Blogs from Quito, North, Ecuador, South America - page 160

For the first few days of my Galapagos trip, my internal monologue was really pretty boring, going something like this: "Oh my god, this is so amazing. Oh my god, this is so amazing. Oh look, another one, even closer. Oh my god, there are about fifty more over there. Oh my, this is so amazing. ... ... Oh my god, I feel so ill. Oh my god, I feel so ill. I think I´m going to throw up. I feel so ill ... ... Oh my god, this is so amazing. Oh look, there´s a baby one. This is so amazing..." I think maybe you got the drift of this from my mid-trip entry. Anyway, I saw so many incredible animals. They´re crawling all over your feet practically. Heaped on top of each other. Not ... read more

Bright and early tomorrow morning, I´ll be hailing a cab to take me to the airport, clutching my binoculars and butterfly catching net. (I wish I had either of these, it would make me look so much more authentic. I´d like to do the whole thing in the style of a 19th century lady naturalist, actually, with fifteen men to carry my boxes of captured animals, and a parasol.) I have ludicrously high hopes for the trip. I´m expecting it to be more successful than my last couple of days of tourism, at the very least. Yesterday was a bit of a flop, you see. I´m exagerating; I went round the cathedral, La Compania and another church whose name escapes me, all of which were stunning. I also did loads of walking round the pretty Old ... read more

Being a four-hour-a-day student takes up more time than you'd think. You might think it would take fur hours a day, leaving twenty free. But somehow it's not like that. There's homework, of course , but also when you're engaged from 11-3, it's hard to do much either before or after. So I haven't. I only made it into Quito Old Town for the first time today. I went to a church. There are lots of them here. And just now I tried to go to a Basilica, but it was closed. So I had an ice-cream instead. I bought it from a street vendor. I'm so confident of my stomach these days that I've started buying food from street vendors, which had been the last bastion of my nutrional virtue. Maybe it will all catch ... read more

I´d just about cracked it on the cold bus journeys by the time I got back to La Paz on Friday morning. I wore three pairs of socks, three pairs of trousers, eight top half layers, gloves, hat, two hoods and I wrapped my grey blanket (alas, now abandoned in La Paz) round me so I was like a mummy. I also had a fat local woman sitting next to me, which helped, although I could have done without her laughing - and getting all her friends to laugh - at me for how much more I payed for the bus ticket than them. Only my feet got cold. A taxi driver was offering 8 Bs minimum to take me into town, so I decided to walk. That was a stupid idea. I had all my ... read more

Om du inte kan bestamma dig for ett klimat eller en aktivitet pa semester sa ar Ecudaor ett perfekt val. Har finns allt! Du kan bestiga snokladda vulkaner i kyla, trekking i Andernas bergsmarker, djungelutfarder i Amazonasregionen, storstadsmyller, sol, bad och surfstrander i varmt klimat, indianbyar och marknader..sen om man lagger till det unika djurlivet pa Galapagos sa har du hela bilden. Ecuador ar ett paradis for natur och djuralskare. Vi stortrivs och det ar otroligt haftigt att fardas mellan dessa 3 olika varldar (Kusten, Anderna och Amazonas) fran dag till dag. Vi tycker att vi har fatt uppleva..och kommer att fa uppleva det basta av landet innan hemresan. Supernojda ar vi! Ecuador ar ett litet land med ca 12 miljoner invanare. 2 miljoner i Quito. Ca 70% av folket ar "Mestizos" (blandade sydamerikaner), 25% urinvanare, ... read more