Saturday morning and were off to see the anaconda a rare treat. Then we took off on foot for a walk through the forest. A native guide joined us from the Quecha indigenous community, Don Silvio and together they showed us how the native people had survived in the forest from their understanding of how plants can be used for medicinal use, food, traps and alcoholic drinks! We soon came across the take-your-pants-off ants, the second most vicious ant in the jungle....

Friday morning and we met one of the guides outside the hotel. Diego takes us on 2 hour bus ride to Rio Aguarico, the scenery becomes more and more amazon like with the trees forming a canopy over the road and bushes trying to climb in the windows. The heat is awesome and flies are already biting us. Before long a hornet lands on my arm, stings me, and leaves. We board a motor canoe for a 4 hour ride to the camp. When we arrive in the evening, the first thing to ...

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...

We decided to leave Otovalo and head back to Quito. This week has been spent at school, that is a Spanish language school called Beraca, two hours of home work in the morning and a four hour long, marathon lesson, in the afternoon. It´s actually very fun. We´ve tried our spanish on the lady who works in the hostel, she appears to understand us but we have to ask her to repeat things a lot and talk veeeeery sloooowly! This morning we think she told us t...

Noticed a billboard in Quito advertising the city´s half marathon on the 19th of November. Entertained myself with the idea of training hard for the next three weeks and then having a go at getting a p.b. Balanced up the idea against the fact of having spent four weeks on a boat drinking beer, and having any walking movement restricted by the boats length of 75 feet. Ten minutes later I had filled in the application form, paid a $10 entrance fee and my fate ...