Ecuador Pics

Spring Break!!

Cuenca. Night. Nothing amusing.

Wheeeeeeee!

The Devil's nose.

Baños Baby!

Cuenca 3am. God i'm such a 'baller.

So you walk down these stairs....

... and come out looking like this.

(Waterproof clothes!?! How do the people at Rohan sleep at night?)

Howler monkeys in there somewhere - God I miss Bosley!

Working hard.

They jumped me.

Quito to the Carribean (photos)

Beauties and the Beast.


The `Heroes`.

Supper.

Humpback Whale.

Parrot Love.

Papallacta..... sublime!

!

Playa el Agua, Carribean Paradise.

We do apologise for the quotes.

Muisne, 15/7/06

Holas,

After leaving the boys looking somewhat tearful in Puerto Lopez I bused down to the chilled out surf resort of Montañita. Here I checked into the cheapest dorm accomodation ever - $2 per night but bats may land on you - and quickly established I was indeed the only person in the place! The owner was a legend however and after a few beers promised to take me out surfing in the morning. It was great fun 3 metre waves are a little large for me at the momment.

On a whim I decided to go to Guyaquil that night and arrived at the absurd (small international airport) sized bus terminal at 11pm. The rough guide describes Guyaquil terrestre as very dangerous with petty theft a common occurance and suggests that on no account should you go there at night! I have to agree although it was pretty fun making myself look as angry as possible and then swaggering arond the underground walkways surrounded by shady characters. Feeling slightly threatened I decided the best move was to jump on the next bus to Cuenca. Sadly it arrived there at 3am.

Cuenca is a beautiful colonial city. The bus station is terrible. Having tried to snatch a few hours of sleep cruelly disturbed by geese carrying peasants (too stingy to fork out for a hostel I know) I took the only course of action, drank 7 cups of coffee and played hacky sack until dawn finally broke. Feeling pretty wired I hit the old town and wandered around the deserted streets looking at the beautiful Spanish architecture and checking out the small saturday market. I then discovered my first choice hostel had shut down but (thanks to the help of my lovely mother) I quickly found another and crashed out for some well deserved rest. Awakened by the guys next door aka the "cronwell rd massive" (bloody Bristol uni students) we hit the bar for breakfast and to watch England lose. More sleep. We then watched Brazil lose. More sleep. Crap day.

In the evening following a quickly grabbed snack overlooking the beautifully lit up skyline we hit "Roca" one of Cuencas biggest salsatecas to celebrate Canada day big time! A good time was had by all and I was sorry to leave at 4am to catch the bus to Alausi. A little innebriated me and the friendly conductor quickly established (in flowing spanish no less) that I had indeed lost my ticket. He let me stay and I am eternally greatfull. I was on the 4am bus on account of the hostel owner telling me the train leaves at 8.30 sharp. It leaves at 11. Luckily 4 other gringas had heard the same and we hung out on the freezing platform.

The devil's nose is awesome! You sit on top of a train zooming down the Andes at ridiculous speeds with dizzying drops and then every so often you have to take the switchbacks and the train de-rails! It was great fun! Having fallen asleep on the Canadian member of the group on the way back (she had obviously been celebrating heavily) I was quickly persuaded that going back to volunteer work was a stupid idea and that I really needed to see Baños.

Baños is awesome! Having found a four person room, meaning I would be sleeping on the floor (I suggested rock, paper, scissors to the girls, but they where having none of it), we went for a meal at Casa Hood, a backpacker institution, for an awesome thai curry followed by "Soy Cuba" some Russian propaganda movie which is aparently a "classic" but is really too intellectual and too artsy for the likes of me. The next day the girls went for massages followed by facials while I grabbed a mountain bike and headed down 22km through the cloud forest. On the way I saw loads of stunning waterfalls, took a cable car and even a $10 dollar bungy jump which looked really good but I was puished for time. The highlight however was going down into the Panillo del diablo, a 50 foot waterfall with a stairway through the jungle into the falls and got soaked. On arrival back in Baños we hit one of the thermal baths from which the town gets its name for a refreshing soak before going up the active volcano Tungurahua. The cloud was so thick that you couldn't see the top from our vantage point but the noises where amazing and it was a great experience.

The next day I attempted to return to work in Muisne at the far end of Ecuador from Baños but after sleeping a little too late I found myself stuck in Esmeraldas City at 11pm. Small children attempted to steal the shoes tied to my bag. Feeling a little sketched out I found a hotel room and hid for the evening. The next day I finally got back to work 12 days later than had been promised and was quickly filled in with the latest gossip. It's better than a soap opera round here!

Work is still pretty fun. We do a lot of the routine stuff on our own now - monitoring shrimp, clearing trails, replanting mangroves but at the same time we also do some cool stuff on the reserve with the definate highlight this week of watching a fisherman reel in a 5foot hammerhead shark with a day working with the local school kids cleaning the village a close second. We also have spent more than a few hours on some great beaches and had a couple of fun nights out in Atacames.

LOL Jx

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.