We´ve had an exciting few days!

On Sunday we rode the famous Nariz del Diablo - we got ther at 6.30am thinking we were early as the train left at 7am - the train was already full!! So we perched precariously next to some american students who were studying in Quito. We had no safety rail unlike everyone else! It all added to the experience! :/ It was really enjoyable and the scenary was amazing, but after 5 hrs the thrill did start to wear off abit... mostly due to the inability to feel our arse cheeks!!! I tell thee, it aint amusing sitting on a wobbly metal roof for that long! (& we were gonna decline the proffers of cushions - fools!)

We were also befriended by a rather annoying American chap called Tucker. He was tolerable to start with, but he was just abit too friendly! He was really trying to be mates with us - "the token british guys". Think he thought he was 18 again, sitting on the roof of a train, smoking fags and swearing with two young kids, bless him.

We did absolutely nothing yesterday other than lounge around town, which was ace. Nice to stop for a few hours!! We also realised that on Mondays everywhere dies - so it was a good day to do nothing!!!

Today we went for a bike ride down Chimborazo. We got a truck up to 4800m, then hiked up the 200m to the climbers refuge - my god it was LITERALLY breath taking! It was so hard to get our breath! Our hearts were beating like mad and we were very light-headed! But it was well worth it just to say we have been 5000m up a mountain!!!!

We then biked down the whole mountain with our new found friends - 2 Belgians, called Tom and ? and an Englishman called Ryan, from St Albans! They were all really nice people, and the Belgians gave us LOADS of tips! Ryan is a rock climber and is gonna scale Chimborazo´s summit on thursday! Mentalist! We are very jealous, but you need ice climbing gear and lots of experience to go up the whole 6310m!

The ride down was Spectacular- as you can see from the photos! We are definately gonna do a similar ride in other parts of the continent if possible!

Anyway, Ryan was a wealth of information about the Volacano you´ve all been goin on about... ok, you were right... the bloody thing did erupt a few days before we got here and is continuing to throw out ash and bombs and is steaming away nicely! OOPS! You are obviously better informed than we are about our environs! He climbed Volcan Tugurahua the day before it erupted! Crazy! Took some photos of it for you!

We are off to Cuenca tomorrow, where we will no doubt undertake more amazing tours, and hopefully learn abit more Spanish - thinking about enrolling in a course, as we are having severe trouble talking to the very friendly locals! A lady called Nancy invited us to her house today -we think?!

Ha! Oh well, all fun and games. Prob email when we are in Cuenca, til then amigos!!!