Hi everybody, just a quick note for the worriers among you because I will be out of contact for the next 9 days - no Internet connection because I am flying tomorrow from Quito - really cold here at 10,000 feet altitude(wearing my down jacket as I write this!) , to Guayaquil (middle of Ecuador)then on to the Galapagos Islands - obviously sea level. Yesterday we flew from Manta - sea level to Quito.   Will post lots of pictures and a report on our wonderful we...

Our week in Manta absolutely flew by. The luxury of having a spectacular condo on the ocean led to a peculiar laziness and we really didn't do very much other than regular daily kind of life stuff. Get up, walk down the beach for the daily group salsa lessons that started at 7 am and were attended by around 50 to 60 people every morning. The class consisted of three instructors, a music system and some catchy Latin rhythms that everybody except me seeme...

Guayaquil turned out to be quite a surprise. Loads of beautiful public spaces – it is located on a very large river/delta. What was really cool was, although it just looked like a wide muddy river, it had a current that floated big chunks of water hyacinth – the same plant that was so detrimental to Lake Chapala in Mexico, in one direction and then when the tide changed many miles away, the current changed directions and the foliage went the other...

   I'm in South America - only two more continents to go in this Amazing Race. Austrailia and Antartica. Maybe i should just keep heading south on this leg and I will end up in Antartica???? Carolyn and I arrived in Guayaquil Ecuador mid-afternoon, took a taxi to a guesthouse I had written down but not reserved and got their last room. Lucky lucky because it turned out to be really really nice, ok price - $20 each with breakfast, and best of all perfect...