I can´t quite put my finger on what it is I like about La Paz. After all, it´s dirty, smelly and chaotic, not normally characteristics which make you warm to a place. Plus, walking up and down the higgledy piggledy streets leaves me breathless unless I take it easy. And after nearly 2 months in the Andes I am probably fairly well acclimatized in comparison with most people. Still, at 3,600 metres (2.2 miles) La Paz is the highest capital in the world, so only the city´s residents who were born in the Andes and therefore have a greater lung capacity [View Full Entry]

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First things first, I need to apologise to a dear friend. Andrea, I only hope you can forgive me....the evidence in the photos is incontrovertible, I did indeed spend part of yesterday evening eating a small pet. Full culinary critique to follow, but guess what...it tastes just like chicken! This week my Dad, Gillian and I have been on a whistlestop tour of Ecuador trying to cram in as much as is humanly possible in 7 days. Generally it has been good, but there have been a couple of mishaps along the way: 1) Having all our cameras stolen on the [View Full Entry]

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Whenever I´ve told anyone that I´m going to the Galapagos the reaction has always been the same. There´s an "Oooh" followed by "You lucky thing!" or "I´m so jealous!". Now there aren´t many places in the world that provoke such an outburst. So what is it? Is it that we all know from school that the Galapagos were the inspiration for Charles Darwin´s "The Origin of the Species"? A book which fundamentally altered the way we as a race think of ourselves. Or is it more likely that in those same classes we learned of a place where animals are totally [View Full Entry]

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So this week I said goodbye to the little bunch of ragamuffins who´ve been so sweet and kept me so entertained for the last month. Volunteering at the centre has certainly been an experience, often of the depressing or frustrating kind. "But we can´t work like this!" is not an unusual refrain to hear coming from the mouths of the British volunteers I know, a belief in the importance of order and structure engrained into our very natures. Working and living in the third world has been enlightening. Generally it makes me hugely appreciate the way things work in Britain. We [View Full Entry]

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This week I realise what a firm friend or rather devout follower I now have in Isabelle. At around 11am each morning we generally have a half hour break. Exhausted after two hours of trying to control the kids most of the volunteers retire to what could be called our little staff room in need of a sit down and some coffee. But no, I´m not allowed any such rest any day this week. I am happy to play with the kids for half the break but if I try to sneak off to get myself a much needed coffee I´m [View Full Entry]

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So as the title of this blog suggests, this weekend we went hunting for a gigantic whale. And as the picture below shows, we were in luck. No sperm whale (aka Moby Dick) but a group of humpbacks, no less majestic and just as breath-taking. Seeing a 16 metre beast swim past your boat at such close proximity (they were less than 3 metres away at points) is quite something. The pictures I did get just don´t do it justice. The captain of our little boat had taken us 25 minutes out to sea before we spotted a pod of whales [View Full Entry]

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So working at the drop-in centre continues in the same shambolic fashion this week. Some days there are classes, some days there are not. Some days there are activities, some days there are not. And some days the nuns don´t tell me when there will be no children at the centre, leaving it for me to turn up only to find there's practically no-one there. That´s what happens on Tuesday morning, I eventually do find someone in the centre - Manuela, the volunteer who is living at the centre for a year and who for that reason is a much braver [View Full Entry]

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Otavalo is home to the biggest indigenous market in South America. There is a market here every day. Mainly for the local community, it´s where they buy and sell animals, corn, bread, vegetables and fruit and all the other the essentials of daily life. Saturday though is the big market day when hoardes of tourists descend on the small town in search of typical South American gifts; colourful scarves and jewellery, ponchos, pan pipes and panama hats (contrary to popular opinion, panama hats actually come from Ecuador, not Panama). In order to beat the big tourist buses which get to Otavalo [View Full Entry]

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My first day at the drop-in centre is Tuesday (a bought of food poisoning prevents me going on Monday). This is something I've been looking forward to and have wanted to do for a long time, but I'm also fairly apprehensive, unsure exactly what to expect. When I arrive at about 9am I find that the centre is run entirely by nuns. Given that this is an almost entirely Roman Catholic country that shouldn't surprise me as much as it does. There are already some other volunteers here, some will work as teachers, others generally help out assisting in classes and [View Full Entry]

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"We advise against all travel to the tourist destination city of Baños and surrounding areas with immediate effect following a major eruption of the volcano Tungurahua at 23:50BST on Friday 14 July 2006" - The British Foreign Office Travel Advice website. So where are we going this weekend? Why, Baños of course. Why? To see an erupting volcano of course...and to bathe in the hot springs that the town is famous for (baño in Spanish means bath). Foolhardy? Me?! Hardly. I just now take the Foreign Office´s warnings with a pinch of salt, and besides, every Ecuadorian we´ve spoken to has [View Full Entry]

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