I first had the idea of trying to reach the summit of Cotopaxi after hearing about a friend, Rachel's, adventures. Two years later, having made my attempt, I have to admit that she is a far more determined girl than I am! Imagine climbing up a very steep ice-covered slope in crampons in the dark. The closest thing I can liken it to is climbing back up a ski slope with skis on inching slowly up sideways. It was much like that, for 6 hours, at 5000m+ altitude. If that is sounding less like fun and more like torture then I [View Full Entry]

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Last Friday was Ivan (my 'house brother')'s 22nd birthday. What better way to celebrate than by introducing some gringas to the Quiteno scene? So it was that Linda, Friedrike and I ended up on the town dancing the night away til 5am. I had thought that the nightlife here might be quite different (and in some salsa bars I´ve been to, it definitely has been!) but this was a huge nightclub and, apart from the choice of music, much like any in England. There were even girls crying and throwing-up in the toilets, so just like England really... That night obviously [View Full Entry]

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Had a brilliant weekend as I joined a three-day trek in Cotopaxi National Park. A very international group it was too: 3 Swiss, 1 German, 1 Belgian, 1 French (Could I speak any French? Could I heck! Sorry Mum, it's all disappeared under a layer of bad Spanish) 2 Canadians and little old me. I felt a bit intimidated when the rest of the group all turned up kitted out from head to toe in goretex and brandishing walking poles, but they turned out to be a great bunch and I managed to keep up, just about! On Friday we started [View Full Entry]

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So no prizes for all the clever-clogs who guessed that classes would not in fact begin this week. I actually believed it when I should have known better. I arrived on Monday morning to the usual chaos of children wildly running around and trying to tag me whilst I tried to work out whether anything else was supposed to be happening....and so it continued for most of the week really. Some days there would be the 'usual' children, somedays children I'd never seen before and, on Wednesday, no children at all, which you'd have thought someone might have bothered to mention [View Full Entry]

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Since I arrived I have been asking Guadelupe if we can cook some traditional Ecuadorean dishes together. Being very accommodating, she chose Saturday morning as a good time to teach us how to make prawn ceviche- a delicious cold soup with lime, coriander, tomatoes and onions. Unfortunately this coincided with my humungous hangover from a very funny and random Friday night out. Peeling prawns was a serious struggle as was eating the results of our efforts. Whoops. I decided to be much more healthy on the Sunday by joining in with the Ciclopaseo. Normally you´d have to be mad to cycle [View Full Entry]

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I SAW WHALES! Lots of them and up close and personal too. Humpback whales are migrating (to where?) and pass by these shores at this time of year. We went on a whale-watching trip at the coast last Friday and were lucky enough to find a large group of whales only about half an hour from the shore. There were 4 adults and 2 babies in the group and they stayed near the boat for about an hour just splashing around and showing off really. We could have stayed there watching them all day, it was brilliant. I could also have [View Full Entry]

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My second week has been just as full as the first; in fact Im feeling as if I am constantly running around trying to be somewhere else at a given time. I have already found it easy to adapt to "la hora ecuatoriana" which seems to be a fluid, rather than precise, interpretation of the concept of time. Suits me though, being late is suddenly perfectly acceptable, brilliant! There´s not really much of an excuse though as getting around Quito is so easy, the buses are like taxis as they will pick you up or drop you off anywhere (as long [View Full Entry]

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It certainly feels like I've been in Quito for longer than a week- and I mean that in a good way. My homestay family have been very welcoming and I feel quite at home there. I say 'family' but really it's just one older lady, Guadalupe, and her 21 year old son who comes and goes. He was quite hard work at first but once he realised that I'd heard of Delgado and I won him over with the contents of my i-pod he warmed a lot (one of his favourite songs is 500 miles by the proclaimers-nothing to do with [View Full Entry]

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