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Published: February 23rd 2007
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Nature. It´s all around!
We´re happy because we´re in front of a rather excellent waterfall! Hola muchachos. Today has been MUY exciting! Well, actually the excitement really began last night... After la escuela, (which was half spent playing cards, by the way. What´s that about? and also I didn´t get killed but I did get a lecture on everything that´s wrong with the importation/exportation system in Ecuador. And I realised I know exactly nothing about British goods and commerce. Boo.) we went home for shrimp curry (I had to close my eyes and not think of their little pink flagellum. Bleurgh), spent literally an HOUR talking with Miguel about fruit (So much fruit, so little time), and then got our gladrags on and caught a nice red taxi into town to a café called Papayanet. I think we were ripped off by about $0.50 but we weren´t in a mood to squabble with the driver. Had a bit of a drinky in the café, mine was a Daquiri Frutas, which was like liquid fruity alcohol yumminess. And, quite excitingly, Tamsin and I received our first sleazy bar notes of the trip! Hers was in Spanish, and the gist was "hello pretty lady, I want to meet you, my name is Juan", and mine came a minute
We´re so small!
That´s Claire and me, the brave adventurers, who decided to go under a massive waterfall and get really, really wet. later, delivered by the waitress, just when I was roaring with laughter at hers and vowing to tell everyone I knew about it... Mine was in English and said "Hello, my name is Juan. I want to be your friend". Hahahahaha!! So we moved on.
It was ladies´night in the next bar, which meant free entrance and free drinks until 10pm. We arrived at 9.45pm with a lot of work to do. Needless to say there was much photo taking, falling off stools, spilling cocktails, attempting to salsa, and fending off the hoardes of Ecuadorian men vying for our attention. By the end of the night we'd made a fair few friends (Sophie B chatted with one chico for about two hours, and was totally oblivious to the fact that he was trying to come on to her - she was genuinely trying to improve her Spanish!). We had a few Spanish conversations, but a few locals wanted to try out their English on us. They were quite good, one man managed "Where are you going? No, you cannot leave. I do not give you permission to leave. Stay here with me" Needless to say, I left. Unfortunately we were
Oreos for lunch
This is after the waterfall experience, and it turned out lunch was ham sandwiches. So I ate some Oreos and modelled a stylish mackintosh. very much ripped off in the taxi on the way home but no one could quite muster enough good Spanish to barter. In fairness, it was only by about 50p, so I´m not too sore about it.
So somehow we managed to wake up at 7am today, and rushed around to leave the house at 8am to make it to school for an exciting road trip, departing at 8.20am. What actually happened was that our padres appeared at 8am and insisted that we ate breakfast before we left. They don´t understand meals on the go. So we half ran to the escuela, only to find that we were the first to arrive, before most of the teachers, and in fact we didn´t set off until about 9am, what with people strolling in late or being sick or whatever. So when we eventually did leave, stocked up with Oreos, Ritz biscuits (which are aMAZing, by the way), tic-tacs, and all you need, really, for a park type adventure, we were taken on an exciting bus journey which quickly became fraught with danger when we left Quito and rattled down this crazy shakey jake dirt road, which was only one vehicle wide
Cow encounter
The idea was that I would stand next to the cow and have my picture taken with it, but then it stood up really suddenly and scared me! and often bordered by a vertical drop. Very exciting. We ended up in a National Park of exceptional splendour, and walked for a few hours through foresty valleys, past springs and under waterfalls, until we ended up at the mother of all waterfalls, and of course decided to go climbing behind it. Well, Claire and I did, no one else much was up for it. It entailed a lot of mud, sharp stones, wading through freezing water and getting really, really wet. Check out the picture. It´s so big! And by the way check out the video on the last entry. Very random.
When we were all warmed up and dried out we headed back for another bone-rattling bus journey home, only to find that our madre was out (what? she goes out?!) and there were no bananas left in the house because we have eaten them ALL. So I headed out to Starnet café, where the staff do not send me sneaky love letters, and there is the bonus of Skype 😊 So this will be my last entry for, ooh, a couple of days, because tomorrow we are all meeting up after school and getting a bus to an indigeno market town called Otavolo, where we plan to stay the night and return on Saturday, and hopefully see the old town in Quito at some point on Sunday. So for now, ¡adios!
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Keith Abel
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Wow!
We've just found your blog for the first time and got up to date with all the action so far. Sounds great. Take care, Dad xx