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Published: February 25th 2007
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Well, my second week in Quito was fairly quiet, we pretty much carried on with the teaching course, and didn’t really do all that much in the afternoon. However, on Friday, Sophie, Sophie, Jack, Matt, Lou, Kat and I (those of us who will live in Cuenca together) went up the ‘teleferico’ (don’t hold me to that spelling) which was basically these things like gondola’s, or cable cars, which went up the mountain. It was fairly touristy, particuarly at the bottom before getting into the cable cars, there were a few rides, and people selling music and various things, and prices were through the roof! But still, the views were beautiful once we reached the top, it was so amazing, you could just look out and see the whole of Quito, one of my favourite moments was when we were watching a plane coming in, and we were higher than the plane. There's a four-hour walk which you can do, although we started, but didn't complete as the change in altitudue was both noticeable and surprising, and we were all feeling fairly out of breath! But it was definetlya fun time. The next day, Saturday, was my birthday! My first
away from home. It was definetly odd waking up, I had one of those 'where am I again?' moments, it was fantastic though, I went upstairs, and Martina and Camilla immediately ran up to me, screaming (literally) 'feliz cumpleanos!!' then the family started singing for me as they presented me with this wrapped up bundle and card which turned out to be a teddy bear. Martina and Camilla then promptly ran off and got some of their other bears and barbie dolls and we promptly started up a game after spending some time thinking up some name, (which I'm ashamed to say I promptly forgot). After a while, Lou, Matt and Jack returned, and presented me with a present of my favourite fruit (again, someting I forget the name of, but has been nicknamed 'frogspawn') complete with a smiley face on it! This fruit is truly delicious, you have to bash it against your hand, or head if you're Camilla, to crack it open, inside is this, well, frog-spawn look-a-like stuff, which just tastes so delicious and a cross between sweet and sharp when you bight open the seeds, pure heaven! That evening we went out, had a few drinks,
and went dancing, all good fun!
This was the weekend which people staying in Quito moved into their proper family houses, so we were now joined by Tamsin, Ezim and Ben (who arrived on Saturday, and still managed to come out with us that night after an 18 hour flight!)
The next morning, Sunday, we made a decision to go to the Quito zoo, which had quite a good reputation. So, afer setting out promptly at about 8.30, and having everything planned out, Sophie, Sophie and Kat were a tad late, and then it seemed impossible to find a bus to get to where we wanted, so we eventually piled into 3 taxi's, after much arguing with the drivers over fares, and arrived. The zoo itself had some of the largest turtles I had
ever seen. The amount of flowers they had there was astounding, the whole place was just awash with colours, it was so pretty even if some of the cages were quite small, but they did have a condor! and a tigrillo, which looked to be soemthing of a cross between a tiger and a leapard. However, I think the most memorable part
of the day had to be the return journey... we were walking back to the main road, which was about 7km, in the blistering heat, when a pick-up truck offered all 9 of us a lift. We assumed that he was talking about to the end of the road, and so promptly said 'yes please'. So we somehow managed to squeeze us into the back, plus a pram which was already there, only to find out that he meant all the way to Quito! So about half-an-hour later, so there we were, looking like little kids playing sardines, arriving into Quito, windswept, cheeks glowing, and laughing our heads off as well as trying to sing every now and again. It had to be one of the best journey's of my life, it was just so fun, and well, gap-year ish! We had seen lots of people travelling around like this in Quito, but never thought that we'd be doing it ourselves. So, $5 later, the family dropped us off very close to our house, probably thinking we were completely insane, and we hobbled down the hill trying to make sleeping limbs become alive again! Definetly on the list of things
Gigantic Huge Turtles
From the zoo, huge, and I mean HUGE to do again, but only in large groups!
The next few days, was Orientation, which was really pretty pointless when we've been traveling around Quito for two weeks and had been everywhere where the guide took us, but there were safety talks which were useful, and getting various things sorted out, it was also a great chance for us Cuenca lot to say bye to the Quito girls, for....
Wednesday, 5am. WAKE UP! Time to catch the bus to Cuenca, and the real beginning of what we all set out to do! Nerves were running fairly high as the family we'd been staying with had been so fantastic, I personally was worried as to what the next family was going to be like. However, after the fantastic send-off they'd given us (lots of salsa dancing), and the manic night of packing, where I quite disgusted Lou with my packing abilities, and managed to amuse the others with my lack of concentration and ability to get side-tracked... I was feeling pretty much ready to face whatever came. So we set off for Cuenca, on our lovely long 12-hr bus ride. The scenery going from Quito to Cuenca
Pretty flowers
Apparently this is some kind of potent drug.. I can't remember what though was just amazing, and the journey passed by relatively quickly, helped no doubt by sleeping a fairly large amount (Kat and I earnt ourselves the nick-names 'sleeping beauties') When we arrived, we were all promptly greeted by our families and Charo, the GAP rep. in Cuenca, and split up to go to our respective homes. And so began the next step...
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Sandra
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Great raconteur, keep it coming:)