Nature Nurture

I fight my way out of Quito's traffic and on down to Latacunga. A pretty town but I head on another hour to the first stop on the "Quilotoa Loop", a hamlet called Tigua. Famous for its indigenous paintings - enamel on drum skin. I stay in a beautiful farmhouse where they make to-die-for yogurt and cheese and grow organic barley. Llamas and ducks wander outside and I warm myself on the range and sip hot panela flavoured with passion fruit. The bucolic idyll is somewhat dented, when I go for a walk, by a continuous procession of trucks from a nearby quarry leaving me spluttering in their dust-wakes. I chat with a couple of indigena kids with snotty faces and try to dissuade them from torturing a kitten.

By the crater lake at Quilotoa, in a howling wind, I chat to a Korean traveller in Spanish. Challenging. I walk some of the way down the crumbling steep path to the water but give up on the grounds that getting back up will be too heinous with this little oxygen to go around.

I get a coca tea which really does seem to be the best antidote to altitude issues and learn a little Quichua from a guy called José. I continue along the road which just gets more and more spectacular and give a ride to a schoolboy. He is speechlessly happy. Or maybe just terrified.

At Chugchilán I walk around the absurdly vertigo-challenging canyon.

There is a birthday party in the evening. Candles, cake, all the same as home except here you also get your face rammed into the cake, Stan and Laurel style.

More stunning scenery through Sigchos and on to close the loop at Sasquilisí. The market here is great. Piglets are argued over and then slung into bags that sometimes walk off on their own. Unbelievable noise when the porkers panic. I watch the knife-sharpeners and sewing-machine jockeys and munch tortillas de maíz. The hats and the plaits of the indigenas. Even one of them in a full-on pop video at a DVD stall - traditional dress but otherwise pure Natalie Imbruglia...

I take Baños at face value and soak in the hot springs at the bottom of a waterfall and then luxuriate in one of the best massages I ever had.

The ride over to Guayaquil takes me up to 4200 metres. And then there is Volcán Chimborazo towering another 2100 metres above me wreathed in snow.

This is actually the nearest point to the sun - slight typo in my last post :) Down through Guaranda and then grope through miles of fog eventually popping out into jungly banana country. Saturated flood plains peppered with stilt houses. In Babahoyo they all have unfeasable-looking jungle-gym bridges to their doors.

After miles of this poverty there is an abrupt brand new shopping centre. Coudn´t be more incongruous. A long bridge and I am suddenly in the Manhattan-esque skyline, grid and edginess of Guayaquil. From snow to sweat, the journey suddenly throws in a torrential downpour for good measure to soak me to the skin in the last ten minutes.

I haggle for a Galápagos trip. This takes most of the day, not least because when I go to pay not one of my four cards will let me have money! Banks! Frustrations are vented, Kraftwerk-style, via Skype and the purse-strings are loosened. I spend the last hours of the day visiting the city cemetery. Must be the only time I have ever felt vertigo in a graveyard! A multi-storey carpark for bodies.

The Galápagos trip is super-expensive. I generally get by on something like $35 a day. For this week this mushrooms sevenfold. But in the end I don´t begrudge a centavo. Maybe it was too much "Life On Earth" when I was little but these magical, wild islands are a experience I will never forget, up there with my trip to La Guajira.

In Puerto Baquerizo Moreno on Isla San Cristóbal a sea lion lazily scratches itself on a bench as we wait for a dinghy (panga) to our boat Monserrat.

This sets the tone for the week, it is entirely unconcerned with people being even only a few inches away. The boat is luxurious and the crew friendly and efficient. Our guide, Daniel, is knowledgeable and laconically introduces us to the treasures of this paradise.

The islands have the purest silvery-blue water to contrast with the jet black lava rock and talcum-powder soft white sand. Near Puerto Chino we watch giant tortoises sluggishly bathe themselves in a pool and then we body-surf in the waves as the sun sets.

We snorkel at Cerro Brujo and Kicker Rock whose underwater canyon walls have the most intense underwater colouring I have ever seen.

The starfish are intent on clashing as much as possible with their bright pinks and greens. I see the dim outline of a shark below and watch a couple of turtles nibbling at the seaweed. I laze on Playa Ochoa for another perfect sunset.

On Isla Española, the wildlife is the most intense. The beach at Bahia Gardner littered with the grumpily twitching snoozing forms of about 80 sea lions.

They ignore us as we wander amongst them. Now and then a youngster wobbles up bleating only to be barked at in the most hideous howling woof by an adult for disturbing its sleep.

The crabs crackle around the rocks in anarchic flocks, sometimes getting into fist fights with each other. That´s a lot of fists.

The purple and black Marine Iguanas flop around, trying to warm themselves up on the rocks, cursing their evolutionary luck to not have been born warm-blooded.

The tortoises, the turtles and the iguanas all share the same face. It´s like Being John Malkovich with Yoda starring.

At Punta Suárez we find the Wavy Albatrosses some balancing huge eggs on their feet.

It's hard to communicat how breathtaking it is to get so close to all these animals. Most wildlife trips you just get fleeting distant glimpses, not this immersion.

The Blue-footed Boobies do their medieval-style mating dance with whistles and squawks.

On Isla Floreana, we panga over to Punta Cormorant where flamingos pull poses in a large lagoon. Apparently the older they get, the more red seaweed-eating micro crabs they eat, the pinker they get. The shoreline there is awash with stingrays and the sand littered with green Olivine, a stone usually found only 8 miles beneath the ground. At Champion Islet I snorkel into a cave and do loop-the-loops with a party of friendly sea lions. So vibrantly alive with their silver-ringed eyes ablaze in the water, such a contrast with their sluggish land personalities. It makes me indescribably happy to frolic with these lovely creatures, so welcoming, they make me jump at times, swimming right up to me and blowing bubbles in my face. I swim underwater alongside a huge turtle. It cranes its neck round and gazes at me blearilly with its ancient old eyes. The Galápagos is chock-full of priceless little connections like this. We post cards at Post Office Bay, a tradition stretching back centuries whereby mariners could send word home via other passing ships.

Our last trip with Daniel is the to Charles Darwin Research Centre on Isla Santa Cruz to visit Lonesome George. He was already old when brought here as the last remaining example of his species (from Isla Pinta)  in 1972. Now he looks knackered! A flurry of excitement 7 years ago when his longtime ladyfriends finally got pregnant was for naught - the eggs were unviable. We see some big fat Land Iguanas here too in their vibrant colours.

I walk to Bahia Tortuga to see jet-black iguanas swimming through the mangroves

and then catch a speedboat to pound me through the waves to Isla Isabela. I instantly fall in love with Puerto Villamil. The ultimate End-of-the-Road. Because there are no roads. Such an odd one-horse town with its tiny fire station and sea-themed church.

I find a sweet little room on the beach with triangular windows

and then "Iguana Point Bar" at the end of the pier for a sundowner cherry daquiri. Both drink and venue become instant daily habits. My days here are deliciously idle. I snorkel with more friendly sea lions and a penguin in a natural swimming pool in the mangroves called Concha de Perla

and walk up to the caldera of Sierra Negra - second biggest in the world and sea the lava flow from 2005. My last image of the islands is from up here with a dreamlike view of Isabela's volcanos spread at my feet with the islands of Fernandina, Rábida, Santiago and the Cuatro Hermanos all clustered round.

I spend the last afternoon cycling out along sandy tracks to an old WW2 US Radar station where I see the Muro de Lágrimas (Wall of Tears) built by convicts under abusive conditions in the post war years.

I drift back along the shoreline visiting little mangrove inlets festooned with diving pelicans in a Battle of Britain feeding frenzy and watch little wading birds pick off unwary baby fish in the rockpools. I peer into lava tunnels and gaze across lagoons from lost worlds.

I get drunk with my Quebecois friends and commence my absurd journey back to the mainland with a
Class A hangover. Not ideal with the 2.5 hour punishment of the speedboat at 6am. A horrible ride. One local lady starts off screaming with giggles each time the boat takes to the air and slams to the water. Half an hour later she is in tears from the pain. In all, my journey involves a 5am walk, four boatrides, two taxis, a bus, a plane (made with scant minutes to spare) and a four hour motorbike ride (sweltering heat to blinding fog to shivering by a roadside putting on my thermals) but I finally make it to Cuenca.

Cuenca is a truly beautiful town and for a day I admire its beautiful churches and galleries. One exhibit is five shrunken heads or tzantzas from the Shuar tribe of the southern oriente. The hair doll-perfect, the faces bonzai death black and their lips sewn together with plaited cords.

I choose to get to Perú by the backdoor. Dusty mountain roads to the tiny border crossing of La Balsa.

I go to leave Ecuador at the "International Bridge" but the gate is padlocked.

I have to go find the customs guy to come unlock it for me. On the Peruvian side, I run around the 'town´ trying to find somebody called Professor Panta. First at his house, then at a café where he was having lunch and then finally a passerby tells me he´s gone for a walk and will be gone for an hour. He was the only person in the village with a photocopier... In the end the customs guy, Chomo, just gets me to read everything out for him to write down and then waves me on and goes back to sleep.