Blogs from Centre, Ecuador, South America - page 98

We arrived at Baños without a hitch, which is a good thing given that the Foreign Office suggest that you don't go there. What do they know, eh? It turns out that Baños is a nice, chilled little tourist town nestling between a big grumbly volcano and some pretty mountains. All good really, as we weren't in the mood for ANY walking after our Quilotoa adventure. Not for a couple of days anyway. We plodded around town and checked into the very welcoming Hostal Llantoventos, on a hill overlooking Baños. I have no idea how we failed to notice the steepness of the hill it was on whilst carrying all of our stuff, but fail to notice we did. That came later when walking home from the pub. In Baños though we felt instantly at home. ... read more

We'd climbed a volcano. So what next? The Quilotoa loop... From Latacunga there's a fairly well trodden path around a series of villages known as the Quilotoa loop. Quilotoa itself is a stunning emerald green lake in the caldera of an extinct volcano at around 3800m above sea level. It takes between 2-3 days to do the loop, and buoyed by relative sucess at Cotopaxi we decided to give it a look. The first leg of the journey was a straightforward taxi journey to Saquisili (you see why we were having trouble with the pronounciation?!) along with Rein & Char, two of the folks that we had climbed Cotopaxi with. Saquisili is the site of a colourful Indian market every Thursday, which was why we started the loop there. Although we had already seen the market ... read more

My last night in Lima coincided with the final world cup qualifier for Germany 2006, played in Sydney between Australia and Uruguay. I watched the first game in Huacachina with a Uruguayan girl I met on an earlier tour, it was great fun and a predictable result. Of course I was extremely gracious to her in defeat. The return game started at 4:00am local time, and by coincidence there were up to ten Australians at the hostel in Lima. The place was absolutely jumping around 7:00am when Australia slotted home the winning penalty, as we started hopping about like mad kangaroos to celebrate a terrific achievement for Australian football. Congratulations to the mighty Socceroos and all the best for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Apologies for the free plug regarding our football team, but the ... read more

Hola amigos! First things first. I´m still alive mum! As the title suggests i´ve made it to the jungle. I´ve just finished the first two weeks teaching the kids in the jungle. However its not quite the proper jungle as you can get to places by car and bus. But all being well and if we can get enough people we´ll be off to the deep jungle in the middle of December. To bring you guys up to date. I finished spanish school a couple of weeks ago. Came straight to Baños after to meet up with Marcelo aka Jesus, the guy whos running the fundation in the jungle. He is a cool guy and showed me on the first day a waterfall. After that day it was straight to work. The grounds are amazing wth ... read more

On that Thursday night we had an impromptu card and drinking sesh, got ever so slightly drunk, couldnt stop laughing all night, great fun! Friday i did NOTHING. Had a fruitless trip to the bus station to attempt to get tickets for Coca or Baños in advance, but wasnt allowed. I was scared to death there, went on my own and the taxi man dropped me off at this underpass. It was dark and deserted and these men started calling to me from behind dark doors...not a good experience. Anyway, that night rum and coke was the usual chaos. Saturday we had a ridiculously early start to go on a day trip to Otavalo market. I went with Andy and Steve, plus Mel and her mum, and a few new faces from the hostel. We visited ... read more