Hi everyone, Well this is our last blog entry on the spanish inquisition revival tour. It´s now 9.30 am here in Vilcabamba.At 12.00 noon we start the journey home which should last about 31 hours before we get home. Since our last blog we spent 3 days in a birding lodge near Zamora. The place is owned by a Belgian couple who came to Ecuador 11 years ago. Really nice people and great birding withhummingbird and Tanager feeders located right outside ...

Hi folks, Its been a while since we added to our blog, busy reading all the responses..... (2). We are now in Cuenca a beautiful colonial city about 8 hours south (by bus) from Banos. In between we stopped for 2 nights at Riobamba. we had originally planned to stay 3 nights in Riobambo in order to go on the famous "devils nose train" which travels through some really scary terrain with sheer drop offs and hairpin turns. Sad to say it was no...

Hi from Banos, Well, we survived the Amazon! Our lodge was really nice - to get there we had a half-hour flight from Quito, 2 hours downriver in a long skinny boat with a motor then 2 hours up a narow tributary in a paddled canoe. We saw lots of birds and other good stuff, including an ocelot (small jaguar,endangered and rarely seen), a tapir, 2 giant river otters (which growled at our canoe), hundreds of parrots at a clay lick. 7 species of monkeys and Malcolm...

Hi Everybody, In case anybody cares, the photo attached is not of either a} a bus queue or b} anythimg in Ecuador. It is a picture of statues on Easter Island. We are a bit cautious about loading pictures from our camera onto computers which are used by lots of folk and there are very few library pictures of Ecuador so this is what you get. We are now on the last day of 4 days we have spent in Otavalo. I will write about that in a moment but w...

Hi all- Malcolm had to get off the computer early last night so you get me again. A few of our impressions of Mindo: -it´s really hard to get small change and there are some truly grotty $1 bills circulating -there is very little English spoken so Elinor´s Spanish got a workout and may have even improved! -heard quite a few foreigners asking about buying land either for a house or new business (like a "birthing sanctuary"or a meditation center -l...