Tuesday 13 March 2012 - The prodigal returns I had a leisurely day: breakfast, laundry and Internet before making my way back to La Hesperia, treating myself to a lovely lasagna for lunch (almost the cost of the bus trip out to Lago Agrio). Back at the "ranch," I found that Anya, Eva and Gabriel had gone to Atacames for the weekend. Not only that, but a lot of things had occurred and everything had changed: Anya had decided that she had had enough and wanted...

Monday 12 March 2012 We were told the previous night that we would be meet at the observatory tower at 6:30 am for our early birdwatching session, with breakfast at the usual time and then we would leave at 9:30 am. Unless it rained. Which, of course, this being the Amazon rainforest, it did from the evening, and pretty much through the night to the morning. I still got up early in the hopes that it might die down early enough for a chance at seeing some...

Sunday 11 March 2012 - Flora and fauna walk After a breakfast of cheese empanada, scrambled eggs with some unidentifiable greenery, bread, mermalade (jam), jugo and papaya, we got onto the motorised canoe and were dropped off with a canoe (and paddles) for our 90 minute hike into the forest, with Samula. On the way we spotted some tamarind monkeys, which Zamula said were the second smallest monkeys in the world. We saw a large spider (which had golden in...

Saturday 10 March 2012 After breakfast (omelette and a large sweet American-style pancake, juice, sliced brown bread and pineapple), we were to go piranha fishing. We got into the motorised canoe, and after about 20 to 30 minutes ride, we transferred to a smaller one and were handed paddles. We paddled our way to the bank and as I was at the front (the outcome of travelling on my own, I hadn´t realised how much of a "couple" destination Cuyabeno was, or may...

Thurs and Friday 8 and 9 March 2012 I got to Quito in good time, despite having accidentally gotten onto one of the few buses not going to Quito but Latacunga. The conductor insisted that I could go to Quito (via Aloag) whilst I insisted that I wanted to go directo and that I wanted letting down at the next bus stop. I just acted innocently naive and made the most out of having made both the conductor and this vendor boy laugh, by saying tengo caliente ...