Our thoroughly entertaining week of Spanish lessons Scorchio! Scorchio! Scorchio! ended this tuesday. The school was excellent, it geared our lessons to the kind of Spanish travellers need. We covered relevant verbs like to need, to travel and to want and the more important words like big & small, here & there, this & that. Our teachers Isobell and Margarita were very chatty and enjoyed a laugh which was good as Dan spent most of the lessons answering the teachers questions with witty one liners.

Teacher - Donde vives tu madre? (Where does your mother live?)

Dan - Mi madres vives en Buckingham Palace. (My mother lives in Buckingham Palace)

Teacher - (Inbetween hysterical spanish laughter) Tu eres el Principito! You are a prince)

Dan - Si. Yes

Hahaha, the real test of our spanish comes this week, out on the street. No more will we suffer with menu choices made randomly by picking anything that sounds english.

We had made plans to travel about 400 miles deep, into the amazon jungle, and camp for 5 days. So tuesday evening being our last night in Quito me, Dan and our 2 Dutch friends headed out to celebrate at the local bar, Shooters. Un-written backpacker law states no trip to Quito is complete without a tube from Shooters. A 3 litre tube of draught pilsner is presented accompanied with frosted glasses served from the freezer at -5 deg. A very good night.



Wednesday morning we packed, checked out and went back to Shooters for another quick beer and to watch the England vs Holland friendly with our dutch friends. Rooney at last ended his international goal drought, and I watched the faces on our Dutch friends drop. Come half time we had to jump in a taxi to the bus station to buy 2 tickets to Termas de Papallacta.

Papallacta is backwater dirt town, set about 10,000 feet high up in the Andes. It nestles inside an old volcanic crater, deep underground molten lava heats the water in 24 pools and we were on a mission for a 3 hour long soak the next morning.


Feeling clean and ready we took a 6 hour bus to the oil town Lago Agrio. Along the journey we witnessed several incidents of near suicide. Of course like most under developed countrys the drivers are totally nuts. Our coach driver liked overtaking HGV lorrys when he got to blind corners, when he came face to face with another HGV lorry, its just a quick swerve and a good ól toot on the horn. Of course sometimes it all goes horribly wrong.



Tomorrow we take a canoe for 4 hours up the river and into the forest. Back in a week.

Cooper Out

Love Dan & Kat