we had one cab driver take us for a tour of greater Quito when we only needed to get two kilometers down the road. Lesson number two (particularly useful in the 90% of cases when you're told the meter is broken) is to ask for a fixed price and check before you leave the hostel what that price should be. This again is not foolproof as one driver wanted to charge us extra because he got lost (his words, not ours) and launched into a ten minute tirade of abuse at us when we refused.

Taxi drivers aside, we thoroughly enjoyed our time in Quito and were glad that, having spent four nights there initially, we were able to come back for one more night before flying off to Peru.

The same can be said of our time in Ecuador generally. The country has recently launched a global tourism campaign entitled 'all you need is Ecuador'. There is a lot of merit in this title, with the country offering amazing diversity in culture, landscape, flora and fauna for a country its size. In just over three weeks we saw Amazonian jungle, the unique Galápagos Islands, white sand surf beaches, a historic high altitude capital, an amazing lake formed by a volcanic crater and an adventure playground in the foothills of the Andes.

Following our visit to the Galápagos Islands we flew into Guayaquil. Although it's the largest and most populated city in Ecuador, Guayaquil certainly isn't the most interesting place to visit (a bit like Auckland in that way, except there's even less to do). The reason we chose to visit this place that most gringos skip is that we wanted to spend some time with Diana, a close college friend of Cindy's who is living in Guayaquil.

Diana's family took us in for a couple of nights and cooked us some fantastic food, including some deer raised on their farm. We also attended Diana's cousin's birthday party at a city centre penthouse. We made some time for sightseeing, visiting the zoo, wandering along the river-side boardwalk and climbing the 444 steps of Las Peñas to the highest vantage point in town.

From Guayaquil, we, Diana and a couple of her friends drove to la Ruta del Sol (which translates to the route of the sun). Our destination was Montañita, a surf town by day and party town by night that is increasingly attracting visitors from all over the world (as well as weekenders from Guayaquil). In the afternoon most of us had a go at surfing (with varying levels of failure) before heading out for what became a massive night. Our big group, including Diana and friends, her brother and her cousin, helped us fight off our tired eyes, and the clubs and cocktail stands lining every street meant that we were never short of a drink.

Younger versions of ourselves might have liked to have stayed in Montañita for a week, but the contemporary, hungover, versions were quite happy to leave the next day to Salinas, a larger coastal town two hours south. We arrived just as the world junior surfing championship was kicking off at a beach just out of town, and we really enjoyed taking in the atmosphere of the event (and cheering on a young kiwi to win his heat).

In Salinas we still hadn't decided where we wanted to go next. The destination we most liked the look of, Baños, had just made international headlines for sitting at the base of a volcano that had just started erupting. We weren't sure if this was a very good reason to go to Baños, or a very good reason to stay away. We decided on the former, and are glad that we did.

Our bus to Baños was, in true Ecuadorian style, a bus to a town 45 minutes away from Baños. We settled in for the first leg of the trip, a six hour winding drive through the Andes. As is the custom, locals would regularly hop on and off the bus to sell ice creams, lollies, chips and drinks, and we took advantage of the service whenever our stomachs felt up to it. The next leg was a bit more tricky. We were dropped off at a gas station and told that we need to flag down the next bus from the side of the road a few hundred meters away. A police officer told us it's illegal for buses to stop there but we had been in Ecuador long enough to know that didn't mean we were in the wrong place. Sure enough, a bus to Baños briefly pulled over in front of the policeman and we piled on to complete our trip.

Baños is known as the adventure capital of Ecuador, and while there we abseiled down five waterfalls (they call it canyoning) and rafted down the white water rapids of a nearby river. Perhaps the most adventurous experience was riding failing bikes around tight mountain roads shared with speeding drivers. Luckily the waterfalls along the way more than justified the dangerous ride.

At night we enjoyed the thermal spas and some fantastic restaurants. The highlight of our Baños stay was the erupting volcano. During the day we saw massive clouds of ash, at night we saw lava erupt into the air and then flow down the hill, and we regularly heard in the background the sheer power of the exploding mountain.

Throughout our time in Baños we had been toying with the idea of visiting the famous Laguna de Quilotoa on our way back to Quito. Plenty of locals had told us it was too ambitious in the time we were allowing or that it was not necessarily worth it. In the end we gave it a shot, jumping off the bus to Quito half way through the journey and then negotiating with a taxi driver to take us on the 5 hour round trip up the hill for a very reasonable price. We're really glad that we decided to visit the crater, and that we walked the long decent down the lake in the middle. We're also glad that we paid to ride donkeys back up rather than undertake the exhausting hike (although Sam still feels bad for the poor donkey who got stuck with the 190 pound Aussie bloke instead of the 120 pound Latin American girl).

At 7pm on our second night in Galapagos we were sipping beer at a local cafe looking forward to some Galapagos lobster for dinner. Suddenly we heard sirens and saw hundreds of people running up the Main Street away from the port. Cindy asked the owner of the restaurant what was going on and the only word Sam understood was tsunami. Cindy immediately took off and Sam thought to himself, I guess we're not paying the bill then. 

All the locals seemed to have already piled into cars to head up hill and we decided that our best chance of getting into a car was to hitch a ride in our hostel owner's pick-up truck. We got to the hostel no more than 2 minutes after the madness had started but the owner had already disappeared like a rat up a drain pipe. We headed back to the Main Street and opted for plan B - flag down any trucks we see with cargo space in the back and try to jump in.  Luckily, a local let 10 of us gringos in and drove us up to the official evacuation zone.

Judging from the reaction of the locals, the whole way up the hill we were expecting to see a Hollywood-proportioned wave swallow the port and come charging towards us. In the evacuation zone, locals with smartphones (the only sources of information in the absence of any police or military presence) informed us that in fact the cause for concern was an earthquake off the coast  of Chile, that the tsunami was not expected to hit for another couple of hours and that we'd likely need to stay put at least until midnight. We grabbed some water, Gatorade and biscuits (no lobster on the menu in the evacuation zone unfortunately) and headed to an Internet cafe to let everyone back home know that we were ok. 

As the hours passed, we heard all sorts of misinformation and saw many people attempt to go back into town only to be turned around by police. We met an English mother and son who had been staying on a peninsula only accessible by taxi boat. They were particularly worried about their belongings and didn't know whether they'd be able to get back to their hotel when the police road blocks were lifted. We offered for them stay with us at our hostel, but while we waited Cindy spent a couple of hours talking to local shop keepers who eventually were able to track down the owner of our new English friends' hotel. At around 1am we were hearing both that the road blocks had been lifted and that an aftershock as big as the initial quake had occurred. When a truck came to pick up our English friends and take them to alternative accommodation in the highlands, we gratefully took up an offer to tag along. 

The alternative accommodation revealed itself as a stunning luxury estate and we were able to enjoy a few hours sleep and a nice breakfast before returning to our hostel (and to pay our bill from the previous evening). That night we went to our English friends' hotel to have a nice dinner to celebrate the mother's birthday.

In the end the largest wave was no greater than 2 feet tall and no damage was caused. The panic proved to be uncalled for but better safe than sorry. We're just glad that nobody died falling off the back of a speeding truck. The most interesting part of the night was seeing people reveal their true colors. On a positive note, we're very grateful to the locals who stopped to give us a ride up the hill, to the store owners who helped track down the owner of our friends' hotel and to our friends for offering us a high altitude place to crash at the end of a long night. We saw some ugly characters too, perhaps the worst of whom was an American who at a complementary 5-star breakfast the morning after was still complaining that when the Navy came to pick him up from his hotel they didn't give him enough time to organize all of his belongings before taking him to safety.

Despite the one long night we feel like we were still able to enjoy the key attractions the Galapagos have to offer. We went on day tours to the islands of Isabella and Floriana and saw the highlights of the island we stayed on, Santa Cruz. We saw plenty of giant turtles both in the wild and in breeding centers, ranging in age from babies to 150 years old. We swam with sea lions, and many of the baby ones were so tame that they'd rub their whiskers on our legs. We saw lots of penguins, both on land and swimming, and saw plenty of iguanas and blue footed boobies. We also saw the craters of some of the volcanos that formed the islands. The clear highlight and most memorable part of our trip was swimming with giant sea turtles, which we were lucky enough to do on two different islands.

We were worried before coming to Galapagos that it'd blow a massive hole in our budget but prices proved to be very reasonable (once you've paid for your flights and entry fee, and provided you don't get sucked in to booking a really expensive multi-night cruise). Day trips were on average $100 per day and the food, particularly the seafood, was good value overall

One thing we learnt was to temper our expectations as to what we'll see on each day tour. There were dozens of day trip booking agents in puerto ayora and it seems they all use the same sales technique; ask the clients what they want to see or do and tell them they'll see or do it on the tour that they make the most money out of selling. We didn't try, but no doubt if we asked for a tour that would allow us to ride unicorns we would have found someone willing to sell it to us.

Unfortunately, for our second day tour we had quite a negative experience. To cut a long story short, the boat was significantly overfilled, there weren't enough life jackets for everyone on board, the engine was leaking oil the entire trip and the guide inexplicably ceased the tour two hours early. We voiced our concerns, particularly our safety concerns, from the outset but were ignored so ultimately had to complain to the minister for tourism, who facilitated us getting most of our money back.

The amazon is huge and can be done from Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia as well as the most famous option, Brazil. After months of research we decided to do the amazon from Ecuador, partly because it's the easiest and cheapest way to get deep into the jungle (requiring only a 1-hour bus ride, cab ride, 8-hour bus ride, 2-hour bus ride and 2-hour boat trip to get to our destination).

We expected the trip to be long, but didn't expect it to be as uncomfortable or dangerous as it proved to be. For the 8-hour bus ride through the Andes, Sam had to assume the role of an amateur contortionist just to get into his seat and we both needed to reach for our motion sickness pills. A landslide blocking the road for an hour at least afforded Sam an opportunity to stand up and restore circulation in his legs.

The scariest part of the trip came at 5:15 in the morning when we discovered that our bus to Lago Agrio was in fact a bus very briefly stopping at the side of a highway somewhat near Lago Agrio. Standing half asleep in the rain guarding our bags that had kindly been placed in the mud, we watched the bus pull away. Cindy hurriedly asked anyone who would listen the Spanish version of 'where the bloody hell are we' while Sam reflected on both the danger and the humor of the ridiculous situation.

Luckily, in the darkness we found two German backpackers who were also going to the amazon and had been similarly dispatched by another bus company. We eventually caught a cab into town with them, convinced them to join us on our amazon tour, and together sat at a cafe to see out the four-hour wait for our tour company to pick us up. Halfway through the wait we got an early reminder to always watch our belongings as a backpacker sitting 5 meters away from us announced that his bag had been stolen from under his nose. This guy wasn't on our tour but when we saw him on a boat tour two days later he was still wearing the same clothes.

After picking up a handful of people who had taken the more comfortable and pricey (but less adventurous) option of flying to Lago Agrio, we began the final leg of our journey, a boat tour into the deep amazon to our home for the next 3 nights, Siona lodge.

Our tour guide, the famous (on tripadvisor anyway) Luis, made sure that we got the most out of our amazon experience. He had it all - native Amazonian heritage, formal biology qualifications, seemingly endless energy, an infectious laugh, catchphrases (our favorite was when he'd use 'boom boom' to describe the mating habits of animals and even humans) and an incredible ability to see the smallest and most camouflaged animals from great distances. Every morning Luis would wake us up by playing Simon and Garfunkle on the pipe flute and at night he'd play lead guitar and vocals for the Siona lodge staff (and intoxicated guests) band.

To see as much flora and fauna as possible, we enjoyed 8 boat tours of up to 3 hours, at sunrise, during the day, at sunset and at night. We also went for jungle walks during the day and at night. In all, we saw approximately 100 species (including frogs, mammals, birds, reptiles and insects). Luis said we were very lucky not only to see famous Amazonian residents like squirrel monkeys, anacondas, boas, river dolphins and tarantulas, but also to see the extremely rare harby eagle. 

The landscape was beautiful, particularly at sunset. During our jungle walk we crossed the equator, and at night this location allowed us the unique opportunity to see all constellations of both hemispheres through clear unpolluted skies.

On our last day we travelled by boat 2 hours deeper into the jungle to visit the Siona Indigenous community. We were taken in by a Siona family who taught us how to make pan de yuca from scratch (literally, we picked the yuca from their backyard). We toured the Siona community to learn about their ways of living and spoke to a village doctor, which they call a Chayman.

When we started our trip we packed a few toys to hand out to little kids we meet along the way. One of the highlights of our trip so far was handing out toys to about 10 very appreciative kids in the Siona community.

Our jungle adventure certainly had its ups and downs, and we both had moments when we might have preferred to be somewhere (or anywhere) else. Cindy didn't particularly enjoy finding a frog in our bathroom or being convinced at 3 in the morning that there was a tarantula in our room. After traveling for 40 hours without sleep, Sam would have preferred to skip the night walk, particularly the bit where Luis said 'watch out for the banana spider, it's about to pounce and it can kill you in less than 20 minutes'. However we tried to keep an open mind and made sure that we undertook thorough inspections of our room every night before bed.

All in all, the positives of our amazon trip far outweighed the negatives. We saw some amazing animals and scenery and met some fantastic likeminded people. We'd recommend the trip to anybody, particularly since ecotourism is the only thing stopping that part of Ecuador being taken over by the oil and gas industries. That said, we were happy to return, after a military and landslide interrupted bus ride, back to civilization in Quito.