Blogs from Baños, Centre, Ecuador, South America - page 40

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 Sunday, November 13 I got up early and caught a bus out of Chugchilan headed for Latacunga. I was comfortable for about five minutes. Then a mother and her horrendously carsick child demanded the seat next to me. I endured four hours of vomiting and screaming. After the Dominican Republic, its nothing new, but still as annoying as ever. In Latacunga I changed buses and headed for Baños, a small tourist town famous for its hot springs. It sits on a massive volcano. In fact, four years ago the Ecuadorian government evacuated the entire town because volcanologists (is that really a profession? I should check that out before I go back to school) said it was about to blow. It never did, but you can see what chaos it would have caused by checking out ... read more

So, we finally arrived safe and sound in Quito. Met the peeps who will be our truck mates for the next 8 weeks. A really nice bunch, pretty much all of them are on career breaks and 5 of 15 are accountants. What a percentage! So a lot of green, yuppie style travellers let loose on South America! Went to the equator on the first day, this was one of the things I (Becky) really wanted to visit, for some reason get excited about the fact that you can balance an egg on the head of a pin there (as the gravitational force is exactly equal on the equator and so pulls the egg down). After a bonkers bus ride where each bus we got on terminated about 3 stops on, and we had to find ... read more

Sadly, we only had one night available to spend in Banos. Once again, I wish I had more time to explore and visit a location, but it was nice to visit nonetheless. The way people described it previously, I had expected a town dominated by hotsprings, etc., but I was pleasantly surprised by the number of parks and natural areas around the town. Too bad we didn´t have time to explore them more, but we did see plenty of other tourists preparing for, or heading out on some wilderness adventure tours. With our limited time, instead we took in some of the local comforts: a 1 hour full body massage, followed by the spa in the hotel. One of those things that felt a little ridiculously indulgent at first, but was definitely relaxing. Mike had an ... read more