those 4 weeks in the clouds flew by so quickly... too quickly. now we r back in quito to get some clean clothes, use the internet and take in as much of the recognisable world as poss b4 heading off to the AMAZON!! first tho, a few off my reflections on Santa Lucia... Santa Lucia - an ecolodge in the Ecudorian cloud forest. memories of the lodge include candlelite, reading and playing competetive sometimes vicious card games, insects buzzing, fireflies glowing... the post-work shower, with the open view over the cloud forest, wave after wave of greenness. the work - [View Full Entry]

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well, cabin fever has set in, we r actually all going LOCO...! ok i have 7 mins to try to fit in as much of the last 2 weeks news and craziness as poss. here goes... MAKING SUGAR thursday of last week. a long laborious process involving cutting the canes, washing, chasing mules round to crush it (some ppl had hilarious insults to shout at them... tom, ben..), 6hrs boiling and stirring, bashing.... and a seriuos amount of consumption of sugar at every possible stage. this is one theory to the starting of the madness! FRIDAY woke up at 4am to [View Full Entry]

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from santa lucia cloud forest to civilization its an hour´s walk then hopefully a truck (standing up like cattle), (approx 30mins) to La delicia where i am now. then another half hr to Nanegal. i stayed with an old couple last nite... interesting. they thought everything i said was hilarious... esp when i arrived 1hr30mins late for breakfast...(8am when i got up-potatoes AGAIN). they had been banging around since 5am and the cockrel crowing what seemed like right next to my ear. all that after a very late night at a kareoke bar... singing more horrendous than humanly imaginable! during the [View Full Entry]

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so by this time i should be in a beautiful peaceful middle-of-nowhere cloud forrest with no internet, no electricity, no car alarms in the night... but im still in quito. 5 out of 11 in our group have food poisoning so we are staying one more day. gracias a dios i dont have it!! yesterday however i got out of quito for un viaje to an indigenous market in a place called Otavalo. went with a couple of my room mates from the hostel, the rest of the intervol group wanted to stay to watch the game... we still got to [View Full Entry]

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Oh dear i´ve only just started this blog and i suck already- one entry and no photos... at least it means im not bored! EVENTUALLY arrived in Quito on sunday after many American Airlines related problems, getting seriously pissed off, frustrated and thinking i would never get here! already thursday night... i´ll try to compact some news... many of the surroundings feel familiar... latin-american spanish accents, reggetton and salsa music, car alarms thru the night, crazy bus drivers, mouth-watering fruit, stares, blantant divides between rich and poor.. but there are also considerable [View Full Entry]

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i made it! despite spraining my ankle 24hrs b4 i was due to leave my house, a quick trip to casualty, a pair of crutches, many tears and a few packs of frozen peas later... i am at Tara's house in Bethpage, Long Island chilling out instead of doing a crazy tourist dash around NYC. suits me just fine. there is a pool, i am being pampered... nuff said. 1st impressions of los Estados Unidos are that 1. it really is the land of the large. to be fair, haven't seen many fatties but the cars are HUGE, the food is [View Full Entry]

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