Caimen, tarantulas and spoted old lady

Plane to Lago Agrio on the Ecuador, Columbian border, 3 hours over dirt roads, 4 hours by motorised canoe took us well into the Ecuadorian part of the Amazonian jungle. We stayed in a thatched hut without electricty but with our own ensuite and tarantulas. Had an amazing time. Went pirranha fishing and swam in the same water. Daytime hunts for caymen (caught one) and anacondas (found its den in an holow tree but it was too far in to see). We did a night trek into the jungle and found poisonous frogs and boa constrictors. The jungle is really frightening when you turn the torches off. You cannot see a thing apart from fire flies that look like eyes peering at you through the darkness.

Saw pink river dolphins, manatee, otters, toucans, parrots, bats, sloths, loads of monkeys including one that is only 6 inches big, lots of snakes, bat hawks and loads of other stuff

It has taken a visit to the Amazon for us to really understand how it teems with life but it is all totally independent. Every bit of jungle we destroy is lost for ever. Replanting will never bring it back

Quito!

first picture is the view at breakfast in the Secret Garden













1. Everyone wants cash but cash machines only work some of the time and never after 3pm
2. Surrounded by volcanoes
3. Quito sits in a valley that is more than twice as high as Ben Nevis
4. Edgy atmosphere, have to be on your guard all the time
5. Secret Garden deserves to have won best hostal in South America
6. No health and safety rules so climbing around the Basillica towers gives an adrenalin rush
7. Live jazz in the main plaza
8. 3 course lunch for 1.5$, a good room for 18$, guinee pig for 3$, the best restaurant in Equador, dinner 70$
9. The new town is known by everyone as Gringolandia
10 Án English and a Scottish pub both with their own micro breweries

Enough internet (this cafe is the best place to get good coffee) . We are off for 5 days

Monika´s revenge

Mindo is a small town, down a track in the middle of the cloud forest. It is the sort of town where children and dogs play in the middle of the road all day and most of the night. Mindo is famous for its bird life, waterfalls and beautiful hostals with natural swimming pools, saunas and humming birds in their gardens

Monika, our Spanish teacher, has a friend who has a hostal in Mindo. Monika kindly arranged our booking with her friend.

Because we had missed our bus we arrived in the dark and with limited cash. We found out that there is no where to get cash in Mindo

Our hostal room was filthy and mosquito ridden. There was no one else staying there and the garden was a dump. We were landed with a crap guide to take us into the jungle. We are now both infected with fleas . We couldnt move because we didnt have any cash

Dispite Monika we did see humming birds and a type of Toucan and swam in waterfalls in the jungle

How not to give to a beggar

On Saturday´s Otavalo supposedly has the biggest market in South America. We arrived on Friday to find a ghost town but woke on Saturday morning to a magic transformation. Every street and square was packed with stalls, manned by indigenous people in their best traditional clothes.

Along with the stalls come lots of tiny, scrunched up, old women beggars, dressed from head to toe in black. The way to help them is to eat at one of the food stalls and put a put a bit of meat into their proffered bowls. The stall owner then usually tops this off with a spoonful of rice. The way not to do it, is the American way. Give two old women a $5 bill and tell them in English to share it, as if one is going to say lets go to the bank and get change. Instead what you get is a nasty mass beggar fight and a hysterical American.

If we had worked harder at our Spanish we would have understood the guy trying to tell us that the bus back to Quito was taking a 2 hour detour across the Andes on winding dirt tracks with shear drops. And we wouldn´t have:

- spent 4 hours on a bus with children being sick,
- like, sat, like, oh my god, like next to a, oh my god, really like annoying, like, oh my god, like, Australian girl,
- had a driver who got lost and had to keep asking for directions
- missed our bus to Mindo

Testing the system

Our Spanish teacher took us to the central market so that we could learn the language in real life and to see if we can get food poisoning. She got us to buy and eat unwashed fruit, fresh fruit juice with local ice and dinner consisting of dried pigs blood, boiled pigs skin topped with a piece of advoacdo. We survived the food but not the Spannish - we were crap

In Equidor young girls walk around cradling small puppies, then in their early teens they swap the puppy for a baby. Marilyn is beginning to get the hots for the indigenous Andien men - I think I will get her a puppy.

Love the comments on the blog

Middle of the word - almost

Took a bus to the equator. The best thing about it is that the French screwed up. Midi du Mondo is like Disney Land. A big complex with stages, restaurants, tourist shops, displays. At its centre is a massive monument supposidly on the equator. All this was built by the French but they got it wrong by 200M. Next door to the complex is a dusty little outdoor museum. It is not signposted but it is brillient and they have used GPS to put it right on the equatorial line. They do alsorts of dodgy scienitifc experiments and tricks using the equator. They also have a real shrunken head. What more could you ask for!

Started Spanish lessons. 5 hours a day, including lunch, when we dont speak a word of Engish. Very intense but fun

Security and Safety

1. Pickpockets everywhere - Marilyn had a child try and get in her pocket. Her hand not the whole child!
2. Guy eaten by an anaconda on a jungle trip - he disappeared while swimming with other members of the group
3. Hammock framework broke while 6 people where sleeping in a cave. Lots of bruises. We are doing this trip in a couple of weeks
4. Guys girlfriend was attacked by a grissly (but this was in Canada)
5. Dodgy areas - twice we have been told to get out of area because it isnt safe - in both cases we where only one block from a safe area
6. Forged dollar bills - we have a very nice fake 20 dollar bill we got at the airport
7. All the usual scams such as squirting gunge on you and then pretending to clean it off
8. Free drinks in the Hostal followed by pool in the new town until 3am- makes you ill
9. Altitude sickness - we just get breathless but some people are quite bad
10. Losing the opportunity to buy 2, 3 day tickets for the Ashes Test in Melbourne. A Engish guy wanted to sell them for $40 but a bloody Australian got in first - makes you sick You should have seen Marilyn´s face when she thought we where going to abandon SA for Australia

All in all we feel safer than wandering around Ipswich on a friday night

We are here

In Quito, in the Secret Garden Hostel. Brilliant place even if our room is a cell without windows. It has a terrace with fantastic views over the city where you can sit and drink beer and eat really good food.

Had a good flight apart from the woman next to Marilyn who thought she was a foot rest. Marilyn wanted to kill her by the end of the flight and she was really pleased when the woman was hit on the head by two bags when the overhead lockeers where opened

Salving our consciences

Offset our carbon emissions but why is it so cheap?. It only costs £12.50 each way per person. Surely planting a couple of trees doesn't offset the damage we will do. If this really worked we could save the world with a 4% tax on air fares