As we got off the bus from Puerto Lopez we were only a little bit less tired than our previous eleven hour journey of hell along the same road, we had nowhere to stay this time. We grabbed a taxi and headed for the centre of Quito and the Mariscal. We wandered around the tourist centre at 5 in the morning for hours but there was no room at the inn. Desperate for a place to stay we finally set eyes upon the 1950´s edifice infront of us. We pressed the buzzer and checked into the sterile but beautiful HI hostal and crashed out til the afternoon. That day we slept and ate and prepared ourselves for the night to come.

That evening we grabbed a mexican (´dunno what came over us we just grabbed the bugger´token), and set off for Level night club. It turned out to be exactly like it´s Bristol counterpart, however we just partied in ignorant bliss as we had little idea as to what was being hollared at us. With both Teo and Tom enjoying the forwardness of the local chicas Laurie took it upon himself to drink some beers with a particularly large and intimidating gangster. After a few hours a scene change was needed and we went to No Bar for the remainder. That is all we shall say but the night was quality and we resided to our NHS wipe clean hostal beds to get some kip.
The next day was the England vs Portugal game. Nothing more to say on that apart from, if C. Ronaldo happened to get hit by a First bus whilst walking down Gloucester road and we were a meter away we might just be forced a blink. Our anger and hurt was so great we forgot to pay at the bar we watched the game, after this moment of madness and illegality we decided to run away to the jungle.

Having heard bad things from James about the bus journey to Tena, we were expecting the worst. However our driver who was no doubt a legend threw the bus around the corners with an elegance similar to that of an Ecuadorian figure skater, we arrived in Tena that evening with not so much as a scratch on our hardened skin. We checked into the Travellers lodge, and got a good room with a fan thanks to Tom´s visit two years previous. This was not before asking ´did you see three lads here about 3 months ago´. This became quite a frequent question and came with the remarkable answer of ´yeh, good kids´amongst other less patronising answers. We adjusted to the humidity over an Italian and resided to our beds for our first jungle night.
The next morning we were fitted for the black rubber boots (wellies) that this part of the jungle is famous for and jumped in the back of a pickup. We were taken to Shangri-la. We checked into the cliff side jungle hotel and after about an hour of indecision decided to the take the less tiring option of floating down the river on a tractor innertube. With our guide who also knew KJT we ´went extacurricular´ and trekked up the river napo on foot to indulge in a spot of uninsured mental rapid tubing, this was so good it left a taste for more white water in our insect filled mouths. Our first day was awesome and it was a great introduction to the jungle. After chilling that evening in the hammock garden, playing hammock ball, talking with an over exubarent american lady and destroying the double bed in our room we got down for a night of sleep. The next day we got an early morning transfer to the Amorangachi huts.
Here we played with the very same parrot as Tommy before donning our boots and heading for the Cascades. We were surprised to meet a group of Christian Missionaries in the gorge and even more surprised by there lack of adventure. Our crazy guide was eager to get wet so without further a do we passed them and threw ourselves up and around the huge cascades without ropes (mothers) and generally soaked and bruised ouselves . After the last cascade we truged back to the huts and consumed a whole meal of food. That afternoon we took the medicinal plants walk where we learnt about the ways of the jungle and became one with the plants and fruit. The entire time we were keeping an eye on the now record flood that was lapping against the shores of the river Napo. We were told that we could not go rafting tommorow. In dismay we had no choice but to reside to our hammocks for the night, here we smoked jungle pipes, ate parrots and amazed our new missionary Deciples with tales of old and tales of our spitual journey.