Well, I seem to be pretty good at timing some South American National Holidays. 10/8 is Ecuador's National Independence day so this weekend, was a 3-day weekend. It would've been rude to not do some wee excursion and since everyone says the sun always shines down South - we headed to Salinas for a couple of days! It was a great option, although the sun wasn't shining the whole time - we managed to soak up some much needed Vitamin D, which was amazing =) There wa...

So this is why I don't write journals ... I'm rubbish! It's Sunday afternoon on the third week of our CELTA course. It's been great three weeks ... but has gone so fast! The place we're living, eating, taking and giving class is called Kamala. It is just next to the town of Manglaralto and about a 20/30min walk down the beach to Montanita - surf and party central of Ecuador. Montanita is a crazy place ... it's really quite small, doesn't have much but, a lot ...

After two weeks of the course and being confined to Kamala and the occasional excursion in to Montanita or Manglaralto, this weekend Sarah, Kristen and I decided it was time to get out of Kamala for a bit! Sarah has a couple of friends in Puerto Lopez who run a Whale Watching tour type thing - it seemed like the perfect excuse! It's whale watching season in Ecuador at the moment so you can see them quite easily, apparently people have even seen them off the co...

Guayaquil is not as bad as everyone seems to think. Waiting on the streets outside barred and locked compounds seemed to be discouraged strongly but, again I think if you use your common sense ... it's not particularly more dangerous than the next big city. But, it is huge. And to be honest, doesn't have a whole lot else going for it really. It does have a really nice new built-up waterfront though. We walked along this most of Saturday and it was pretty pump...

After several delays, some [of what I can only guess is just] slow flying and a random stopover in Guayaquil, we flew in to the middle of the Andes, 2,800m above sea level - Quito, the capital of Ecuador late Monday afternoon. Flying directly in to altitude is generally not advisable but, although I did feel it from time to time, it really wasn't all that bad! Ecuador has a bit of a reputation for being volatile and dangerous. To be honest, I didn't really get...